Violent Video Games and Aggression

11 Key excerpts on "Violent Video Games and Aggression"

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  The Psychology of Teen Violence and Victimization

  [2 volumes]

  • Michele A. Paludi(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  Online game addiction has been associated with lower self-control, aggression, and narcissistic personality traits (Kim et al., 2008) and a preference for virtual life (Liu & Peng, 2009). It seems that gaming addiction is a problem affecting a considerable number of people worldwide and that additional research in this area is needed (Anderson et al., in press). Conclusions The recent explosion in video game research has helped improve our understanding of how video games in general and violent video games in specific affect players. A wealth of research now shows that playing violent video games is a causal risk factor for aggression and several aggression- related variables. One common mechanism for both the short- and long- term increases in aggressive behavior is increased accessibility of aggressive cognitions. The recent comprehensive meta-analysis yielded theoreti- cally and empirically consistent findings, including significant effects of violent video game exposure on aggressive behavior, cognition, affect, and arousal, as well as negative effects on empathy/desensitization and prosocial behavior. These effects were similar across experimental, cross- sectional, and longitudinal designs; for males and females; for children, adolescents, and young adults; and for individuals from both Eastern and Western cultures (Anderson et al., 2010). Useful frameworks for under- standing media effects on aggression as well as other types of learning (e.g., prosocial behavior) are provided by the General Aggression Model and the General Learning Model. Effects of Playing Violent Video Games 63 A smaller but not insignificant number of studies demonstrate that vio- lent video games also have significant effects on attention and cognitive control. Some of these effects are positive—action games can improve some visual and spatial skills (e.g., Green & Bavelier, 2003, 2006).

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  From Smartphones to Social Media

  How Technology Affects Our Brains and Behavior

  • Mark Carrier(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  However, there also is evidence that goes against the model. Data supporting the model are weaker for the emotional pathway than for the cognition pathway. In the case of the emotional pathway to aggressive behavior after violent video gaming, research results that this pathway may be weak or nonexistent, or at least not as important as the cognitive pathway. For instance, one study with U.S. college students found that playing a VVG for 15 minutes in a research laboratory did not cause more hostile feelings than playing a nonviolent game for 15 minutes. Further, increasing the time spent playing to 45 minutes did not change the results. More evidence that the emotional pathway might be weaker than the cognitive pathway comes from a three-year longitudinal study—one that tracked more than 2,000 elementary, middle school, and high school students in Singapore. Each year, students completed measures of aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions. The measures of aggressive thoughts included assessments of students’ beliefs about the appropriateness of violence, their fantasies of committing violent acts, and their hostile attribution bias. The measure of aggressive emotions was an empathy scale, with lower levels of empathy presumed to be linked to higher aggressive emotions. The results showed that the effect of violent video gaming upon aggressive behavior was related to the amount of aggressive cognitions that a student experienced, but not to the amount of aggressive emotion. Plus, the GAM has been criticized for being too general, and other explanations for the effects of violent media have been put forward. The GAM, being an accumulation of many different psychological effects that might impact aggressive behavior, has been described as a “kitchen-sink” theory, making it difficult to test and difficult to disprove. Treating science as a linear process, where each new result is added to the old results and the theories are adjusted each time to encompass all of the prior results, is not the only available approach to learning and understanding in the world of science. In fact, many scientists believe that science is non-linear, where each theory will eventually be displaced by a new theory, and then another new theory, and so on. Sometimes, there will be setbacks and reversals, but this is all normal. One alternative to the GAM is a motivational model. A motivational model assumes that people engage with violent media in order to satisfy basic human needs, borrowed from a more general explanation of human behavior called self-determination theory. A person, for example, might play a VVG in order to satisfy the competence need—the need to feel that you are good at something. Other possible reasons to play a VVG might be to satisfy the relatedness need—the need to interact with other people—or an autonomy need—the need to be independent. Changes in emotions can occur when a game does not satisfy these needs for various reasons. Perhaps the gaming interface is too difficult to learn or there is no opportunity to practice within the game in order to get better. In this model, even nonviolent games might produce aggression-related emotions.

