Violent Video Games and Aggression: Alignment Change – Manav Taneja
Manav Taneja is a second-year student majoring in Psychology. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he now resides in Huntsville, Alabama. This essay was written for Professor Ray Engle’s English W270, Argumentative Writing, in Fall 2020. Professor Engle writes “Mannie has a gift for research. He is open to looking at a topic on a statistical level but does not shy away from the emotional human aspects of a topic. He chose to investigate the connection (or lack thereof) of violence and video game play. Through writing, revising, and discussion, I was repeatedly in awe of Mannie’s willingness to research and use what he had learned.”
Violent Video Games and Aggression: Alignment Change
On April 20th, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people injured 24 more, and killed themselves at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. Harris and Klebold were found to be fans of violent video games, especially 1993’s Doom. On December 14th, 2012, Adam Lanza killed his mother, himself, and 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Police found numerous video games in his basement. And at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14th, 2018, a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 more. 19-year old Nikolas Cruz, currently awaiting trial, is the prime suspect. Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky blamed violent video games as part of the reason this shooting happened. Violent video games have been blamed for incidents of violence perpetrated by youth across the world since the 1990s, but the question must be asked: is this true? Are violent video games to blame for the aggressive behaviors seen in recent times, or do we need to examine culture as a whole to find the source of this increased aggression?
Video Games and Culture: Which Needs Examination?
A History of Violent Video Games and Youth
Violent video games first caught the public eye in 1992, when Mortal Kombat came out for arcades. The game’s blood and gore caught the attention of the public. Due to this, Congressional hearings concluded with a one-year time limit for the entertainment software industry to establish a rating system for video games. This led to the creation of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), and all video games from then on have been required to be rated by the ESRB and have those ratings displayed on game packaging. After the Columbine shooting, President Clinton called for investigations into how video games were marketed to the public. This investigation found that across more than three dozen school shootings, only 12% of perpetrators showed an interest in violent video games (Borum et al, 2004, p. 22). In 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) put out a statement in which the organization supported the theory that violent video games caused increased aggression in youth. And following the Sandy Hook shootings and the discovery that Adam Lanza played video games, the debate started anew, despite the State Attorney’s final report find no proof that violent video games were responsible for Lanza’s actions.
What Research Shows Us
In 2015, research carried out by Bender, Gollwitzer, Nauroth and Rothmund measured a sample of 126 people in Germany on issues like pacifism, moral threats, violent video games, and the tendency for selective exposure. What they found was that people who identified as pacifists were more susceptible to selectively exposing themselves to scientific and political claims of violent video games leading to aggression when they felt that their morals were being threatened (Bender et al., 2015, p. 779). What this shows us is that, when scared or feeling that their morals are in danger, people will choose to listen to someone claiming video games cause violence, rather than look at the facts objectively.
Gao, Li, Liu, Shi and Pan (2018) conducted research of their own in this area. They gathered participants of two types: those who did not play video games, and those that played violent video games for at least 10 weeks in the preceding three months. After screening for vision and mental disorders, the participants were divided into the violent video games group and the control (non-video games) group before fMRI readings were taken. The results of the readings showed that the brain structures which correlate to aggression and aggressive behavior showed little difference between the two groups. In particular, the violent video game group showed no spontaneous activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (Gao et al., 2018, p. 1224), a part of the brain that was of great interest to the researchers. With the results showing negligible difference in brain activity, the researchers concluded that the results showed no strong causation between violent video game exposure and aggression.
In a longitudinal study, Gallinet, Kugler, Kühn, Schmalen and Weichenberger (2019) examined three groups of college-aged subjects in Germany. One group played violent video games, one played non-violent video games, and one played no video games at all. The subjects were measured for aggression both before and after a 2-month intervention period, and then once more 2 months after the end of the intervention period. Questionnaires were used at each measurement, and results of the study showed that there were no detrimental effects of violent video game play (Gallinet et al, 2019, p. 1231).
Cultural Differences in Video Game Exposure and Aggression
Hull, Prescott and Sargant (2018) of Dartmouth College carried out a meta-analysis of 24 different studies that had been done in the area of violent video games and aggression. Using databased like PsycInfo and PubMed, they gathered articles and qualified them using measures such as time between measurements of aggression. The results of the meta-analysis showed an interesting fact: while there were observed increases in aggression in adolescents, the increase differed across different ethnic groups (Hull et al., 2018, p. 9886). This suggests that video games, on their own, are not a defining determinator of increased aggression in adolescents.
