November 19, 2007 -
We’ve been hearing about a particular “violent games cause aggression” study for months now - a study that looked at 430 elementary school kids and found that they had become more aggressive over the school year as a result of playing violent video games.GamePolitics first caught wind of it while reporting on Craig Anderson’s 2007 book about violent video games and their effects on kids. We again heard it mentioned by Iowa State University Professor Doug Gentile during his interview with the Colorado students who created the game violence documentary we wrote about last week.
Gentile and his father Ronald, a University of Buffalo professor, noticed that video games employ many of the educational principles of learning such as clear objectives, practice through repetition, and positive feedback. As such, they hypothesized that playing violent video games could teach aggression and co-authored a study titled “Violent Video Games as Exemplary Teachers: A Conceptual Analysis."
The study looked at three groups of students: 430 kids in grades 3-5, 607 in grades 8-9 and 1,441 college students (average age 19). All were surveyed on their gaming habits (what do you play, how often, and how violent?) and asked to perform a self-assessment of their hostility. The data collected showed that those who played more violent video games had more hostility.
Additionally, the third through fifth-graders were surveyed again five months later and a comparative increase in aggression was found.
From the study:
It is important to remember that the data presented here are correlational, and we cannot conclude that playing violent video games caused the changes in aggressive cognition and behavior.
However, because we also have longitudinal data, it is clear that our data are not solely showing that aggressive kids play violent video games. Even controlling for prior aggressive cognition and behavior, playing multiple violent video games adds a significant amount of power for predicting which children will become more aggressive. Violent video games appear to be excellent teachers of aggression.
Does that mean the study is supporting a ban of violent games or even government regulation of their sales? Not necessarily. Gentile has said in the past that “aggression researchers aren’t out to pick on games.” Indeed, this study seems more interested in using the aggression findings to push the educational value of video games:
When considered in the light of what is known to be the “best practices” of education, violent video games appear to be exemplary teachers of aggression…
It should therefore be no surprise that video games are excellent teachers, both of educational content and of violent content… The fact that learning occurs regardless of whether the effects are intentional or unintentional is irrelevant, and should make us more thoughtful about designing games and choosing games for children and adolescents to play.
Physorg.com has a nice write-up on the study. Readers who want the whole enchilada can read the full study.
-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen
Comments
1. The entire title and introduction reeks of bias and you can tell what conclusion the authors will come to in about a paragraph. In unbiased research, it is unclear what the authors views are allowing the reader to make their own conclusions.
2. The authors fail to account for what are known as "confounding variables," or factors in the study population that could be causing the examined outcome instead of what they are looking at. The big ones here that they fail to account for are mental illness and socioeconomic status, which are much stronger and well-established indicators of violence.
3. The actual results are particularly pathetic. I like how they aren't included in the actual paper, but hidden way down in the appendices. Even after using the measurements tools they admit to be "controversial" they couldn't demonstrate even a single standard deviation for any of their outcomes. All of the results were on the order of 0.1sd - 0.6sd. To give some of you some reference, If you were looking at a cholesterol drug, these results would be a lowering of cholesterol of like 5 or 6 points, which is so small that a person could have that much difference between measurements without doing anything. Another way to put it would be to say these results could easily fall into the margin of error, i.e. they are meaningless.
These stooges are nothing more than quacks who are interested in keeping the grant money coming in. It's very appropriate that they publish at the same time as another meta-analysis that deflates the political slants these charlatans inject into their "research."
To "Dr." Anderson: Thanks for writing this. I was almost out of toilet paper.
I know; I never said it had to be harmful :P But what I was pointing out is that that...whoever it was (let's say hotdevil666), is very wrong; games may not influence necessarily VIOLENT aggression, but they do influence non-violent aggression, such as competitive. He makes it sound like there cannot be an influence of aggression of ANY kind.
can we get this memoralized somewhere so when JT tries to use this as an argument for "games cause violence" we can project this on to the night sky a la batman signal of truth??
"It is important to remember that the data presented here are correlational, and we cannot conclude that playing violent video games caused the changes in aggressive cognition and behavior."
Is a load of bullpucky (swearing sensor activated, actual respose truncated).
These guys are out to push an agenda and make a fast buck on the TV circuit with the hope they won't look like a huge (moron) like the other (zealots) out there.
Why was a second aggression sample only done with the elementary school kids?
