Study: video games may incite 'angry' players to violence
by Tony Carnevale 
{ Apr 26th 2007 at 2:26PM }
In a Villanova University study (PDF), 167 undergraduates played games that were either violent or non-violent, and were then asked to choose an action for a fictitious character in a story. The gamers who had just played violent games like Mortal Kombat or Doom 3 "produced significantly more aggressive responses" than those who'd played inoffensive fare like Tetris Worlds.Seems pretty conclusive, doesn't it? Professor Patrick Markey, who conducted the study, doesn't think so. "Their personality made a big difference. People who are extremely angry tend to be much more affected by violent videogames than people who are not angry and of course the opposite is true that people who are not angry are virtually unaffected by violent videogames. So it's both the person and, in essence, the situation."
Markey, himself a gamer, cautioned against sensationalism from the mainstream media, as well as knee-jerk defenses from -- ahem -- game journalists. "I like the rating system so legislatively I hope nothing's done. ... [but] getting out the information that videogames can have an effect if you're [an angry] person is extremely important." For still more on Patrick Markey's research, you can check out his appearance on the Cheap Ass Gamer CAGcast.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jaysins @ Apr 26th 2007 2:28PM
ahhhhh, I love that picture
Hannibal @ Apr 26th 2007 2:30PM
Choosing an action in a fictional story is at least somewhat different from actually taking action in life...
Chris @ Apr 26th 2007 2:30PM
That picture is amazing
JodyAnthony @ Apr 26th 2007 2:32PM
loved his appearance on cagcast. made some very good points.
vidGuy @ Apr 26th 2007 2:35PM
I have no doubt that real-life violence and media violence (be it movies, music, video games, or any other media) are correlated. I cannot believe that media violence is the cause and I certainly don't believe it is the trigger (initiating factor) of real-life violence.
The fact is, no matter how many ways you link video game violence and real life violence, there are millions upon millions of gamers who are no more violent than the average citizen.
However, what these studies always gloss over is that in the same years that violent videogames have been developed and played, violent crime rates have decreased steadily. This is a result of lots of factors, and doesn't necessarily mean games=less violence, either.
I like the limited conclusions of this study. If you are prone to violence, violent media may be a factor. If you are "normal", violent media does no harm.
Chris Putnam @ Apr 26th 2007 2:36PM
And here we see the fundamental problem with all video game violence studies: subjects were "asked to choose an action for a -fictitious character in a story-."
What's really at issue is whether game violence causes people to actually act violent -in real life-, which is a fundamentally different thing. Games are experienced in a "play" mindset, and there is every indication that humans (and chimpanzees, for that matter) are capable of separating what goes on in the world of play from real life. Whether or not games increase aggressive "thoughts" is completely irrelevant from a practical standpoint.
No study to date has taken into account this simple, and absolutely fundamental, issue. And they probably never will, since it would be unethical to introduce real violence into a psychological study. And so here we sit.
ShortFuse @ Apr 26th 2007 2:38PM
I don't think it's that valid of a study. It's like saying, watch a bunch of oreo, hershey, nesquik, godiva and m&m commercials/advertisements and then ask to choose what food they're craving an hour later. how many of them will say chocolate?
or show people a stop sign, fire truck, russian flag, a rose and fire extinguisher. give them color crayons and a sheet of paper and ask them to color in the shirt of the girl in the drawing. how many will pick red?
OR (last one) ask people to watch porn for 2 hours and then ask them to finish this line "john and mary spent the night"... how many are going to say:"watching tv"; "at the carnival" or "doing homework together"? and how are going to say "making love" (or something along those lines)?
so look at the first paragraph again:
"In a Villanova University study (PDF), 167 undergraduates played games that were either violent or non-violent, and were then asked to choose an action for a fictitious character in a story. The gamers who had just played violent games like Mortal Kombat or Doom 3 "produced significantly more aggressive responses" than those who'd played inoffensive fare like Tetris Worlds."
hmmm...i wonder why?
JodyAnthony @ Apr 26th 2007 2:42PM
more people like ShortFuse need to comment on this site.
samfish @ Apr 26th 2007 2:46PM
Well no duh. The color of one's room has an affect on their mood, furthermore engaging in simulated violence.
vidGuy @ Apr 26th 2007 2:46PM
Very nice comment, ShortFuse. Great points.
Brian @ Apr 26th 2007 2:49PM
Chris,
To a certain extent I agree, but I think that's an unfair characterization of the limitations of science in general. You don't have to directly experience everything in a laboratory setting to make generalizations about future behavior... that's what statistical analyses are for!
In driving-safety research I see this all the time: you want to make a car safer, but can't produce a lifetime of driving in the two or three hours you have with a participant. After all, if you go most of your life without getting into an accident, it's a bit much to expect for someone to randomly crash during a short experiment! So what you do is determine the types of behavior that are correlated with crashes, like lane-keeping, speed, etc., and see how those measures change depending on your manipulation.
It is VERY likely that the stories used in this video game study (and we could check, since the actual journal article would describe how they were selected) have been shown to be correlated with future aggressive behavior. If not, what you said is absolutely a legitimate concern. After all, a lot of video game research deals with immediate aggression after playing, and not with long-term shifts in aggression. If the authors are able to verify that their measure really predicts aggressive behavior, then a lot of these concerns aren't such a big deal.
