February 19, 2007 -
Any scientific link between violent video games and violent behavior remains tenuous.At least, that's the conclusion of a Ph.D faculty member at Texas A&M International University's Department of Behavioral, Applied Sciences and Criminal Justice. The researcher, Christopher Ferguson forwarded GamePolitics information about a study he recently completed. In an e-mail, Ferguson wrote:
I conducted a meta-analysis of studies associating violent video game exposure with aggressive behaviors. A meta-analysis involves collecting existing studies in the literature, and obtaining an over all effect size (i.e. degree of relationship) for all of the studies examined. This allows us to get a sense, not just for individual research projects, but rather for the overall result from combined studies in a field.
In the current publication, studies that examined violent video game effects on aggressive behavior were analyzed. Also examined was a phenomenon called "publication bias" which means that scientific journals are more likely to publish studies that support a particular hypothesis than those that reject it.
Results from the current meta-analysis found that there were about 25 recent studies on violent video game effects, with conflicting results.
Overall results of the study found that although violent video games appear to increase people's aggressive thoughts (which it would not be surprising that people are still thinking about what they were just playing), violent games do not appear to increase aggressive behavior.
This as true for both correlational and experimental studies. Also it was found that studies that employed less standardized measures of aggression produced higher effects than better standardized measures of aggression. In other words, better measures of aggression are associated with lower effects.
Publication bias appeared to be a significant issue for studies of aggressive behavior. Thus it was concluded that there is little evidence from the current body of literature on violent video games that playing violent video games is either causally or correlationally associated with increases in aggressive behavior.
Ferguson included a copy of his findings, from which the following quotes were lifted:
(it) appears that news outlets may promote media violence in general, and video game violence specifically as a direct cause of violent behavior.
Despite the relatively young and sparse nature of the research on violent video game effects, some researchers have claimed that the evidence is conclusive...
Yet a close read of the literature reveals that many of the studies used to support this link provide only questionable or inconsistent evidence.
Part of the problem may be that video game researchers have adopted unreliable methodologies from media violence research in general... Most of the research (particularly laboratory research) employs unvalidated ad-hoc measures of “aggression”.
We regret that GP is unable to publish the entire report at this time. However, it can be purchased here ($30).
Comments
Re: Researcher Finds Scant Evidence Linking Violent Games With
hus spoke psychology research, I had a feeling that psychological research on video games is bound to be influenced by politics and possibly vanity, even so much that it can't remain NPOV (neutral point of view). On whose evidence should I examine?
Re: Researcher Finds Scant Evidence Linking Violent Games With
There's a lot of games which do have violence in them without the makers or producers putting that on the boxes and to my opinion, that's wrong.
There's nothing wrong with violence in games, I love shooters and games full of violence too, but, always on the bad guys. Cuz they never win.
I do think some games are barely or really ill informed.
People should change that.
Most children who do play these games, should be, to my opinion, old enough to know that, when you shoot someone in a game, it's not normal to do this in real life.
Keep those games away from your kids if they're mentally unstable, too young, or just morons.
منتدى المهندسين العرب
Re: Researcher Finds Scant Evidence Linking Violent Games With
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/walsh.html
"Overall results of the study found that although violent video games appear to increase people’s aggressive thoughts."
Don't worry about the rest of it, that bit alone speaks volumes.
Love,
Dan
(It was "Ha!" in bold and italics)
...
A PDF of the report can be found at this link.
http://www.mediafire.com/?cdl4zemmd2y
Ferguson, C.J., Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review, Aggression and Violent Behavior (2007), doi: 10.1016/j.avb.2007.01.001
The article is not yet published but has been accepted for publication meaning that it should appear in a new issue of Aggression and Violent Behavior.
Yea, Fer is gonna get dissed by JT
I'd like to read more about that actually. What exactly are most of them using to define agression.
There's nothing wrong with violence in games, I love shooters and games full of violence too, but, always on the bad guys. Cuz they never win.
I do think some games are barely or really ill informed.
People should change that.
Most children who do play these games, should be, to my opinion, old enough to know that, when you shoot someone in a game, it's not normal to do this in real life.
Keep those games away from your kids if they're mentally unstable, too young, or just morons.
Re:
Meta analysis of research can be bias if the researcher only chooses articles that support a particular point of view prior to the analysis. In research this is often called selection bias and many polictically active groups are often involved in this activity.