How significant was the aggression increase? I look at the table in the study and I have to wonder what the difference between a .33 and .44 overall physical aggression index is.
Andrew Eisen
taken from
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/aggressive
"synonyms aggressive, militant, assertive, self-assertive mean obtrusively energetic especially in pursuing particular goals. aggressive implies a disposition to dominate often in disregard of others' rights or in determined and energetic pursuit of one's ends . militant also implies a fighting disposition but suggests not self-seeking but devotion to a cause, movement, or principle . assertive suggests bold self-confidence in expression of opinion . self-assertive connotes forwardness or brash self-confidence ."
aggressive/aggressivestion is a nautal partof being human f you are nottaught howto do with it(and other feelings/emotions)and how to channel them and eccsivie energy then anything in life will make you aggressive........
Since gamers are usually the victims of school shootings (as most kids are gamers), aren't school shootings a good thing since they weed out the number of gamers? You were pleased at the thought of GamerDad dying; wouldn't you also be pleased at the thought of gamers dying elsewhere? Wouldn't your clients be interested to know how much you hate their dead sons and daughters and how glad you are that they died?
@(i think its HotDevil666)
Yeah, I agree
lol to the gay song part
"No. Aggressive people love aggressive video games. You are aggressive not because the game teaches you to be aggressive, that’s stupid!"
It may seem like common sense to you, but that doesn't mean it's true. Loads of things that seem obvious to anybody turn out to be false when you look at them in a systematic way. And the guy actually preempted your argument: it's (partly) a longitudinal study (something a lot of people around here have criticized previous studies for NOT being) that shows that kids who played violent games became more aggressive over time than those who didn't. Mind you, it still didn't show causation, but then it doesn't claim to. It's right there in the study:
"It is important to remember that the data presented here are correlational, and we cannot conclude that playing violent video games caused the changes in aggressive cognition and behavior."
This is, as far as I can tell, a legitimate attempt to contribute to our knowledge about these issues. You're welcome to dislike the results, but you need to come up with better arguments against them...
Apart from that, one thing I really liked was the idea that if games can teach aggression, they can teach any number of other things as well. In fact, haven't we been saying all along that gaming can have all sorts of positive effects? It seems to me that, like in medicine, if something has an effect, it can also have side effects.
@Walker T:
"SELF-assessment of aggression? Wow, that’s reliable psychological evidence."
I'd say self-assessment beats measuring the duration of noise-blasts...
"These people still fail to realise that although violent people play violent video games, the games aren’t the cause of it."
But do we *know* that? Or do we simply go by the anecdotal evidence available to us?
"And if a person becomes more and more aggressive as they grow up, they should look at the kid’s personality instead."
So... what you're saying is that kids who are going to become more aggressive as they grow up instinctively pick more violent games to play than kids who're going to grow up into more peaceful personalities? How are we going to find out one way or the other? And anyway, does it make a difference? All it does is cast a shadow of suspicion over any kid who likes violent games - "Yes, I know little Timmy is perfectly well behaved, but he likes Halo, so he'll probably grow up to be a bully - we'd better take preemptive measures!"
Aggression (or non-aggression) isn't what is brought out by exposure to stimuli. Emotions are.
And with those emotions, along with various genetic possibilities, personality types, life experiences, etc, aggression is displayed to varying degrees or is even not displayed.
While these researchers point out that their study does not show a link to aggression and video games, they also don't point out that exposure to other stimuli can produce much of the same results. Even non-interactive stimuli.
Nightwng2000
NW2K Software
Age appropriate games FTW!
"As long as people don’t assume Aggressive = violent"
like thats possible.
This study feels like more-of-the-same, actually. How many times have we heard that the link between games and aggression is correllary, not causational.
@nightwng2000
Agreed. You can teach kids martial arts and high impact sports, and get pretty much the same results as this study indicates.
aggression is a natural animal instinct, not just human. aggression is why you have an Alpha male in a wolf pack. aggression is why the human social hierarchy is as wonky as it is. when young, physical aggression means more than when an adult, and then the role is reversed to allow intellectual aggression to take over.
while their study is interesting, it once again misses the true mark of why people are violent by ignoring the human factor.
I can't answer your first question, I haven't completely read it. Maybe mid-december after finishing my undergrad thesis proposal.
