Games & Violence
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The Video Game Voters Network has compiled research about games and youth violence, as well as studies on the benefits of video games. For years, politicians have sought to blame video games for the violent behavior of children and young adults; however, over the past fifteen years, as video games have increased in popularity, youth violence has decreased drastically. If you would like to stay informed of actions and research about video games please join the Network.
INDEPENDENT RESEARCH FINDINGS
“Action-Video-Game Experience Alters the Spatial Resolution of Vision,” Green, C.S. and Bavelier, D., Psychological Science, February, 2007. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester.
Key Finding: Action video games may sharpen vision by helping players to ignore visual distractions. Playing fast-paced, action-filled video games significantly sharpens vision, enabling gamers to see tiny, tightly packed letters more clearly.
C.S. Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester state that the “study extends previous findings on the impact of videogame and visual skills by showing that video-game play can alter visual performance even in a task in which the location and time of arrival of the stimulus are fixed and known ahead of time to the subject. In contrast, previous work in gamers focused on complex visual tasks that by design relied on uncertainty, such as visual search tasks in which the target location is uncertain and has to be found.” (Page 92)
“The finding of improved performance under such conditions cannot easily be attributed to strategic factors. Rather, one of the mechanisms by which action-video-game play may enhance visual processing is by increasing the spatial resolution of visual processing across the visual field. The present study highlights the potential of action-videogame training for rehabilitation of visual deficits.” (Page 93)
“Of course, much work remains to characterize the level (or levels) of processing at which video-game playing may act; however, by establishing that a video-game training regimen can reduce the detrimental effects of crowing, this research opens new avenues for the development of rehabilitation software.” (Page 93)
Rosser, J., et al. “The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century,” Archives of Surgery, February, 2007, 181-186.
Key Finding: Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help surgeons.
“It has been suggested that younger surgeons may acquire skills in laparoscopic surgery more rapidly than their elder colleagues, possibly because they have been exposed to video games at a young age and, thus, have had more experience with screen-mediated task execution. Other studies have shown that subjects with previous regular engagement in video game play tend to be more skillful at videoendoscopic surgical tasks. Video games are frequently a person’s first contact with a graphical user interface. Therefore, they could promote familiarity with other screen interfaces, such as those used in laparoscopic surgery. This study correlates participant performance in video games with laparoscopic surgical skills.” (Page 182)
“Video game skill correlates with laparoscopic surgical skills. Training curricula that include video games may help thin the technical interface between surgeons and screen-mediated applications, such as laparoscopic surgery. Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons.” (Page 181)
“The amount and content of video game play have been studied and found to have significant effects on behavior and performance. As argued elsewhere, it is also likely that the form and mechanics of video games can have important effects, and that they are more likely (than amount or content) to be the mechanisms by which video gaming may improve laparoscopic skills.” (Page 184)
“The results of this study are highly significant and invite creative inclusion of video game play as an adjunct for skill training in laparoscopic surgery…Video game design could be a strong element in recruiting young people to a surgical career. It could also accomplish a similar effect on other professions that require eye-hand coordination and spatial awareness. Given the broad and sustained appeal of video games, it seems reasonable to explore their positive aspects in the interest of education, skill acquisition, and skill maintenance.” (Page 185)
Lanningham-Foster, L. et al. “Energy Expenditure of Sedentary Screen Time Compared With Active Screen Time For Children,” Pediatrics 2006; 118;1831-1835.
Key Finding: Activity-promoting video games have the potential to increase energy expenditure in children to a degree similar to that of traditional playtime. When there is this active screen time, it could help with obesity prevention and treatment.
“Energy expenditure more than doubles when sedentary screen time is converted to active screen time. Such interventions might be considered for obesity prevention and treatment.” (Page e1831)
“Low activity levels that are coupled to, on average, 8 hours of screen time per day are widely recognized as major factors in obesity. Many attempts have been made to promote activity at home, at school, and in the workplace. Part of the problem is that children value screen-based activities; therefore, attempts to have children replace their gaming with less-valued activities, such as walking in the park, often fail. If sedentary screen time could be converted effectively to activity, then this could be an effective approach for promoting physical activity.” (Page e1834)
“Activity-promoting video games have the potential to increase energy expenditure in children to a degree similar to that of traditional playtime. Classic behavior models and large numbers of video-gaming units and computers suggest that children are spending more time in front of screens than they did previously. Furthermore, projections indicate that screen time for children is likely to continue to increase, rather than decrease. We think that converting seat-based screen time to activity- associated screen time is an essential approach for promoting an active environment that is also fun for children.” (Page e1835)
Sternheimer, K. “Do Video Games Kill?” Contexts, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp. 13-17, Winter, 2007.
