Professors Say Videogame Violence Connection Not So Brilliant
Guinness draft illustrates connection between hot wings and violence.
Ok, maybe not in those “exact words”, but not since the Guinness beer commercials have two supremely educated individuals come to a conclusion more “brilliant”.
Professors John Kilburn and Christopher Ferguson of Texas A&M International University reached out to GamePolitics a few days ago (sorry, I’m still recovering from my WoW addiction) to point them in the direction of a “meta-analytic review” they published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
In short, their conclusion states the following:
“Results from the current analysis do not support the conclusion that media violence leads to aggressive behavior. It cannot be concluded at this time that media violence presents a significant public health risk.”
A bulleted list outlining their findings is available for you after the jump.
- In the last 10 years, video games studies have been overwhelmingly popular compared to studies on other media.
- Less than half of studies (41%) used well validated aggression measures.
- Poorly standardized and unreliable measures of aggression tended to produce the highest effects, possibly because their unstandardized format allows researchers to pick and choose from a range of possible outcomes.
- The closer aggression measures got to actual violent behavior, the weaker the effects seen.
- Experimental studies produced much higher effects than correlational or longitudinal studies. As experimental studies were most likely to use aggression measures of poor quality, this may be the reason why.
- There was no evidence that video games produce higher effects than other media, despite their interactive nature.
- Overall, effects were negligible, and we conclude that media violence generally has little demonstrable effect on aggressive behavior.
Source: GamePolitics