  There may be particular effects for children and adolescents when playing VVGs. Children and adolescents might not have enough life experiences to know how to regulate their arousal in highly arousing situations. Certainly, the violent content of video games would make arousal levels higher in children and adolescents than in adults, but there is also the factor of the competitiveness of certain games. When adolescents play competitive violent games, an additional boost in arousal levels is observed. As mentioned earlier, the aggressive cognitions can include violent scripts and hostile thoughts. The aggressive affect can include anger and frustration. People’s arousal may change through an elevated heart rate or increased blood pressure. There is laboratory evidence that there is a pathway from exposure to violent games to violent behavior through changes in cognition. College students were asked to play video games under the cover story that these would help the students develop their motor skills. Two games were played that were matched for their levels of arousal and emotions that happen when playing the games. The games were Myst and Wolfenstein 3D . Playing Wolfenstein 3D increased the players’ aggressive thoughts and their aggressive behavior in a lab-based task, but playing Myst

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  Does Playing Video Games Make Players More Violent?

  • Barrie Gunter(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  10 . A further important distinction was whether the measured ‘aggression’ comprised specific tasks created by the researchers to represent intention to inflict harm under controlled conditions versus observations of the natural behaviour of players after video-game playing has finished. Finally, some experiments examined internal emotional and cognitive responses to violent video games that were conceived to play important roles in creating a psychological condition within the player that could enhance the likelihood of overt aggressive behaviour on their part in the future.

  The remainder of this chapter will therefore review research evidence in four areas of outcome:

  1. Behavioural effects based on observed interactions involving the players.  

  2. Behavioural effects based on analogue measures of aggression.  

  3. Emotional effects representing hostile feelings that were experienced internally, and detected either through physiological measures of verbalised responses.  

  4. Aggressive cognitions that were either consciously vocalised, or detected through projective and other psychological tests.  

  Behavioural Effects Based on Observed Interactions

  Although analogue measures of aggression used by experimenters are not real, they have been defended as valid indicators of aggressive or hostile intent (Berkowitz & Donnerstein, 1982 ).

  Research has been carried out with children that was inspired by the 1960s experiments designed to investigate the social learning effects of filmed and televised violence. In these studies, children were recruited to play video games, which varied in terms of whether they contained violence or not. After a controlled period of video-game playing, which lasted the same amount of time for all the child participants, the children were then taken to a different room in which they were observed, without their awareness, as they interacted with other children and/or played with toys and games. During this period of social interaction and play, the researchers code any spontaneously occurring behaviour that is aggressive in nature. The aim of this type of investigation was to find out whether children who played video games with violent themes displayed more subsequent free play aggression than did children who had previously played with non-violent video games.

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  Video Game Policy

  Production, Distribution, and Consumption

  • Steven Conway, Jennifer deWinter, Steven Conway, Jennifer deWinter(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The authors of some meta-analyses have maintained that the overall trend over research findings is that violent video games are associated with aggressive outcomes in both causal and correlational studies (Anderson and Bushman 2001 ; Anderson et al. 2010). Others have argued that relationships between Violent Video Games and Aggression in the overall literature are weak enough to be unimportant (Ferguson 2007 ; Sherry 2007) or attributable to a tendency for journals to publish research finding significant relationships or researchers’ biased selection of studies for inclusion in meta-analyses (for example, Ferguson and Kilburn 2009). Such polarized interpretations have led to such a degree of acrimony among researchers working in the area that a recent meta-analysis even compared the results of studies authored by two different “research groups,” the apparent insinuation being that discrepant findings by one researcher or group are the product of inferior research (Greitemeyer and Mügge 2014). While the argument among researchers as to whether violent video games influence aggression shows little sign of decreasing in intensity (see Anderson 2013 ; Bushman and Huesmann 2013 ; Elson and Ferguson 2013), it remains mostly as irrelevant to video game regulation as it is heated. Research using conceptual measures of aggression can inform theoretical linkages between violent video game exposure and resulting thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, but research that does not measure effects of video game violence on actual violent crime does little to conclusively answer questions about whether violent video games cause serious harm, thus meriting policy intervention. This shortcoming of much of the research on video game violence is understandable as there are substantial logistical and ethical challenges to measuring its effects on real-life violence as opposed to laboratory aggression measures. All the same, U.S

