A pair of researchers with opposite takes on interpreting and analyzing research related to violence and videogames are once again engaged in the scrutinization of each other’s work.

The latest findings of Iowa State University’s Craig Anderson and his team are the subject of an article in the Washington Post. Unfortunately, actual details from the study are scarce in the Post article, other than the research led Anderson to attribute playing violent videogames to increases in “violent thinking, attitudes and behaviors among players.”

Fortunately, another source provides some insight into the research, which will appear in the March 2010 issue of the Psychological Bulletin. Anderson and his team analyzed 130 existing research reports, comprised of over 130,000 subjects, using meta-analytic procedures, which is described as “the statistical methods used to analyze and combine results from previous, related literature.”

The research concluded that:

…violent video game effects are significant in both Eastern and Western cultures, in males and females, and in all age groups.

Anderson, who indicated that this may be his last study on the subject, because of its “definitive findings” added:

From a public policy standpoint, it's time to get off the question of, 'Are there real and serious effects?' That's been answered and answered repeatedly. It's now time to move on to a more constructive question like, 'How do we make it easier for parents -- within the limits of culture, society and law -- to provide a healthier childhood for their kids?

Well, hold your horses there Dr. Anderson. Texas A&M International University researchers Christopher Ferguson and John Kilburn issued their own research paper challenging Anderson’s findings. The paper is entitled Much Ado About Nothing: The Misestimation and Overinterpretation of Violent Video Game. Effects in Eastern and Western Nations: Comment on Anderson et al.

The paper claims that Anderson’s study “included many studies that do not relate well to serious aggression, an apparently biased sample of unpublished studies, and a 'best practices' analysis that appears unreliable and does not consider the impact of unstandardized aggression measures on the inflation of effect size estimates.”

“One very basic piece of information” that Anderson’s research neglected to report, according to Ferguson and Kilburn, is “as VVGs [violent videogames] have become more popular in the United States and elsewhere, violent crime rates among youths and adults in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, and most other industrialized nations have plummeted to lows not seen since the 1960s.”

Ferguson and Kilburn offer the following summation:

Psychology, too often, has lost its ability to put the weak (if any) effects found for VVGs on aggression into a proper perspective. In doing so, it does more to misinform than inform public debates on this issue.

Just a note: Anderson’s study apparently used a Ferguson and Kilburn-authored analyses to contrast their own.

Thanks Adam!

While researchers Douglas Gentile (left) and Craig Anderson have often been critical of violent video games, a new report from the Iowa State University professors indicates that non-violent games may enhance pro-social behavior in chidlren.

As reported by isciences, an Iowa State reasearch team led by Gentile and overseen by Anderson studied school children in Singapore, Japan as well as college students in the United States:

College students... who were randomly assigned to play prosocial games (Chibi Robo and Super Mario Sunshine) behaved more prosocially... in a subsequent task than those who played either neutral (Pure Pinball and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe) or violent video games (Ty2 or Crash Trinsanity). Those who played the violent games engaged in more harmful behaviors...

"Video games are not inherently good or bad," wrote the researchers in the paper. "Video games can have both positive and negative effects.

"Content matters, and games are excellent teachers," they continued. "Violent content in video games can lead people to behave more aggressively. Prosocial content, in contrast, can lead people to behave in a more cooperative and helpful manner."

VG Researcher has more. Read the study abstract here.

Call it the "Pink Floyd Effect."

A just-released research report claims that playing violent video games makes players "comfortably numb" to the pain and suffering of others.

The study, conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson, appears in the March 2009 issue of Psychological Science.

Both Bushman and Anderson have previously published research with negative findings about violent games. A press release describes the research methodology employed in the new report:

320 college students played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for approximately 20 minutes.  A few minutes later, they overheard a staged fight that ended with the "victim" sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.

 

People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game---73 seconds compared to 16 seconds. People who had played a violent game were also less likely to notice and report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game.
 
In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theater... The researchers timed how long it took moviegoers to [help]... Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26 percent longer to help than either people going into the theater or people who had just watched a nonviolent movie.

Prof. Bushman (left) commented:

These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior. People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song.

Earlier this week GamePolitics reported on a new study linking violent video games to aggression in young people. The study detailed research conducted in both the United States and Japan. Of the data, Dr. Craig Anderson of Iowa State University proclaimed, "We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents."

GamePolitics also reported on a rebuttal of sorts by Dr. Christopher Ferguson (left), whose objections were published in a letter to Pediatrics, the same journal which published the Anderson study.

