Does violence in video games lead to violence in real life?

Every parent wants to protect their child from the “bad things” in life.  If my child plays a kid’s version of online slots in Club Penguin is it going to lead them to become a gambling addict?  If my child plays video games that have shooting and violence in it is my child going to be the next mass school shooter?

We, as parents, are always going to have these concerns in the back of our minds because all of us want the best for our child.  But let’s take a look to see if our fears are justified and hows and the whys related to this discussion.

Self Reported Research

A lot of research on this topic is based on self-reporting.  But when talking about teenage students, self-reporting may or may not be correct.  Self-reporting has a lot of inaccuracies and unreliability. Just interviewing students in a group environment vs. an individual environment can skew the results.  Is a child under reporting or over reporting things in order to match what they think their peers want them to say?

Not to mention the whole “silent protest” of the research, so teenagers purposely give bogus answers in order to purposely skew the results.  At the end of the day, teenagers will always be … teenagers.

Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Oxford Research

This study used a combination of subjective and objective data to measure teen aggression and violence in games.  This study used information from parents and caregivers to judge the level of aggressive behavior in their children.

Also, the content of the video was classified using the official PEGI and ESRB rating systems, rather than just the player’s perceptions of the amount of violence in the game.

The study consisted of 14 and 15 year olds and an equal number of parents or caregivers, totaling 2,008 subjects in all.

Professor Andrew Przybylski said that the study showed that there was no link between violent video games and teenage aggression.  But Professor Przybylski did admit that “trash-talking, competitiveness, and trolling online and other such behavior warranted further study because they could be signs of antisocial behaviors”.

As for the differences between Przbylski’s research and other research …

“Our findings suggest that researcher biases might have influenced previous studies on this topic, and have distorted our understanding of the effects of video games.  … Part of the problem in technology research is that there are many ways to analyze the same data, which will produce different results. A cherry-picked result can add undue weight to the moral panic surrounding video games.”

But Przblyski also stated, “While no correlation was found between playing video games and aggressive behavior in teenagers, the researchers emphasize that this does not mean that some mechanics and situations in gaming do not provoke angry feelings or reactions in players.”

Joseph Hilgard of Illinois State University

Hilgard altered a single game to examine the unique influence of two aspects of gameplay: content and difficulty.  Hilgard created 4 versions of the game Doom II. The more violent versions contained enemy graphics and sounds borrowed from Brutal Doom.  Participants were tasked with defeating aliens, which resulted in the enemies exploding in gory fashion. The less violent versions contained sillier-looking alien enemies drawn from Chex Quest.  Rather than killing the aliens, participants were tasked with sending them home with their “zorcher”.

In the more difficult version, the enemies fought back and participants had to restart the level if they received too many hits.  In the easy versions, the enemies simply walked slowly instead of directly attacking the player. Although the content varied between the four versions, the gameplay remained relatively the same.

This study was done with college-aged men.  They completed a 5-minute writing assignment about their general views on different topics related to violence (including views on topics like abortion).  They were also asked to comment on another essay that was a fake essay that opposed the participants’ stated beliefs.

The participants then played for 15 minutes.  Afterward, they read feedback on their essay, which was always negative, harsh, and intended to give an emotional response.  To measure aggression, participants chose how long their partner had to keep his hand in the water while performing the task.

Data from 275 participants showed no indication that playing the more violent or more difficult version of the game influenced the amount of time participants assigned their partner to be exposed to the cold water.

The researchers did admit that many participants were “aware of the study”, and were therefore excluded from the study.

My view (which matched the view of a lot of the comments at the end of the article about this research), the amount of the time allocated for the study as well as the plain old silliness of the research tests makes the whole study … for lack of a better description, silly.

I have never heard of a real life incident where a person expressed aggression by having somebody else place their hand in cold water. Not to mention the whole, these were college students who have already formed their values as opposed to children and teenagers who are still forming their values.

Rong Shao and Yunqiang Wang Study

In this third study, the researchers took a completely different approach.  They examined how “moderated mediation” affected normative beliefs about aggression and family environment on exposure to violent video games.  The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression. For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games has only a direct effect on aggression.  For those with a poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects.

“Individuals who have an aggressive temperament or an aggressive personality are more likely to produce violent behavior during times of environmental strain.”

“Environmental factors act as catalysts for violent acts for an individual who has a violence-prone personality. This means that although the environment does not cause violent behavior, it can moderate the causal influence of biology on violence. The CM model suggested that exposure to violent video games is not an antecedent variable of aggressive behavior, but only acts as a catalyst influencing its form”

Put into layman’s terms, a person who already has violent tendencies, playing violent video games is going to make the situation worse.

“adolescent aggression cannot be predicted by exposure to violent video games, but it is closely related to antisocial personality traits, peer influence, and family violence.”

There is also the normative beliefs about aggression.  This refers to an assessment of aggression acceptability by an individual.  They can be classified into two types: general beliefs and retaliatory beliefs.    The former means a general view about aggression, while the latter reflects aggressive beliefs in provocative situations.

Studies have found that normative beliefs about aggression are directly related to aggression.  Relatitory normative beliefs about aggression can anticipate adolescent retaliation behavior after 1 year.

Normative beliefs about aggression are significantly positively related to online aggressive behavior.  The most obvious form of online aggressive behavior is online bullying or cyberbullying. Teenagers with high normative beliefs about aggression are more likely to become bullies.  Finally, normative beliefs about aggression can significantly predict the support and reinforcement of bystanders in offline bullying and cyberbullying.