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  The Video Game Debate

  Unravelling the Physical, Social, and Psychological Effects of Video Games

  • Rachel Kowert, Thorsten Quandt, Rachel Kowert, Thorsten Quandt(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  each exerts its effects. Human behavior is complex, and is determined by many factors interacting together (a fact which should make us realize there is no one answer to questions like ‘do violent video games cause violent behavior?’). Most scholars agree that aggression and violence are multi-determined, including influences from biology and genetics, stimuli in the immediate environment (for instance, provocations from others in the social environment), pre-existing tendencies (their personality, aggressive traits and so on), and life history (e.g. exposure to violence in the family or community). No single factor determines whether someone will aggress or not in a given situation. What remains unclear is whether violent video games is, or is not, one of those factors. A risk/resilience approach to understanding violence does not mean “all have won and must have prizes” and some issues people identify for potential concern may ultimately prove to have little value in predicting violence.

  In addition to complex relationships between the various factors which might lead to aggression, aggression itself is a complex idea. Aggression can refer to behaviors, or to tendencies and attitudes, and different definitions of aggression lead to difference measurements which present their own advantages and disadvantages. An appreciation of the different kinds of measures which have been used is useful when trying to understand the results of research.

  Different researchers choose different measures of aggression, and these relate with differing degrees of effectiveness to the sorts of real-life behavior we are interested in. Sometimes, the measure of aggression is not chosen by the researcher at all, but is simply already available. For instance, if we believed there to be a link between VVG playing and violence, we might conclude that as the availability of VVGs increases, the amount of violent crime also increases. All of these data are publicly available, but in formats over which we have no control (e.g. sales data on VVGs over the past ten years and national data on the incidence of various forms of violent crime over the same time period). Our hypothesis might lead us to predict a strong association between the two. As VVG availability increases, so does violent crime.

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  Computer Games and Instruction

  • Sigmund Tobias, J. D. Fletcher(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  The cross-section- al studies link repeated exposure to violent video games with aggressive and violent behavior in the real world. The longitudinal studies further suggest long-term effects of repeated exposure to violent video games on aggression and violence. (p. 93) Gentile, Lynch, Linder, and Walsh (2004, p. 6) reported, “In general, a preponderance of studies show a fairly consistent negative correlation be- tween recreational video game play and grades . . . .Others have document- ed a similar negative correlation with college students between amount of time playing video games and grades.” Ferguson (2007), however, provided an alternative argument minimiz- ing the impact of video games on aggressive behavior. He conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies published during 1995–2007 and found an aver- age correlation of .14 between video game playing and aggressive behavior. When corrected for publication bias issues (e.g., publication favors stud- ies with positive effects, or a particular level of p-value), the correlation dropped to .04. In a later study that provided both experimental and corre- lation data, Ferguson, Rueda, Cruz, Ferguson, Fritz, and Smith (2008) had 101 undergraduate students play games that were violent or nonviolent, or they were given a choice of the two. They found that neither random- 186  S. TOBIAS et al. ized exposure nor previous real-life exposure to violent video games had any effect on aggressive behavior displayed in the laboratory. They used a task that involved exercising punishment against a fictional opponent. In a second questionnaire study of 428 undergraduate students they found that trait aggression, family violence, and male gender, but not exposure to video games, were predictive of violent crime. Attitudes and Attitude Changes It is clear that people like to play games. However, when attitudes towards games are compared to other instructional delivery systems, the results are not that straightforward.