Jonathan Tran @ Apr 26th 2007 2:48PM
@JodyAnthony
Actually we need about 8 more Jacks of No Trades, I'd say.
I don't know what to make of the study. Usually I find PvP in any game makes me angry, whether it's fighting, FPS, racing, RPG, etc... However playing vs NPCs is calming. That's just me.
jay @ Apr 26th 2007 2:50PM
How many people here go to gyms and have workout playlists for their iPods?
How many people play certain genre of songs when they're sad, or feel inspired after watching a movie?
But it's totally blind and ludicrous to say the media can spark *angry* emotions and have people pursue them, just as the media can do with every other emotion. Heck, I watched Outlaw recently and that made me want to be a vigilante just as much as The Last Train made me want to go into train tunnels.
There is a connection, as VidGuy said. I wouldn't expect most folk on a gaming site to see that however as games are somehow exempt from everything other than good.
Jay @ Apr 26th 2007 2:52PM
Shortfuse, it's valid for EXACTLY the reason you stated -- you wrote: I don't think it's that valid of a study. It's like saying, watch a bunch of oreo, hershey, nesquik, godiva and m&m commercials/advertisements and then ask to choose what food they're craving an hour later. how many of them will say chocolate?
Well, that study would show that advertising affects your food cravings. The beginnings of all research start with certain common sense things that HAVE to be shown in a study before they can be accepted into legitimate research. The fact that the researcher could correlate out of it that people with an angry disposition are ones that are most likely to respond in a specific way after playing a violent video game has meaning, whether its for counseling, or just as a basis for future studies.
These people are just doing research -- and, like the guy said, you can't read too much into it. Media effects research is still in its infancy compared to things like biology or even psychology.
Viridium @ Apr 26th 2007 2:53PM
"Seems pretty conclusive, doesn't it?"
As I've said with just about every other 'study' that Joystiq has posted in the past - NO. Correlation does NOT imply causality!
NoHitHair @ Apr 26th 2007 2:53PM
What an inciteful study. I suppose Stephen King must be "more violent" than the average person because he has written graphic violence into some of his novels. We should immediately surround him with psychiatric and police officials to stave off the obvious impending massacre.
Their conclusion rests upon the notion that what these gamers imagined on paper translates accurately to real life. This study is biased, hardly empirical and definitely worthless.
http://blog.myspace.com/nohithair
JodyAnthony @ Apr 26th 2007 3:07PM
nohithair, did you read the actual report, or at least even listen to his appearance on cagcast? your stephen king thing makes no damn sense.
Boss Tempo @ Apr 26th 2007 3:20PM
I'm sick of the whole video games causing violence arguments. Remember back when it was just Black Sabboth music that made people kill themselves? Man, those were the days! Bottom line: Angry people are more dangerious than non-angry people. Watch out for those guys. Who cares what games they're playing?
Ocho @ Apr 26th 2007 3:27PM
Study: Anything may incite 'angry' players to violence
Kelvin @ Apr 26th 2007 3:32PM
Shortfuse comment was great. Agree completely.
ChrisB @ Apr 26th 2007 3:34PM
This guy was recently on the "Game Theory" podcast as well. For all of you dismissing the study offhand as being stupid and there's no way it could have proved anything, I'd urge you to listen to him talk on eone of the podcasts (either the linked one here, or on Game Theory)
It's actually a well thought out study, and it's more about the personality of the person than it is about the video games. From what he said in the podcast, the "proof" of the study is more that "violent people are more affected by volient media than non-violent people" than "video games make violent people more violent". A slight distinction, but an important one that he stresses -many times- during the podcast. (the Game Theory one atleast)
justin @ Apr 26th 2007 3:36PM
reminds me of the darkloard vego from ghostbuster 2 when he comes out of the painting.
http://www.wiiuser.org
now open
mike @ Apr 26th 2007 6:07PM
Is there any way we can get this photo and the frumpy dog from the GoW strat vid fiasco worked in to every post for the next millenia?
No, really; can we?
bgdc @ Apr 26th 2007 4:16PM
According to Jim incites me to violence. I still don't blame Jim Belushi...it's my choice to channel surf, discover a fat guy with a hotty and then want nothing more than to eviscerate corpulent men.
