Study links violent video games and physically aggressive behavior

You must be angry, it's mean you are affected.

Right.

lol! same thoughts. That kid is scary!

You're completely right. Studies have been done comparing physiological responses to playing sports and playing violent video games. Similar responses. Higher adrenaline, heart rate, testosterone, etc. More aggressive responses after each activity. And most of the time, sports actually induce a greater amount of "aggressive" physiological activity compared to games. So basically we should be watching out for the quarterback as well when it comes to school shootings then. :P

What is laughable is an internet poseur attempting to lecture the eminently more qualified scientists who conducted this study on the importance of sample sizes. You concern that these studies be taken seriously is touching. You should probably contact RAND immediately and show them all of your qualifications. I'm sure they really appreciate an occasional comedic break from their work.

Take a stats class and you'll know that any study can take place with just 30 participants. If it was a completely random sampling (i.e. take names from a census and call them to participate or something similar) then it would represent all people who play video games with a fair amount of accuracy. Of course, a larger sample is always better and more accurate, but it CAN be done with very few.

Are you guys serious? First off Phineas, you don't have to be a scientist to conduct a survey. There are way too many studies done by incompetent fools that don't mean squat. I would consider the people in charge of the political polls experts in their fields, yet there are still way too many surveys/studies that are way off or just flat wrong. Unless you survey every single person in the world, there is no way to get a full proof study

To ColosalHat, I don't care how random your sample is, there is still a margin of error, which is made even larger considering that less 2000 kids were surveyed when there are millions upon millions of kids playing video games all over the world.

ElCapitan fails at stats.

Interesting, thanks for linking the study. I hadn't seen this link when I wrote my first post, so please pardon the ignorance I showed in it. I haven't seen a really good longitudinal studies about the effect of violent video games on violent behavior, so I look forward to reading this over to see how good it is and the conclusions made. I'd love to have a little debate on the *science* as you say, so I'll try to give it a good read tonight and post up my thoughts. I'd love to hear yours too.

WizarDru sez: "Finally, quoting US youth violence numbers (without reflecting on the rise of video games and the continued lowering of youth violence numbers) seems specious."

Unfortunately, the Surgeon General's report on youth violence doesn't quite share your rosy view of the data.

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/chapter2/sec1.html#arrests

For instance, we read:

"Headlines proclaim that the epidemic of youth violence that began in the early 1980s is over, but the reality behind this seemingly good news is far more complex and unsettling. Public health studies show that youth violence is an ongoing, startlingly pervasive problem."

...and...

"Self-reported violent offending showed no decline at all. After rising by about 50 percent, the incident rate of self-reported serious assaults and robbery remained essentially level through 1998. The leveling off of these rates after 1993 is troubling, for it indicates that the rise and fall in arrest rates are set against a backdrop of ongoing violent behavior. This picture of ongoing violence is borne out by prevalence rates and trends from the Monitoring the Future survey (MTF)."

In addition, your "other researchers have begun criticizing" statement is also a bit misleading. *I* could slap something up onto the Post-publication Peer Reviews section of the Pediatrics website. These are not real peer reviews. Beyond obviously not having even read the paper (since he would have discovered that his challenge is baseless), the second "reviewer" is in marketing. The first "reviewer", though reportedly a Psychologist (actually, he's an Assistant Professor
DEPT BEH/AS/CJ IE, whatever that means, at Texas A&M), touts the FBI reports on arrest rates, which for me is a red flag for questioning credibility on this issue, since anyone who took the time to be informed on the subject would be aware of the Surgeon General's report and the issues it raises with relying wholly on arrest rates as outlined above.

Real peer reviews happen *prior* to a paper like this being published, and that the paper *was* published demonstrates that it passed that peer review.

In addition, the report doesn't say "that the Institute [on Media and the Family] had no relation to the report." Rather, it says quite clearly, "This work was supported by the National Institute on Media and the Family; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Laura Jane Musser Fund; and the Broadcasting Policy Division in the Information and Communications Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications in Japan." There is also the typical legal disclaimer that, "The views in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official position or policies of the National Institute on Media and the Family; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Laura Jane Musser Fund; or the Broadcasting Policy Division in the Information and Communications Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts, and Telecommunications in Japan."

Obviously, your credibility is taking a few hits here as well. Either you haven't bothered to actually read the report, or your biases are blurring your vision regarding what was actually written.

Nice post.

Most gamers who take the time to think about the link between media and behavior tend to couch things in terms of causes. It seems obvious to them (and rightly so) that a game about shooting things doesn't *cause* someone to go on a shooting spree. But studies like the one conducted by the RAND group are looking for more subtle links that are more appropriately thought of as influences, not causes.

Nearly $150 b-b-billion was spent last year on advertising in the US. Evidently, someone is pretty convinced that a 30 second spot of people enjoying a certain brand of soda on TV can influence consumer buying habits. This isn't about mind control. No one can say that a TV ad *caused* their eyes to glaze over and prompted them to walk, zombie-like with arms stretched out in front of them, to the nearest convenience store for a cold one. But a whole lot of people seem convinced that the aggregate influence of lots of people simply seeing a picture, hearing a radio spot, or viewing moving pictures will influence buying patterns to the point that they will make their ad budget back and more in sales. We don't like to think that we can be influenced so easily, but hundreds of billions of dollars say otherwise.

Media is often used for propaganda purposes as well. Once again, there appears to be a belief that media has the power to influence people's opinions, beliefs, etc. In fact, from a decidedly more cynical perspective, effective media is *all* about audience manipulation. It is often designed to influence the way we feel. If it doesn't accomplish this, it is considered somewhat less successful in its design than a piece of media that does.

If games do not have the power to influence, then they are the weakest and most useless form of media known to man. On the other hand, if they do have the power to influence, then should we assume that they must always and only influence for good? Where's the logic in that? This study appears to indicate that games can sometimes influence us in ways that may be seen as negative. Rather than shocking, this is to be expected based on all the knowledge we've managed to garner so far on media and influence. Why even have an ESRB rating system if this were not already thought to be true?

Rather than an indictment on games as a medium, this study confirms its status as a legitimate and robust art form. The study also confirms that, as with everything that is produced, the power to influence the lives of others to some degree places a burden of responsibility on the producer. Rather than denying the science behind this study, as someone who works within the game industry, I believe that it should embrace its responsibilities, continue to try to improve game-rating systems, work to better educate parents, and support further research into games and how they influence gamers.

I think it would be interesting to see different takes on this sort of research. For instance, do games like Spore, Wii Music, or even the GalCiv series influence gamers to be more artistic/creative.

Agreed. I think games have great potential upside for influencing gamers in positive ways. I'd love to see the industry invest in this sort of research--embrace the science instead of denying it. To me, that would be much better than the current failed PR strategy, which, though it plays well on gaming blogs, totally falls on its face in the mainstream media.

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Please forgive the double-post. The reply system made me do it, so I am obviously absolved of any responsibility.