The second question, I might be able to answer. Now the table only show the raw correlational data, you can't compare correlational scores to predict something. so they used logisitic regression (see in wikipedia).... (see my blog for further detail)
It's self-assessment of their hostility, not aggression. There's a difference. Unless GP can clarify which assessment is he referring to.
...you really need to learn more about psychology. Yes, they can. It's a stimulus, an influence, which can make you more aggressive, it influences. But so can many other things; it's not strictly games. Being aggressive and being gay is a rather poor example. However, being aggressive, and being violent, are two different things. You can be aggressive without being violent. It's a matter of self-control.
And instincts? Humans basically traded in their instincts for intelligence. It's not instincts at all, it's a matter of decision. I COULD do something I don't like, but I don't, because, well, I don't like it, not because I instinctively avoid it.
There are different kinds of aggression. Some can be harmful, like the drunk guy in the bar who starts itching for a fight asking "Are you looking at me?", or people who drive aggressively, speeding and taking risks on the roads.
However, there are many examples of aggression that are completely harmless. You could take an aggressive strategy and attack early in an RTS game, or in chess. You could put your players forward in attacking positions as a soccer manager. You could ring up employers asking about your application instead of sitting back and waiting for feedback. I would call a certain lawyers constant filings and motions and the language contained therein EXTREMELY aggressive, yet it does not harm anyone (physically, professionally is another question!). Aggressive marketing strategies, aggressive lines of inquiry, aggressive medical treatments, where is the violence in any of these things?
I think that a lot of these studies contain a massive flaw which is: confusing aggression with excitement. If you are being tested and they give you a game to play, you aren't going to slack at the game, you are going to try your best at it. If it is a challenging game, then this makes the effort higher and it's exciting to try and beat this challenge.
I would love to see the results if this exact test were done on people who watched their favourite sports team play in the finals of a competition. Or with a sample group of people who just watched their favourite band play live. Maybe even on people before and after taking part in a debate.
He could throw out any data he didn't like.
Like when I took the MMPI, I was supposed to take it truthfully, which I did.
It came back saying I lied (>73% on the L scale) and had a 'unrealistically high moral code'.
I had not lied a bit. I had told the truth, and answered all thirty questions on whether or not I would cheat to get ahead or not in the negative.
For this, my results were declared void, and I was removed from the study.
Oh, by the way, the L scale is extremely easy to tip. Anything over 50 is grounds for disqualification; which means its up to the person doing the study to determine whether to remove the data or not.
I want to know how many women were involved in the testing.
If it was all men, of course they'll see more aggression. Here's a hint.
COLLEGE AGED STUDENTS ARE THE MOST AGGRESSIVE PEOPLE ON THE FUCKING PLANET.
FOR MALE CHILDREN, YOU GET MORE AND MORE AGGRESSIVE UNTIL YOU'RE 21-25, AND THEN YOU MELLOW OUT.
Oh my God, I think I just disproved his bullshit.
Who cares if games 'teach' aggression? How much different is that from a son playing in a football game, and the father comes out and tells him to "kick some ass?" Games present challenges to the player. The enemies in the games aren't going to just lie down and let you walk all over them, you have to approach the situation in an aggressive manner.
Aggressive =/= violent. Aggression is a perfectly natural human response to a situation.
I need to get this off my chest.
I'm sorry I killed you and you didn't get to come to the party.
Really.
ALSO
I have always said that fathers teach children aggression.
My father told me if someone hits me 'go to town on that fucker'.
He also always said never lay down and roll over for anyone or anything.
My question is how does this compare to their control group. Did they have one?
We know the kids who played more violent games more often were more aggressive than the kids who played less. But that's merely a correlation, not causation.
But it's not clear how much the physical aggression index increased over the course of the study for those who played less... Was it a similar increase? IE do grade 3-5 students just get more aggressive over the course of the year anyway?
Bingo.
I think this is totally reasonable. They're not demonizing video games, per se. They are simply giving an underhanded compliment.
This falls right in line with: "Parents, take note of what your kids are playing, and don't let them play games you don't want them to."
M rated games are not child appropriate. Children are more impressionable than adults. Haven't you ever seen a kid latch onto something, even though they don't understand it or what ramifications are involved. (For instance purple-nurples, indian burns, rampant use of the word "poopy"... kids.)
Now, I don't think many grade-schoolers are going to take a gun to school because of a video game. Clearly many other factors would contribute to that (availability of guns, lack of parental supervision, unhappy home or school life not being noticed by parents or teachers, etc.).
