The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has revealed the result of two new projects, researching the link between participation in violent acts in videogames and that of real-life violence, culminating in a study that provides a compelling argument against the supposed connection. The two research projects took place in both the US and Sweden, and both drew significant results.
A host of respected researchers and government authorities, including the U.S. Supreme Court, determined that existing research provides no evidence to support the claim of a connection. Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association/ESA noted that, “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent videogames and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively.”
Last month, Professor Christopher Ferguson and several of his Texas A&M International University colleagues published a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Research finding no long-term link between violent video games and youth aggression or dating violence. The study involved a sample of 165 youth between the ages of 10 and 14 who were tested three separate times over a three-year period. Ferguson’s team used a series of measurement tools to assess participants’ violent video game exposure as
well as antisocial personality traits, family attachment and delinquent peers; exposure to domestic violence; depression and mental health; and instances of dating violence. When controlling for these behavioural and environmental factors, the researchers affirmed that exposure to videogame violence was not related to youth aggression, and that depression, antisocial personality traits, family violence and peer influences were in fact the best predictors of aggression.
In addition, the Swedish Media Council determined in December, following its review and analysis of more than 100 scholarly articles published in international journals in the last 11 years, that there is no conclusive evidence proving that violent videogames cause aggressive behaviour. The report also noted that while a majority of these studies found a correlation between videogames and aggression, they also suffered from significant methodological shortcomings that called their results into question. These flaws included only assessing study participants’ videogames playing and aggressive behaviour at a single point in time, and measuring aggression not through their physical actions but through their aggressive thoughts, attitudes and feelings, which the report described as vague and not linked to actual violence.
Both studies add to a growing body of research debunking the myth that there is a link between videogames and violence. In fact, a wide body of research has shown the many ways videogames are being used to improve our lives through education, health and business applications. When considering this research, numerous court rulings and other facts, it is clear that there is no concrete evidence that videogames cause harm, but they can have positive effects. Electronic Theatre will keep you updated with all the latest research papers on the suggestion of videogames causing the hypodermic needle effect upon violence in youths.
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