Key Finding: Politicians and other moral crusaders frequently identify individuals or groups they define as evil and immoral so society can channel blame and fear. Video games, those who play them, and those who create them have become targets because they seem to pose a threat to children. But, in a time when video games became a major part of many young people’s lives and were enjoyed in record numbers, homicide arrest rates fell by 77 percent among juveniles, school shootings remained extremely rare, and students had less than a 7 in 10 million chance of being killed at school. So why are politicians blaming video games?
“By focusing so heavily on video games, news reports downplay the broader social contexts. While a handful of articles note the roles that guns, poverty, families, and the organization of schools may play in youth violence in general, when reporters mention research to explain the shooters’ behavior, the vast majority of studies cited concern media effects…” (Page 14-15)
“It is equally likely that more aggressive people seek out violent entertainment. Aggression includes a broad range of emotions and behaviors, and is not always synonymous with violence. Measures of aggression in media-effects research have varied widely, from observing play between children and inanimate objects to counting the number of speeding tickets a person received. Psychologist Jonathan Freedman reviewed every media-violence study published in English and concluded that “the majority of studies produced evidence that is inconsistent or even contradicts” the claim that exposure to media violence causes real violence.” (Page 15)
“The biggest problem with media-effects research is that it attempts to decontextualize violence. Poverty, neighborhood instability, unemployment, and even family violence fall by the wayside in most of these studies. Ironically, even mental illness tends to be overlooked in this psychologically oriented research. Young people are seen as passive media consumers, uniquely and uniformly vulnerable to media messages.” (Page 16)
Ferguson, C. J. “Evidence for Publication Bias in Video Game Violence Effects Literature: A Meta-analytic Review,” Aggression and Violent Behavior, February, 2007. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2007.01.001
Key Finding: Researchers cannot let themselves be side-tracked by prior hypotheses that may distract the scientific community and the general public from the real biological, social and family influences on violent behavior. Results of current studies raise the concern that video game researchers are more concerned with “proving” the presence of effects, rather than testing theory in a methodologically precise manner.
“Researchers need to be more careful in taking account of possible “third” variables that may account (i.e., cause) both violent video game (and other media) consumption and violent behavior. Researchers have generally failed to do this in previous studies. No study to date considers exposure to violence in the family in any regression model (in many cases, simply adding gender to a regression equation greatly reduces the unique variance attributable to video games). Researchers often claim that they have taken “trait aggression” into account in their studies. However measures of trait aggression such as the Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Warren, 2000) have very high “face validity” meaning that it is easy for the reader to interpret the intent of the questionnaire. Given that most individuals prone to violent behavior are also prone to lying (Hare, 1993), assertions that personality traits that predispose an individual to violent behavior (such as psychopathy; Hare, 1993) have been controlled seems naïve at best.” (Page 11)
“The search for video game violence effects is a reasonable one. However researchers must be prepared to test their assumptions and the quality of the data that they are producing. When tragedies such as the Columbine High School shooting occur, it is tempting to look for “scapegoat” answers to a complex problem. It is incumbent on researchers that they not let themselves be side-tracked by a prior hypotheses that may distract the scientific community and the general public from the real biological, social and family influences on violent behavior. Results of the current study raise the concern that researchers in the area of video game studies have become more concerned with “proving” the presence of effects, rather than testing theory in a methodologically precise manner.” (Page 12)
Calvert, C. and Richards, R. “Precedent Be Damned—It’s All About Good Politics and Sensational Soundbites: The Video Game Censorship Saga of 2005.” Texas Review of Entertainment and Sports Law, September, 2006.
Key Finding: When states and governmental entities impose and mandate their own ratings on video games and determine what is appropriate entertainment for minors, they have plunged deeply and headlong into the quicksand of culture wars and interfered with decisions affecting the First Amendment freedom of speech. We should trust parents to make their own decisions about what games their children should or shouldn’t be allowed to play.