But could playing violent video games result in more Halo-esqe playground games and therefore more skinned-knees and boo-boos? I don't think it's unreasonable to think that. But I also don't think that's really a major social issue either.
When I was in grade-school and Jurassic Park came out, me and my friends always played "raptor" at recess. It was a game based on a very violent movie moment, but was recreated as a variant of tag. So, did this (quasi) violent movie lead to increased agression? Absolutely. Was this a bad thing. I don't believe so.
But hey, I only have an BS in engineering. Clearly only those with doctorates in psychology (or law?) can be trusted to give us reliable information.
Right.
In this study, you don't need a control group, that's for an experiment study. But according to the correlations, it seems that kids who play less violent video games are less aggressive according to peers and teachers' report. If that's what you're trying to find for a control group.
for your last question, Figure 1 of the paper is what it is trying to answer on how much the physical index is increased and what are the factors involved.
Strangely, if I took some time to look at, it seems that physical aggression at time 1 seem to have a higher number to time 2 physical aggression than multiple violent video games play at time 1. Wish they'd give the effect size.
Although, I wish I knew how to read logistic regression more clearly.
Let's assume for a moment this study is spot-on. All the research impeccable, all the conclusions unquestionable.
So what? Why work yourself up into a lather over this?
The study doesn't say that people who play violent video games become more VIOLENT. It implies/asserts/whatever that they become more AGGRESSIVE. Big difference.
Am I missing something here? Are we fearing that studies like this will lead to a ban of violent video games? From what I've read, the study is not making any wild conclusions and, in fact, alludes to the potential of video games as being excellent teachers.
Please, someone tell me why I should be bothered by this study.
Instant Fail.
All this study has proved (assuming the date is right) is that 490 kids (I'd love someone to let me know how old 3-5 grade is btw) rated themselves as getting more aggressive as they got older.
Big woop! Growing up is a pretty hectic time with a large number of hormonal changes and other stresses in your life that (in my considered opinion) would be far more likely to account for any change in aggression levels.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced either way about whether games cause agression in kids, but this study is BS!
But whatever the case, aggression itself isn't actually a bad thing. Reports like this are about as demonising to games as they get, and even then the conclusion is that "games might make people angrier."
Got that, anti-game crowd? The most powerful piece of scientific study you have at hand is "games might make people angrier." Quite a distance away from "GTA turns kids into trained killers."
Please, for the love of Truth, reread (or read!) the study. It does not attempt to show a causal link between video games and violence. It simply shows - and clearly states - a correlation between the two. It makes no claims one way or the other on which is responsible for the other - it doesn't even claim that there's an actual link, just that these two things show a similar rise. It's a starting point.
Note that the "video games = violence" isn't even the focus of the study - the ability of video games to teach is!
In this study, you don’t need a control group, that’s for an experiment study. But according to the correlations, it seems that kids who play less violent video games are less aggressive according to peers and teachers’ report. If that’s what you’re trying to find for a control group.
I want a control group for the increase over time. They have control groups for the correlation of "more games = more aggressive". But I don't see one for the "more games = bigger increase in aggression over time".
for your last question, Figure 1 of the paper is what it is trying to answer on how much the physical index is increased and what are the factors involved. Strangely, if I took some time to look at, it seems that physical aggression at time 1 seem to have a higher number to time 2 physical aggression than multiple violent video games play at time 1. Wish they’d give the effect size.
I think I understand it now. If you are already aggressive at Time 1, you are more likely to be even more aggressive at Time 2. (.64) If you play multiple violent video games, you are more likely to be more aggressive at Time 2 (.16). But the effect of starting out as being aggressive seems 4x higher than the effect of being an avid gamer in terms of predicting future aggression. In fact, whether they're a gamer is almost as insignificant as whether they're a boy or girl (on Time1/Time2 comparisons anyway .08)...
Yeah, it would be nice to know effect size. I remember that study that talked about homework being impacted, and how boys studied something like 30% less when gaming. But it failed to mention that it was 30% of 8 minutes...
Or..................
Maybe just maybe people get angry it happens.
I had read the article... and you're quite right the people who did the study were at least inteligent enough to see that there was only a corrolation between the two pieces of information.
That doesn't mean that such a bloody aweful piece of research (if you can call it that) won't be missreprisentent at a later date.
My beef was with the quality of the research itself, not the conclusions that were drawn from it!