These Violent Delights Don ’t Have Violent Ends: Study Finds No link Between Violent Video Games And Teen Aggression

By Matthew Warren Claims that violent video games lead to aggression have been around since the days of Space Invaders. When young people are exposed to violent media, the theory goes, their aggressive thoughts become more prominent, leading them to commit acts of violence. But while several studies have found results that seem to back up this idea, the evidence is far from unequivocal. Now a study published in Royal Society Open Science has failed to find any association between the time spent playing violent video games and aggressive behaviour, adding to a growing body of literature that suggests that such a link has been overstated – or may not exist at all. Many past studies in the field suffered from important methodological limitations, such as relying on people reporting their own levels of aggression, which opens results up to “mischievous responding”, where participants give dishonest responses just for the sake of it – a particular problem in research with young people. Perhaps more worryingly, researchers have often taken a “flexible” approach to analysis. For example, when calculating scores that represent the level of violence in games or how aggressive an individual is, researchers have decided to use just a small subset of all the questions that they’ve asked participants, allowing them to pick and choose from their measures to produce results consistent with their theories. In the new study, Andrew Przybylski and Netta Weinstein sought to exam...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Developmental Forensic Media Technology Source Type: blogs