Calvert and Richards write:
“The wreckage of…ill-fated legislative initiatives now lies littered and strewn across the pages of three judicial opinions, each bearing the name of a high-profile governor and each having been decided in the final two months of 2005…In baseball lingo, that was three strikes in 2005 against laws targeting minors’ access to violent games. A reasonable person might think that the politicians would be called out by their constituents for wasting taxpayer dollars on unconstitutional laws or, at the very least, that the politicians would themselves call for a legislative ceasefire against the video game industry.” (Page 82)
“It will only be when a new generation of politicians takes office - a generation that, in fact, grew up playing video games as a regular part of the youth culture - that legislative efforts will wane. Every generation fears the effects of new technology, and the current generation of legislators fears the effects of video games.” (Page 86-87)
“The big picture that emerges across the trio of 2005 cases described above is that of uniformly unconstitutional legislation that targets First Amendment-protected content of video games, fails to be supported by social science evidence and fails to survive the strict scrutiny standard of judicial review.” (Page 128)
“Just as kids surely will continue to play video games in the near future, politicians surely will continue to play political games with this incredibly popular form of new media that they neither play nor understand. What the politicians do appear to understand, however, is the political hay and headlines that can be made by promoting legislative initiatives targeting video game content. To the old aphorism, then, that the only things one can count on in life as inevitable are death and taxes, the authors propose the addition of video game legislation.” (Page 153)
“Ultimately and, viewed collectively, the three cases from 2005 that are at the heart of this law journal article represent a triumph for parental rights. The opinions, in the aggregate, reinforce the right of parents to make choices regarding their children’s lives, free from government-imposed intermeddling. When states and governmental entities impose and mandate their own ratings on video games and determine what is appropriate entertainment for minors, they have plunged deeply and headlong into the quicksand of culture wars and interfered with decisions affecting the First Amendment freedom of speech. We should trust parents to make their own decisions about what games their children should or shouldn’t be allowed to play.” (Page 155)
Williams, D. & Skoric, M. “Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Games.” 2005.
Williams and Skoric set out to determine the effects, if any, of engaging in a violent massive multiplayer online role-playing game. They found that there was no effect on levels of aggressiveness or in belief and behaviors of the gamers.
They wrote, “Research on violent video games suggests that play leads to aggressive behavior. A longitudinal study of an online violent video game with a control group tested for changes in aggressive cognitions and behaviors. The findings did not support the assertion that a violent game will cause substantial increases in real-world aggression.” The results determined that, “...game play controlling for gender, age, and time one aggression scores - was not a significant predictor of aggressive cognitions. Compared to the control group, participants after the experiment were not statistically different in their normative beliefs on aggression than they were before playing the game.”
Olson, C. “Media Violence Research and Youth Violence Data: Why Do TheyConflict?” Academic Psychiatry, 28:2. 2004.
Cheryl K. Olson, professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Mental Health and Media, examines statements about the relation between violent video games and real-life violence in a 2004 article in the journal Academic Psychiatry.
First, Dr. Olson notes that “...there is no evidence that targeted violence has increased in America’s schools. While such attacks have occurred in the past, they were and are extremely rare events.” She goes on to write that, “There’s no indication that violence rose in lockstep with the spread of violent games.”
Dr. Olson then details the limitations of current studies on games and youth violence, including: vague definitions of aggression; failure to put use of violent media in context with other known contributors to aggression (such as illegal substance use and family poverty); results which are difficult to generalize to the real world; small, non-random, non-representative samples; and lack of consideration of moderating factors such as the subjects’ age or developmental stage.
Dr. Olson concludes: “In summary, it’s very difficult to document whether and how violent video and computer games contribute to serious violence such as criminal assault and murder.” She writes, “It’s time to move beyond blanket condemnations and frightening anecdotes and focus on developing targeted educational and policy interventions based on solid data. As with the entertainment of earlier generations, we may look back on some of today’s games with nostalgia, and our grandchildren may wonder what the fuss was about.”
Bensley, L. & Van Eeenwyk, J. “Video Games and Real-Life Aggression: Review of the Literature.” Olympia, WA: Washington State Department of Health. 2002.