PC World's Matt Peckham scored an interview with Ferguson, who expands on his objections to Anderson's work:

[Something] that they attempted to do with this study, and I think it reflects some of their irritation with the criticisms or counter-arguments that they've encountered, is this U.S., Japan comparison. People point out all the time that Japan is saturated with violent media, probably more, if anything, than the United States. They've got the hentai, the sexualized violence, and all that kind of stuff, and yet they're a very low violent crime society. So the argument is if violent media causes aggressiveness, how come it's not doing it in Japan?

 

...some of my own research that I've done, I've found that controlling for family violence exposure pretty much wipes out any relationship between violent games and aggression, so the correlation is essentially zero once you control for family violence. They didn't do that in this study, which is a significant concern for me...

I would certainly say there's an agenda here... what Craig Anderson argues in his paper, he then goes into describing youth violence, talking about how serious a public concern youth violence is. [But] He doesn't measure youth violence in his study. He doesn't measure anything even close to it. The aggression measure he uses is not a behavioral measure, it doesn't measure aggressive behaviors. It doesn't predict youth violence. So they're engaging in hyperbole that is not warranted by the results of their study, and that to me say there's clearly an agenda.

Hit the link for part one (of two) of the full interview

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued a statement regarding a new video game violence study which appeared today:

For the better part of the past decade we – game consumers, makers, sellers and creators – have been waiting for the results of an unbiased, longitudinal and comprehensive study to be done which will inform us about the potential harmful effects of entertainment products on our children. Unfortunately, with the report published in the latest issue of Pediatrics, we remain waiting,” said Hal Halpin, president of the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), the non-profit organization which represents the rights of video and computer gamers.

 

One of the ways in which our stance is likely very different from others in the discussion on the subject is that the ECA would encourage more and better research on the matter. The problem has been, and apparently continues to be, that the agenda of the researchers supersedes our want and need for inclusiveness of all media… not just games – for the overtly sensationalistic spin that will inevitably be employed – to the exclusion of music and movies. We remain optimistic that longitudinal research that is truly comprehensive, objective and inclusive will be performed and shared, but sadly that day has not yet come.

The ECA statement references GP's report on the study by Iowa State University's Dr. Craig Anderson and two Japanese research teams as well as a letter from Texas A&M's Dr. Christopher Ferguson which disputes Anderson's finding.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Earlier today GamePolitics reported on a study published in the journal Pediatrics which details U.S. and Japanese longitudinal studies suggesting that violent video game play leads to increased aggression in children.

Of the research, Iowa State professor Craig Anderson, whose work constitutes the American segment of the report, said:

We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents.

But, in a letter to Pediatrics, Christopher Ferguson, a researcher at Texas A&M International University, has called the Anderson study into question. Ferguson claims that the research contains "numerous flaws" and disputes its meaningfulness. Ferguson writes:

In the literature review the authors suggest that research on video game violence is consistent when this is hardly the case. The authors here simply ignore a wide body of research which conflicts with their views...

The authors fail to control for relevant "third" variables that could easily explain the weak correlations that they find. Family violence exposure for instance, peer group influences, certainly genetic influences on aggressive behavior are just a few relevant variables that ought either be controlled or at minimum acknowledged as alternate causal agents for (very small) link between video games and aggression...

Lastly the authors link their results to youth violence in ways that are misleading and irresponsible. The authors do not measure youth violence in their study. The [research tool used] is not a violence measure, nor does it even measure pathological aggression. Rather this measure asks for hypothetical responses to potential aggressive situations, not actual aggressive behaviors.

A new report links violent video games to aggressive tendencies in children in both the United States and Japan.

According to the Washington Post, the report published in the journal Pediatrics examines research conducted by Dr. Craig Anderson (left) of Iowa State University as well as work by a pair of Japanese researchers. All three studies are of the longitudinal variety. From the WaPo:

Anderson said the collaboration with Japanese researchers was particularly telling because video games are popular there and crime and aggression are less prevalent. Some gamers have cited Japan's example as evidence that violent games are not harmful.

Yet the studies produced similar findings in both countries, Anderson said. "When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you're looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon," he said. "One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures..."

 

"We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents," Anderson said.

Anderson also told the WaPo that video games are only one of a number of influences on a child's behavior:

A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games... [Extreme forms of violence] almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors.

The Des Moines Register has additional comments from Anderson:

The [Japanese] culture is so different, and their overall violence rate is so much lower than in the U.S. The argument has been made - it's not a very good argument, but it's been made by the video game industry - that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate.

By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, 'Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?' And of course, they aren't. They're affected pretty much the same way American kids are.

Anderson's study was previously detailed in his 2007 book Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy.

Full report available here.