Ferguson and Wang (2019) came to a supplementing conclusion when they carried out an analysis of a previously gathered dataset of over 3000 Singaporean youth. Using standardized variables and measures, and pre-registering their outcome variables to minimize bias, Ferguson and Wang analyzed the dataset and concluded that the data showed no significant causal link between violent video game exposure and aggression increase (Ferguson & Wang, 2019, p. 1448). This supplements Hull and colleague’s results, that showed Asian ethnic groups having lower increases in aggression than other groups. This also supports the idea that culture is a bigger factor for aggression than video games.
How We Can Measure Cultural Effects
The research around the effects of violent video games on youth aggression is inconclusive. We have seen that different ethnic groups respond differently to violent video game exposure. Hull and colleagues (2018) found that, in their meta-analysis of 24 different studies, their own results showed a significant moderation effect for ethnicity (that is, ethnicity affected increases in aggression). They found that the strongest moderation effect was in White ethnicities, intermediate moderation in Asian ethnicities, and small, nonsignificant moderation for Hispanic ethnicities (Hull et al, 2018, p. 9886). Looking at these results, as well as those provided by Ferguson and colleagues in 2019, there is a correlation between ethnicity and culture, and the effect of violent video game exposure on aggression. This suggests that other factors are at work, thus the need for deeper studies.
A longitudinal study, spanning at least 5 years, across different countries and ethnic groups would do a great deal to show whether video games are indeed a factor to be concerned about, or if there are bigger fish to fry, so to speak. This study would measure exposure to direct violence, violent media, and violent social, political and religious beliefs, and then measure the effect each variable had on aggression over time across a wide range of ethnic groups. The dept of the results of these studies would help determine if violent video games are indeed a factor to be concerned with, or if other cultural factors are at play, like exposure to violent television, or even outright live exposure to direct violence. Determining a single cause of aggression increase in unlikely, but it is likely that video games can be ruled out as a suspect.
The Other Side
In 2019, Gao, Li, Yao, and Zhou studied a group of 547 participants in China by taking surveys to measure variables such as exposure to violent video games, moral disengagement, physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, hostility, and sensation-seeking tendencies. They found that there was a positive correlation between violent video games and moral disengagement, and between moral disengagement and aggressive tendencies, with moral disengagement, anger and hostility mediating 71.43% of the relationship between violent video games and aggression (Gao et al., 2019, p. 666).
However, this was a cross-sectional study, measuring a single moment in time, which is a poor way of measuring long-term effects. The sample size was also small, localized to five universities in South China, and thus not representative of the youth of South China, let alone any larger ethnic group. A larger longitudinal study would provide a much more accurate picture of South China’s youth in this respect.
The Way Forward
I have played video games for at least two decades and have not found myself having an increased desire to commit violence or feel any increased aggression. I have met many people who play violent video games and yet are pleasant and kind. I believe there is a larger context for the increased aggression that we see in youths who carry out violent acts. Video games are neither the sole cause, not the largest contributor to this increase in aggression.
I believe that, rather than focusing on whether video games cause increased aggression, we should instead focus on examining culture as a whole and its impact on aggression in youth. We can do this by carrying out large-scale longitudinal studies across many different parts of the world to track youth exposure to direct violence, violent media (songs, television, movies, video games, etc), and exposure to violent social, religious and political beliefs. By measuring the effects of these different exposures, I believe we can find a clearer picture of what causes increased aggression in youth and show that video games are not as harmful as many people would like us to think.
Large scale longitudinal studies are of the utmost import in order to accurately track and compare different factors that contribute to increased aggression. The larger context must be examined in order to determine whether video games are something to be concerned about. Youth aggression and violent acts are something to be taken seriously. The blame cannot be shifted wholly onto video games when there are larger factors to be considered. If we do not focus on identifying the real causes of this increased aggression in youth, then we will wind up losing this game of life, and there are no extra lives here.
References
Bender, J., Gollwitzer, M., Nauroth, P., & Rothmund, T. (2015) Public concerns about violent video games are moral concerns – How moral threat can make pacifists susceptible to scientific and political claims against violent video games. European Journal of Social Psychology, 45(6), 769-783. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2125
Borum, R., Fein, R.A., Modzeleski, W., Reddy, M., & Vossekuil, B. (2004) The final report and findings of the safe school initiative: Implication for the prevention of school attacks in the United States. United States Secret Service & United States Department of Education. https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/preventingattacksreport.pdf
Ferguson, C. J., & Wang, J. C. K., (2019) Aggressive video games are not a risk factor for future aggression in youth: A longitudinal study. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 48, 1439-1451. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01069-0
Gao, X., Li, C., Liu, F., Shi, S., & Pan, W. (2018) Spontaneous brain activity did not show the effect of violent video games on aggression: A resting-state fMRI study. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 2219-2227. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02219
Hull, J.G., Prescott, A. T., & Sargent, J.D. (2018). Meta-analysis of the relationship between violent video game play and physical aggression over time. Proceeds of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(40), 9882-9888. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1611617114