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  Mass Communication and National Security

  • Sandra M. Martinez(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Society Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Some concentrate on counting number of instances of hitting/pushing by individuals while others concentrated on peer reviews or teacher reviews regarding aggressive behavior of individuals. There have Mass Communication and National Security 168 been some more studies which explore the likeliness of an individual being mean to others after playing violent video games. Although there have been many studies regarding the impact of violent video games on players, there have been none which detail the effect on children under age 10. Studies regarding effect on minority children have also not been done. Similarly, there is a lack of research on how varying characteristics of video games like perspective or plot affect the players. Some studies have cautioned that it is competition among players in video games which is a better indicator of aggression rather than level of violence. 7.2. VIDEO GAMES AND VIOLENCE Aggressive behavior, though abhorrent cannot always be termed as violent behavior. Violence is a form of aggression. There have been no studies that link violent video game playing with elevated criminal behavior, violence, and delinquency in later stages of life. This is because it would be difficult to conduct such studies and even if someone decides to do it then a large number of subjects (kids) would be required. However, it seems only logical to think that playing violent video games would lead to violent and criminal behavior later in life as there are studies that support the fact that video games lead to aggression. 7.2.1. Policy There was a deadly shootout in a Florida school at Parkland in 2018. This again led to a debate on influence of violent video games. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) gives ratings to all video games. The APA Task Force on Violent Media wants ESRB to revise their rating system so that the level of violence is clearly marked. ESRB is of the opinion that the rating system which they are using is sufficient.

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  Cultures of Computer Game Concerns

  The Child Across Families, Law, Science and Industry

  • Estrid Sörensen(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • transcript Verlag

    (Publisher)

  L ITERATURE Anderson, C. A. & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on ag-gressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific liter-ature. Psychological Science, 12 (5), 353-359. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00 366 Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R. & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on ag-gression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136 (2), 151-173. doi: 10.1037/a0018251 American Psychological Association. (2005). Resolution on violence in video games and interactive media . Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/about/ policy/interactive-media.pdf P SYCHOLOGY ’ S M ULTIPLE C ONCERNS | 293 Appelbaum, M., Calvert, S., Dodge, K., Graham, S., Hall, G. N., Hamby, S. & Hedges, L. (2015). Technical report on the review of the violent video game literature . Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/families/review-video-games.pdf Bargh, J. A., Chen, M. & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71 (2), 230-44. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.71.2.230. Bloor, D. (1976). Knowledge and social imagery . London: Routledge. Elson, M. & Ferguson, C. (2014). Twenty-five years of research on violence in digital games and aggression: Empirical evidence, perspectives, and a debate gone astray. European Psychologist, 19 , 33-46. doi:10.1027/1016-9040/ a000147 Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Do angry birds make for angry children? A meta-analysis of video game influences on children’s and adolescents’ aggression, mental health, prosocial behavior and academic performance. Perspectives on Psy-chological Science, 10, 646-666. doi:10.1177/1745691615592234 Funtowitz, S. O. & Ravetz, J.

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  Violence | Perception | Video Games

  New Directions in Game Research

  • Federico Alvarez Igarzábal, Michael S. Debus, Curtis L. Maughan, Federico Alvarez Igarzábal, Michael S. Debus, Curtis L. Maughan(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • transcript Verlag

    (Publisher)

  3 Przybylski, Andrew K/Weinstein, Netta: “Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents’ aggressive behavior: evidence from a registered report,” in: Royal Society open science 6, 2 (2019), pp. 1-16. 64 | N GUYEN have caused sickness and memory loss. 4 Shortly before the popularization of video games, a nearly identical debate on the dangers of television consumption took place. Perhaps the debate and fear surrounding video games is a repetition of past discourses, occurring whenever a new medium takes its place culturally and socially. Thus, rather than describing video games merely as violent, this paper is a transdisciplinary approach aimed at widening the vocabulary that seeks to de-scribe the relationship of the consumer to its medium. The terms violence and addiction are too imprecise to meaningfully describe the effects of either televi-sion or video games. Without disregarding those terms entirely, the description of violence or addiction in games will be closely interlinked with voyeurism and affect borrowed from (reality) television studies. The game in question through-out this paper will be the life-simulation game T HE S IMS 4 (2014). V OYEURISM In an essay written in 1993, David Foster Wallace writes: “Sorry to sound jud g-mental, but there it is: six hours a day [of television] is not good.” 5 The concern is usually that spending ‘too much’ time watching television or playing video games could lead to losing the sense of what ‘really’ matters and, in the worst -case scenario, to forgetting about reality entirely. In another instance, the afore-mentioned activist Jack Thompson even draws a direct comparison between G RAND T HEFT A UTO : S AN A NDREAS (2004) and T HE S IMS 2 (2004) in relation to nude content. Nudity or pornographic content often falls together with violence in critique formulated against games.