ShortFuse @ Apr 26th 2007 4:24PM
@Joy
Yes, but the study is saying video games may incite "angry" players to violence. it's so generalized. but the study isn't really proving that.
it's only using the common psychological knowledge that if you bombard the mind with a thematic series of images/video, the next human response will be correlated with that mentioned theme.
the real question is, does video games violence disensitize people to real life violence. will you increasingly feel less disguest to see a real person get shot, sliced or blown up in real life after playing x hours of a violent video game.
that's A
then there's B. your decision making based on your view on morality. will you become "less moral" after playing x hours of violent video games? maybe stories where the antagonist (who committed a crime) gets brutally murdered at the end. would the person gradually feel less perturbed his/her horrible death? would the person feel that he/she got what he/she "deserved"?
and finally C
would it incite violent action (the big one)? now how will you go about doing this... this is tricky. maybe place people in a boxing ring and see how aggressively they attack each other. are they increasingly more aggressive every day (the more exposed to violent video games they are). or maybe a very difficult hands-on puzzle that can be solved by brute force or sitting there and trying to solve it. will they continually get more and more aggressive every day (the more exposed they are to violent games they are).
this is ME thinking it out and i'm not doing any type of study but the results would be more conclusive. in my opinion the study is completely worthless. this is just demonstrating people what they already know in the first year of psychology class in college. thematic visual/audio intake incite the same thematic output (or a probably less degree). my illustrations about the color red, pornography, and chocolate are just emphasing my point. that saying watching violence makes you think violence is a no brainer and the study is heavily lacking of any concrete evidence.
ShortFuse @ Apr 26th 2007 4:25PM
*sorry, i meant to write "Jay" not "Joy"*
ShortFuse @ Apr 26th 2007 4:33PM
Oh, and i prefer subconscious tests to conscious test because when you know you're being to tested to see if playing video games has an effect on you... you're conscious response are sometimes biased...
Brian @ Apr 26th 2007 4:39PM
Shortfuse,
you write "it's only using the common psychological knowledge that if you bombard the mind with a thematic series of images/video, the next human response will be correlated with that mentioned theme. "
If that were the only thing going on in this study, you wouldn't see an interaction between overall anger and the responses to violent media. You'd see the same reaction, proportionally, for everyone. In other words, angry people would have more extreme responses than non-angry people, but BOTH would show an increase in aggression.
"people who are not angry are virtually unaffected by violent videogames"
A differential effect of violent videogames (mediated by overall anger)kinda shoots your whole "I know everything because I took Psych100" thing to poo, certainly, but is really quite interesting. Something independent of the violent media is creating this effect.
lag @ Apr 26th 2007 5:44PM
@ShortFuse:
You're overlooking a key component of this study: the degree to which predisposition affects result. Let me take your chocolate-craving study as an example:
If you wanted to do a similar study with chocolate, you'd first question each of your subjects to find out to what degree they like chocolate. Assuming that your sample is sufficiently random, you'd likely have, on one end of the spectrum, a few subjects who absolutely love chocolate, who (if they could) would forsake all other foods and eat only chocolate all day. On the other end of the spectrum would be people who don't like chocolate at all. Then you make each subject watch an hour of chocolate commercials. Afterwards you get them to rate how much they are craving chocolate at the moment.
Common sense tells you that the chocolate-lovers would probably have a very high chocolate craving, while the chocolate-haters would probably have a very low chocolate craving (if at all).
Now say you repeat the study, except this time show an hour of Coke and Pepsi commercials. Then ask the subjects how much they crave chocolate. If the results are analogous to Markey's video game violence study, then you'll probably find that the chocolate-lovers have a much lower craving for chocolate then before, while chocolate-haters will have an only slightly different level of craving (i.e., very little to none).
So a reasonable conclusion to draw from this study, in my opinion, is that one's predisposition to liking chocolate correlates to the the degree to which media exposure to chocolate effects one's chocolate cravings.
What's invalid about that?
EvoAnubis @ Apr 26th 2007 5:55PM
Bullshit.
Jitty @ Apr 26th 2007 7:10PM
LOL, NO! Company bashing, fanboys, video game "pros" and bias supremacists of those kinds make me want to kill way more than any video game (which is still not that much). Plus games that can get frustrating like motorstorm makes me want to kill way more than playing GTA or resistance... (which is still doesn't really make me want or incite me to kill...)
Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Apr 27th 2007 5:04AM
So true.
Most violent and angering game ever.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6204903272262158881
[/sarcasm]
JoseMiguel @ Apr 27th 2007 11:45AM
Wow, talk about idiotic waste of time.
So if you're an angry rocker, listening to metallica you're more likely to be more violent, but the fact that you're an angry person doesn't have anything to do with being violent in the first place. It's all metallica's fault I guess. It's also the games fault.
Seriously WTF is this shit?
Aberu @ Apr 28th 2007 1:14AM
For a study to be admitted into a court of law though you would require much more patients to be studied. In the vicinity of 1000-10000. This report is inconsequential because of how low a number of people tested there were.
Lucas @ Jun 4th 2007 6:35PM
Yes maybe video games can make you a moreviolent person. but it could also be a way to cope. does anybody here when theyre angry just want to beat sombody? but they know that if the beat a real person they will go to jail or whatnot. what about just beating a punching bag? dont got one? beating three dimensional pixels that appear on your screen. the only thing about violent video games for me is when i get beaten. which just makes me take out my rage on the little men in my tv that beat me. (makes me feel a whole lot better when theyre not shooting at me anymore.)
what about good things about video games?
1. hand eye co-ordination: certain amount of shots? certain amount of enemies? good aim? no problem.
2. Reflexes: guy out of no where starts at you? you react before he gets you.
3.strategy: cant beat someone? work at it finding new ways around obstacles to get him.
by the way... over half of violent video games you are someone who is violent to save their country. most of the time it isnt for no reason.