Family environment and how it relates to violent video games

Family violence, parenting style, and other family factors have a major effect on adolescent aggression.  On the one hand, the family environment can influence directly aggression by shaping adolescents’ cognition and setting up behavioral models.  Many studies have found that family violence and other negative factors are positively related to adolescent aggression. While an active family environment can reduce aggressive behavior.

Essentially what is being said is that violent video games is just one piece of a puzzle.  The other pieces are the family’s views on violence; aggressive beliefs, aggressive behavior scripts, and aggressive personality.  In other words, it is not just a video game. It is the video game, plus other things, and it is the combination of all of those things the defines the relationship between violence and video games.

Personal Experience 1

This following was taken from the comments sections of one of the study articles.

“I can tell from experience that competitive play or ‘ranked’ play is very stressful and can cause brief aggression. I myself have ‘raged’ from very stress filled game because I have made a bad choice. During these times I have broken controllers and such.”

This seems to support the observation made by Przblyski that it is not the actual video game that shows a relationship between the violence in the games and violence in real life, but the online chatting which includes “trash-talking, competitiveness, and trolling online”.

This also supports the observations made by Rong Shao and Yunqiang Wang where online violence does have a correlation with offline violence (aka cyberbullying, trolling, etc.)

Personal Experience 2

This is my own personal experience.  At one job that I had, a group of co-workers would always play violent video games against each other at the end of the work day.  I curiously asked one of these coworkers why they did this, and his reply was, “Isn’t it better for us to take out our frustrations for the day through a video game rather than through road rage?”

For this specific group of individuals, the violence in the video game had no correlation to violence in real life.  Acutally, it had a positive affect by providing a healthy release of the day’s frustrations through a controlled environment rather than having those frustrations released through road rage or getting angry at a spouse or a child.

My opinion based on reading these three research studies

In my opinion, I think that the study done by Rong Shao and Yunqiang Wang makes the most sense.  If there is a positive relationship between the child and the parent, when a parent sees a child paying a violent video game, the parent talks about it with the child.  They talk about the fantasy of video games vs. the reality of real life. That blasting an alian monster in a video game is not the same thing as taking an AK47 and blasting your school teacher, because the teacher failed you in history and you now have to repeat history in summer school.

But the same thing can be said about violence on TV.  When a parent drills into a child that what is said and done on TV is the same as what is said and done in the real world, the violence viewed on TV is going to have less of an impact on the child than in family where the TV violence is cheered on with no commentary about the right and wrong of the TV violence compared to real life.

But I 100% agree with the researchers that say that social online aggression (cyberbullying) does have a correlation with offline aggression (real-life bullying).  People become emboldened online because they don’t have to face the other person.

Not to mention the whole “peer pressure” thing.  In generations of the past, kids only had to deal with peer pressure from others in their actual school.  Now, a person connects with an online community, and who knows anything about the other person, including if the person who claims to be a teenager like them is actually even a teenager like them.

Somebody with bad intentions can easily tell a “confused” teenager whose original intention was to just “let off steam” in a video game, to take those aggressive feelings to the real world.  With a teenager who has a connection to their parents, the parents will be “whispering in their ear” … “that guy is crazy, don’t listen to him.” But with a teenager who lacks the parental connections, that whispering in the ear is missing.

I also think that there is also a problem with the video stories in a lot of video games that try to control the thoughts and actions of the players, instead of just allowing the player to make their own thoughts.

Think about it this way. Two small children are given two toy guns. The two children have two options. Option 1 is that one child is the “bad person” and the other child is the “good person” and they fight against each other.

The second option is the two children are both the “good people” who then fight against some imaginary “bad person” (aka, Evil Pete the Farting Hippopotamus).

The company that made the toy guns is not telling the two children how to play with the toy guns.  That part of the play is being left up to the children. But then if a video was included that “told the children” that the “right way” to play with the toy guns was to fight against each other, then the children are being influenced in their play.

The same could be said about video games that include story modes.  The story modes are influencing the thinking of the player beyond the actual play of the video game.

Summary

In terms of violence in video games, who has more power to influence the morals and values of a child (who then becomes a teenager), a video game manufacturer or the parent, and the answer is the parent.  But the lines of communication between the child (teenager) and the parent can’t be shut down.

When the lines of communication between a parent and a child are shut down, it leaves open the door for other people to then impose their morals and values onto the child (teenager).  This could be accomplished through “story modes” in a game or through the interaction of players in a game through cyberbullying, peer pressure, and perceived competition.

One easy way to keep the lines of communication open is to keep the “good” computer (the most powerful one that is the most fun to play video games on) in the main area of the house, so the parent can see what the child (teenager) is getting into and can then talk about it with the child.  The conversation can be as simple as “who’s winning”, “what is this game about”, “Which game do you like better, game X or game Y”.

You can also see the child talking to other players either through headphones or online chats. I am not recommending listening to the child’s private conversations or reading their private chats.  But just the fact that anybody in the family is free to be in the main area of the house and see what is on the screen, and potentially hear at least one side of a conversation, might be enough to keep your teenager from straying too far onto the wrong path.

Aka, when the teenager starts banging on the keyboard in frustration, it might be a sign to take the teenager to the local park with a baseball and a bat.  Good old fashioned fresh air is never bad for a growing teenager, as well as good old fashioned exercise to the point of exhaustion — followed by a healthy snack, a good night’s sleep, and the simple reminders that mom and dad are there for them.