Study: Violent Games Cause Violent Behavior

I think all this proves is that a lot of Japanese people are ****ed up.

Tentacle hentai. Need I say more?

The article mentions that studies have had difficulty proving that violent video games actually CAUSE, rather than just correlate with, violent behavior. I fail to see how this one is any different.

To really prove that claim, you'd need a longitudinal study where you tracked the same gamers and non-gamers over the course of many years to see whether the two groups really did diverge. The article mentioned this study had a time-frame of "months," which seems pretty flimsy, especially alongside all the self-reporting.

I'm pretty willing to admit that lifelike, realistic, immersive games can have pretty lasting psychological effects, and that with violent games, those effects might not all be positive. But there's no way you're going to be able to measure them by having a kid fill out a questionnaire in August, then another one in December.

Humans are still animals, very intelligent animals but animals none-the-less, motivated by primal urges and prone to have a wide range of emotions. Human males also produce specific hormones which have caused aggressive behavior FOR MILLIONS OF FUCKING YEARS... games have nothing to do with it.. Iowa assholes

Aggressive is a pretty broad term. "Aggressive corporate takeovers." "Aggressive defense." "Aggressive stage of an infection." "Aggressive behavior." It sound's like someone's trying to make the facts fit into the conclusion and not the other way around through some fancy doublespeak.

New Study: Studies on Violent Behavior Cause Violent Behavior

Kids shouldn't be allowed to play games. Not any more anyway. It was ok when I was a kid, with Zelda and Mario and Monkey Island and fuck knows what other awesome light hearted games were available.

Kids today are fucking idiotic animals though...and giving them things like GTA 4 and Condemned and whatever graphically beefy gore fest is popular at the moment is a bad idea.

I draw the example of my little brother who is 9 years old....and his dad thought it was a good idea to get him San Andreas a few years back, and the afore mentioned GTA4 recently. He plays these games all the time, reciting lines from them and thinking he's fucking CJ or Nico when he's pissing about with his mates in the street. This kid is a right little shit, and is gonna grow up to be a bully or a fucking criminal.

I mean, even I played the first GTA as a kid, but that was ok.....and you know why? Just look at it....it's a comedy style game.

This is a load of crap. I play pretty much nothing but violent games but am very much a non-violent person.

Oddly enough, when I was younger (grade school-age) I was much more violent. Kids would pick on me and I would retaliate with violence.

I came to realize that wasn't the right way to resolve my problems right around the time I got into playing videogames, actually.

Even before I read the story I suspected that Anderson was involved.

Anderson has never done a study where he didn't find that something caused aggression. He sees aggression everywhere.

The problem with this? At least in the papers of his that I have read he never offers a clear definition of "aggression." This article is no exception.

In one paragraph they write,"'Aggression' also is defined differently by behavioral scientists than by the general public. Social and developmental psychologists typically define 'aggression' as behavior that is intended to harm another person who is motivated to avoid that harm. In other words, aggression is an act conducted by 1 person with the intent of hurting another person; it is not an emotion, thought, or intention." (page e1068)


However, in the next paragraph they contradict the statement that agression "is not an emotion, thought, or intention" when they state, "Existing experimental studies demonstrate that playing a violent video game causes an immediate increase in aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions." (page e1068)

So does "aggression" include thoughts or emotions or not?

Regardless, both the Japanese and the USA groups involved self-reporting of "aggression" which puts the results in doubt and there's no information on why the participants in each group were chosen (the Japanese group was actually data from another study) so there's no way of knowing if games make kids more aggressive or if aggressive kids play more games.

Finally, the study was funded in part by the National Institute on Media and the Family (page e1070) which also calls the results into question since they are an outspoken group about the evils of videogames.

Hockey players are all a bunch of Doom addicts anyway. Fuckers.

It's really the fault of Heavy Metal.

Solution? Get the parents of children aged 9 to 12 to stop buying their kids violent games rated above their age level.