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  Media and the American Child

  • George Comstock, Erica Scharrer(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  This leads to the plausible speculation that video games effects may peak among young males in pre- and early adolescence, while for television and film violence the largest effect sizes have been recorded in the research literature for very young children and for those of college age (Paik & Comstock, 1994; Comstock & Scharrer, 1999, pp. 287–297). These circumstances lead us to render a qualified verdict. We con-clude that the evidence at present identifies violent video game play as increasing aggressive and antisocial behavior among children and ado-lescents. We also conclude that violent video game play fits well within IV. The Effects of Violence in Video Games 237 238 Television Violence, Aggression, and Other Behavioral Effects the explanatory framework of the General Aggression Model (GAM) (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Anderson, Gentile & Buckley, 2007). We believe that the processes involved in the contribution of violent tele-vision and film entertainment to aggressive and antisocial behavior operate similarly in the case of violent video games. Finally, we con-clude that effects are greatest among males 10 to 14 in age. V. OTHER HYPOTHESES REGARDING MEDIA INFLUENCE The hypothesis that exposure to violent television or film entertain-ment increases aggressive or antisocial behavior by far has received the most attention of any possible effect of media violence. Frequently, this hypothesis has been extended to include presumed antecedents or correlates of such behavior—for example, hostile thoughts, aggressive personality traits, or attitudes and values favorable to causing others discomfort, inconvenience, or pain. Additional hypotheses, however, have focused on mental states and their consequences, and in each case there is evidence of media influence. Three hypotheses have received considerable attention: 1. Fear —the expectation that the depiction of some events by the media will incite reactions of fear or anxiety (Cantor, 2001).

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  Human Aggression

  Theories, Research, and Implications for Social Policy

  • Russell G. Geen, Edward D. Donnerstein(Authors)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  As noted earlier, rewarded violence increases the risk of aggressive re- sponding (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1961, 1963b; Lando & Donnerstein, 1978). Other scholars have suggested that humor may increase a viewer's level of arousal over that attained by violence alone (Wilson et al., 1997). Increased arousal has been found to increase aggressive responding (Zillmann, 1979). Taken together, these studies suggest that violent portrayals featuring humor may increase the risk of desensitization and aggressive behavior in viewers. In total, the research reviewed earlier indicates that nine different contextual features of violence either increase or decrease the risk of psychological harm. Summing across all the variables, it becomes obvious that the most risky vio- MEDIA VIOLENCE 1 9 1 lent depictions for learning aggression are those featuring attractive perpetrators engaging in justified and rewarded violence that fail to depict any pain/harm to their victims. In terms of desensitization, viewing extensive and repeated acts of violence juxtaposed with humor or blood and viscera heightens the risk of grow- ing calloused or numb toward aggression. Finally, those depictions involving un- justified acts of aggression that are not punished increase the risk of long-term fear and anxiety in viewers. ISSUES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT AND AGGRESSION Viewer variables may also influence the impact of exposure to different types of violent depictions. One particular characteristic, age or level of cognitive de- velopment, has a significant impact on a child's learning of aggressive thoughts, attitudes, and behavior. Younger children (2 to 6 year olds) are a special audience and they bring different cognitive skills and capabilities to the viewing experi- ence than do older children (7 to 12 year olds).

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