Some things just don't add up
If violent video games are so pernicious, why aren't
those kids in the university game room screaming bloody murder instead
of simply pushing buttons? Why, to take more contrary evidence, did a
study of 71 kids aged 8 to 12 find no significant increase in aggressive
mood scores after a violent video game? Why did positive mood increase
after the violent game, but not the paper-and-pencil game (see "Effects
of Violent Versus..." in the bibliography).
CounterStrike puts the human in the cross-hairs.
This is just an isolated study, and hence a poor basis for generalization. We asked Randy Borum, associate professor of mental health law and policy at the University of South Florida to help us make sense of the evidence. Borum, a forensic psychologist who researches the causes of violence, said "Most research on violent media and violent behavior is about TV. That research finds, overall, a relationship between exposure to TV violence, and subsequent aggressive behavior (from pushing to yelling or worse) in the short term, for minutes or hours afterward.
"There is a short-term, significantly strong relationship between violent TV and low-level aggressive behavior," Borum sums it up.
We figured he would know about this kind of stuff, being as how he's president of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology, and specializes in violence risk assessment of youth. He told us scientists cannot implicate media in any particular murder, and that while many studies find increases in short-term, low-level aggression, the violence of a murder scene is a different matter. "The relationship between TV violence and subsequent serious, violent behavior is much less strong -- it's a small but statistically significant relationship, and again it lasts for minutes or hours."
We'll take that question in the back row...
When it comes to video games, Borum grows more cautious,
saying "very little research" has been done on the issue. The results
to date, he says, "tend to show a relationship between violent video game
exposure and subsequent aggressive, low-level behavior, particularly in
the 6- to 8- to 12- age range."
Regarding older teens and young adults, however, the relationship becomes "less clear, although it's not that we know that it goes away."
Remember we said that the active learning of video games would increase their psychological impact? Well, Borum says "the video-game effect is smaller" than that of TV. A recent meta-analysis of 32 studies on violent video games and aggression in children, adolescents, and young adults (see "The Effects of Violent..." in the bibliography) concluded: "The effect of violent video game play on aggression [was] less significant than the effect of viewed television violence on aggression." Video games that enacted violence against people were more likely to cause real-world aggression than games that enacted violent sports. But, oddly, longer playing time resulted in lower measures of aggression.
Homicide as recreation: Nothing like a good evening blasting your electronic
enemies to take the sting off a hard week.
The blame game (Warning: Statistics ahead)
Mightily have we tried to protect you, gentle reader,
from the onrushing assault of statistics. But like a bunch of electronic
samurais stampeding over a virtual hill, stats are incoming. In explaining
the impact of video games, Iowa's Craig Anderson points to a recent meta-analysis
(see "Effects of Violent Video Games..." in the bibliography).
The study, he says, shows a correlation coefficient of about 0.20 between
violent media and violent behavior. In crude terms, you square the coefficient
to find what proportion of the effect (violent behavior) is due the possible
cause (violent media).
Permit us to do the math: 4 percent of the violent behavior was due to violent video games. Even Anderson admits this may sound slight, but he says many important correlations fall into this range. "In cigarette smoking and lung cancer, the correlation is 0.4, so smoking explains 16 percent of the variance [in lung cancer rates]. Does that mean cigarette smoking is not a major cause of lung cancer? No, it may be the single most important cause, but there are other factors, and they are presumably why the correlation is not higher than .4."
Other important social decisions, such as controlling asbestos in buildings or lead in gasoline, were based on correlation coefficients below 0.2, Anderson says.
Sharon Dunwoody, a media researcher and chair of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at University of Wisconsin-Madison, e-mailed us her two cents on the subject. "A correlation of .20 is not big. It's modest, but often something to write home about in a social-science world where the welter of competing variables makes strong correlations (.60 or above in my book) exceedingly rare. And yes, it suggests that the independent variable (media) is associated with only a tiny amount of variance in the dependent variable (behavior). If those two things were measured validly and reliably (another exceedingly rare occurrence), then the media variable leaves most of the variance in violent behavior unexplained."
Inconclusion ahead
Violent video games. Violent human beings. We wish
we could write a satisfying conclusion telling you how they are related.
Now that the U.S. Army is in the business of giving away video games that
train and motivate soldiers, and now that technology has made virtual
reality virtually real, our advice is this: Figure out what you think
about them.
Why? Look. There. On the left - just beyond that burned out truck -- more violent video games are charging over the hill!
Fire!
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