In a 2002 presentation that updated their earlier comprehensive review of the literature on games and violence, Dr. Van Eeenwyk from the Washington State Department of Health presented information indicating that “after controlling for psychosocial factors, association between aggression and playing video games was not statistically significant.” This review was based on available objective research and was conducted by the State of Washington at the request of the state legislature.
Egenfeldt-Nielsen, S., et al. “Playing With Fire: How Do Computer Games Influence the Player?” Commissioned by the Danish Government and published by the Unesco Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media. 2004.
In their review of the existing body of research commissioned by the Danish Ministry of Culture, the authors determined that the results of research into the effects of violent games have “often pointed in different directions.” The authors state: “...the studies that purport to show (a connection from violent games to violent behavior) have been exposed to serious and continuing criticism.
This criticism is primarily that it is an oversimplification to perceive computer games as a phenomenon that can be isolated from the player’s everyday life.” Further, the authors conclude that: “It is not possible to say anything conclusive about the potentially adverse effects of violent games. The empirical evidence is too limited and the criticism of the extant research too serious.We can say that the question of the extent to which computer games in general have an adverse effect on all or on many gamers is too broad for a specific answer.”
Baldaro, B., et al. “Aggressive and Non-Violent Videogames: Short-Term Psychological and Cardiovascular Effects on Habitual Players.” Stress and Health, Vol. 20, pp. 203-208. 2004.
Researchers set out to evaluate the short-term effects of playing violent and non-violent videogames among young adults. The results of the study determined that there were no increases in the participants’ hostility measurements. Specifically, the authors write: “The increasingly widespread use of videogames among young people has led to many studies into their potential negative effects.
Research into progress in school and personality of young videogame players has partly eased some general worries. Owning videogames does not in fact seem to have negative effects on aggressive human behaviour. The results of (this) study showed a range of short-term effects of playing violent and non-violent video games on arterial pressure and on the state anxiety of subject, but not on hostility measurements (emphasis added).”
Vastag, B. “Does Video Game Violence Sow Aggression?” Journal of the American Medical Association. 2004.
In a summary of research, researcher, Brian Vastag, details the results of major studies and their findings. His conclusion is that:
- Consensus is lacking on whether video games with violent content fuel aggressive behavior in children and adolescents…
- If video games do increase violent tendencies outside the laboratory, the explosion of gaming over the past decade from $3.2 billion in sales in 1995 to $7 billion in 2003, according to industry figures would suggest a parallel trend in youth violence. Instead, youth violence has been decreasing.
Tremblay, R. “Physical Aggression During Early Childhood: Trajectories and Predictors.” Pediatrics. 2004.
Dr. Richard Tremblay, professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Psychology, Canada Research Chair in Child Development, and Director of the Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development and widely considered one of the world’s leaders in aggression studies, has conducted research on thousands of subjects to determine that:
- Most children have initiated the use of physical aggression during infancy, and most will learn to use alternatives in the following years before they enter primary school. Humans seem to learn to regulate the use of physical aggression during the preschool years. Those who do not appear to be at highest risk of serious violent behavior during adolescence and adulthood.
- Results from the present study indicate that children at highest risk of not learning to regulate physical aggression in early childhood have mothers with a history of antisocial behavior during their school years, mothers who start childbearing early and who smoke during pregnancy; parents who have low income, and have serious problems living together.
Sternheimer, K. “It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children.” 2003.
In her book, Dr. Sternheimer researches why the media is a constant target of attack and focal point of blame for society’s ills. She looks deeper into our societal dilemmas to see what other common factors could be affecting children. Blaming media for changes in childhood and social problems has shifted our public conversation away from addressing the real problems that impact children’s lives. The most pressing crisis facing American children is not media culture but poverty (p. 4)....We want research to support our fear so badly that even a minor study filled with flaws will be published and circulated throughout the news media (p. 112)
Dr. Sternheimer concluded that “violent video games are a lot like dreams where we work out our fears or anxieties without actually ever engaging in them.” (p.114)
Office of the Surgeon General. “Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General.” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2001.
After examining the science on violence in video games, the Surgeon General concluded:
The overall effect size for both randomized and correlational studies was small for physical aggression and moderate for aggressive thinking… The impact of video games on violent behavior remains to be determined. (p.92)
