WHEN two teenage boys opened fire on their classmates and teachers at
Columbine High School in Colorado last year, killing 13 and wounding 23, one of
the factors blamed for the massacre was the boys鈥� interest in violent video
games.
The perception that video games can exacerbate some of society鈥檚 ills was
reinforced recently, when a press release from the American Psychological
Association trumpeted: 鈥淰iolent video games can increase aggression鈥�. It was
based on a paper in the APA鈥檚 prestigious Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology. It was widely quoted in the world鈥檚 media as the proof we all
needed. In Britain, The Observer newspaper ran the story under the
headline: 鈥淥fficial: video games make people violent.鈥� Even New
快猫短视频 joined in
(6 May 2000, p 25).
The authors of the APA paper, Craig Anderson of Iowa State University and
Karen Dill of Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina, claimed they had new
evidence showing that violent video games cause aggression, and that they may be
more harmful than violent television programmes or films. Their main reasons
were that video games are interactive and very engrossing, and they require
players to identify with the aggressor. However, the scientists did not examine
these causes鈥攖hey are left as untested assumptions about the power of
games.
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Their research consisted of two studies, both involving undergraduate
students at the University of Missouri at Columbia. In the first, 78 male and
149 female students were asked about their five favourite video games, how
violent they considered them and how long they spent playing them. In addition,
the students had to fill in questionnaires about their aggressive behaviour and
delinquency. They were also asked how much time they had spent playing video
games when they were younger.
鈥淪tudents who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high
school engaged in more aggressive behaviour,鈥� the researchers found. However,
since the researchers did not seem to have asked the students whether the games
they had played in earlier years were violent, this finding cannot be based on
any results reported in their 43-page paper.
What the data do show is a reasonably strong association between the playing
of violent video games and concurrent aggressive behaviour and delinquency. This
may be troubling, but it tells us nothing about causal relationships: are video
games the root of the problem or the fruit of it? In other words, finding that
people who enjoy violent media may also be aggressive is tantamount to observing
that those who play football also enjoy watching it on television.
鈥淭he correlational nature of [this] study means that causal statements are
risky at best,鈥� the authors admit. Quite so. To discuss the issue sensibly, we
need to know a bit more about how people are changed by their experiences of
video games and other media, especially in populations more obviously
problematic than university students.
The second study, and the one to which the researchers attach more
importance, involved 106 male and 104 female students in a laboratory
experiment. Each one was asked to play either the violent video game Wolfenstein
3D or the non-violent game Myst and was then assessed for aggression.
The experiment was carried out in two parts. First, the participants played
their allotted game for 15 minutes and then took tests to measure the speed with
which they could repeat aggressive words鈥攕uch as 鈥渕urder鈥濃�攆lashed
onto a computer screen. The authors argue that this is a measure of aggressive
thinking, and thus of potential for violence.
Those who had played the violent video game showed significantly faster
responses to the aggressive words. However, we cannot know from the results
whether the violent game speeded up responses, or whether the non-violent game
slowed them down. Thus the authors鈥� conclusion that the effect is due to the
violent game is a leap of faith.
One week after this test, participants returned to the laboratory for a
further 15 minutes on their allotted video game. They then had to play a game of
quick reactions against what they thought was a human opponent but in reality
was a computer. Their task was to respond as quickly as possible by clicking a
mouse key when a tone was sounded. If they lost, they received a blast of noise
from their opponent as a punishment. If they won, they gave their opponent a
blast of noise. This, of course, was another ruse to measure aggression:
participants were asked to set the decibel level of the noise blast sent to
their opponent. They could change this level (between 55 and 100 decibels)
before each round, and vary the duration of the blast by holding down a control
bar.
鈥淧articipants who had played Wolfenstein 3D delivered significantly longer
blasts than those who had played the non-violent game Myst,鈥� the researchers
found This, they argue, shows that 鈥減laying a violent video game increased the
aggressiveness of participants鈥�.
However, closer inspection of the results reveals that these 鈥渟ignificantly
longer鈥� blasts were just over 2 per cent longer鈥攈ardly of much
psychological significance. Moreover, the average length of noise blast set by
all the students was just over half a second, which is about what we might
expect from a firm press of a control bar and is hardly punitive.
What about the noise levels set by the students? The authors simply note that
there were 鈥渘o statistically significant effects鈥� and leave it at that. But this
measurement, whatever it is, is crucial to the question of aggression, and the
researchers should have revealed it. Certainly, we should have been told whether
or not those who played the violent game retaliated with louder blasts than they
received.
All in all, Anderson and Dill鈥檚 new evidence is exceptionally weak, and in
its one-sided approach it has a depressingly familiar ring to it. As anxiety
grows about violence in society, popular culture is frequently cast in the role
of demon. Whether this is justified is a legitimate subject for research, but
studies to date have been notably biased towards seeking evidence of harm. This
鈥渂lame game鈥� may be fun for some researchers to play, and knee-jerk reactions
such as the APA鈥檚 press release may be media-friendly. But we deserve
better.