This study is a validation of common sense. No one should be surprised that exposure to violence increases violent behavior. We are products of our environments. But, as many are pointing out, this study does NOT say that violent videogames make killers out of well-adjusted kids (or ANY kids, for that matter). I think we're simply talking about increased anti-social behavior-- quicker tempers, greater tendency to resort to fisticuffs, desensitization, etc.

It;s been said, but there is a huge gap between "aggression" and doing some of the horrible things that people have been trying to blame video games on for the last decade. I wonder why they also chose test subjects that were underage...

You guys are missing the main point, "The Japanese children rated their own aggressive behavior, as did the US group, though additional data on the US group came from peers and teachers."

So all the data was collected by non scientists which makes this whole thing retarded.

I'm not saying that environmental influences absolutely cannot shape behaviors. That would be a ridiculous statement. However, this study has two major flaws: sample size and control methods. The first was too small, the latter too loose.

This environmental influence argument concerning electronic media was made about television serial westerns in the 1950s and '60s, and it was no more valid at that time than it is today concerning video games. My father was raised on those serials, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more disciplined, self-controlled, and gentle man. Yes, the content was different -- more "white hats" and less GTA thugs, but I see that as ancillary issue to the question as a whole.

Bad seed is bad seed, and bad parenting is bad parenting. If your kid is a violent asswipe with no self-discipline, redden his behind until he learns better. That's called parenting.

The study is associated with Craig Anderson. I'm not saying their methods aren't valid without looking at it but this man is known to desperately want this to be true. He's like the Jack Thompson of researchers; and second, has a history of going to the media to exaggerate about it.

A standard criticism is that these types of studies assume a large enough sample size will cancel out differences when there is good reason to control for systematic biases as these aren't controlled experiments

There's no point ignoring research like this, and living in a dream world where entertainment mediums don't have an effect on behaviour - particularly in children. Admitting that violent games can cause violent behaviour isn't the same as saying "GTAIV is a murder-simulator!!!" or "X game caused some psychopath to murder his best friend" because these are just opinions which have no real basis in fact. Whereas this study isn't exactly pioneering, its well documented that observing violent behaviour or being exposed to it at a young age can cause similar behaviour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_doll_experiment is a classic study. It really isn't that shocking. Just because gaming is your hobby doesn't make it safe for children to have uninhibited access to it just in the same way that someone interested in guns, cars or film would not allow children to have unrestricted access to them at a young age. I really don't get why people are trying to point out methodological issues in what is actually a pretty mundane and well accepted theory about the effects of observation of violence.

little wussbags needed some toughening up anyway

Japanese? aggressive? What did they do - stoped using polite language? Seriously...

Anyway, I agree ;-) I can't supress the urge to shoot some zomibes! Or to smack a head-crab with a crowbar...

Oh, and "pretty good evidence" doesn't sound very scientific to me. Psychology has no scientific approach these days. Besides, they rated themselves? Come on...

They've also made studies showing the opposite...

Devil's Advocate: Is this a bad thing? It's not like aggression is something that has to be avoided at all times - sometimes it's a neccessary or good thing.

Isn't there a huge gap between behavior you'd call "aggressive" and behavior deemed "violent"?

Looking at the research:
* They selected kids who already play these games, thus preventing them from eliminating an alternate theory (that aggressive kids play violent games).
* The violence the groups were exposed to were calculated with different methods. One group simply counted the games and how much they played (and the *adventure* genre was listed as violent), while the other had researchers attempting to quantify how much violence the gameplay contained.
* "It's not the violence per se that's the problem, it's the context and goals of the violence." Bravo on an excellent counterpoint.
* Re: "...A 'culture of disrespect' in which children get the message that it's acceptable to treat one another rudely and even aggressively..." I counter that those changes (if it really is different than it has been in the past) are more due to: parents trying to be a kid's friend instead of their parent; other authority figures thrust into a culture of fear where the children they work with hold the power (one false accusation means they're fired); etc. The difference between a symptom and the disease has not been adequately explored.
* As MST3K put it, Iowa State University is "the high school after high school." (This is completely an ad hominem were I serious, so disregard it freely.)