essay on do violent video games

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• Published: 13 March 2018

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

• Simone Kühn 1 , 2 ,
• Dimitrij Tycho Kugler 2 ,
• Katharina Schmalen 1 ,
• Markus Weichenberger 1 ,
• Charlotte Witt 1 &
• Jürgen Gallinat 2  

Molecular Psychiatry volume  24 ,  pages 1220–1234 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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It is a widespread concern that violent video games promote aggression, reduce pro-social behaviour, increase impulsivity and interfere with cognition as well as mood in its players. Previous experimental studies have focussed on short-term effects of violent video gameplay on aggression, yet there are reasons to believe that these effects are mostly the result of priming. In contrast, the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay using a large battery of tests spanning questionnaires, behavioural measures of aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), mental health (depressivity, anxiety) as well as executive control functions, before and after 2 months of gameplay. Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group. Also, no effects were observed between baseline and posttest directly after the intervention, nor between baseline and a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention period had ended. The present results thus provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective on the effects of violent video gaming.

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The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players [ 1 , 2 ], whereas the other camp [ 3 , 4 ] repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions [ 2 , 3 ]. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them [ 2 ] reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects.

To unravel this topic of research, we designed a randomised controlled trial on adults to draw causal conclusions on the influence of video games on aggression. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field [ 3 , 5 ]) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.

It has been suggested that the effects of studies focussing on consequences of short-term video gameplay (mostly conducted on college student populations) are mainly the result of priming effects, meaning that exposure to violent content increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts and affect when participants are in the immediate situation [ 6 ]. However, above and beyond this the General Aggression Model (GAM, [ 7 ]) assumes that repeatedly primed thoughts and feelings influence the perception of ongoing events and therewith elicits aggressive behaviour as a long-term effect. We think that priming effects are interesting and worthwhile exploring, but in contrast to the notion of the GAM our reading of the literature is that priming effects are short-lived (suggested to only last for <5 min and may potentially reverse after that time [ 8 ]). Priming effects should therefore only play a role in very close temporal proximity to gameplay. Moreover, there are a multitude of studies on college students that have failed to replicate priming effects [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] and associated predictions of the so-called GAM such as a desensitisation against violent content [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] in adolescents and college students or a decrease of empathy [ 15 ] and pro-social behaviour [ 16 , 17 ] as a result of playing violent video games.

However, in our view the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?” For this reason studies are needed in which participants are trained over longer periods of time, tested after a longer delay after acute playing and tested with broader batteries assessing aggression but also other relevant domains such as empathy as well as mood and cognition. Moreover, long-term follow-up assessments are needed to demonstrate long-term effects of frequent violent video gameplay. To fill this gap, we set out to expose adult participants to two different types of video games for a period of 2 months and investigate changes in measures of various constructs of interest at least one day after the last gaming session and test them once more 2 months after the end of the gameplay intervention. In contrast to the GAM, we hypothesised no increases of aggression or decreases in pro-social behaviour even after long-term exposure to a violent video game due to our reasoning that priming effects of violent video games are short-lived and should therefore not influence measures of aggression if they are not measured directly after acute gaming. In the present study, we assessed potential changes in the following domains: behavioural as well as questionnaire measures of aggression, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), and depressivity and anxiety as well as executive control functions. As the effects on aggression and pro-social behaviour were the core targets of the present study, we implemented multiple tests for these domains. This broad range of domains with its wide coverage and the longitudinal nature of the study design enabled us to draw more general conclusions regarding the causal effects of violent video games.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Ninety healthy participants (mean age = 28 years, SD = 7.3, range: 18–45, 48 females) were recruited by means of flyers and internet advertisements. The sample consisted of college students as well as of participants from the general community. The advertisement mentioned that we were recruiting for a longitudinal study on video gaming, but did not mention that we would offer an intervention or that we were expecting training effects. Participants were randomly assigned to the three groups ruling out self-selection effects. The sample size was based on estimates from a previous study with a similar design [ 18 ]. After complete description of the study, the participants’ informed written consent was obtained. The local ethics committee of the Charité University Clinic, Germany, approved of the study. We included participants that reported little, preferably no video game usage in the past 6 months (none of the participants ever played the game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA) or Sims 3 in any of its versions before). We excluded participants with psychological or neurological problems. The participants received financial compensation for the testing sessions (200 Euros) and performance-dependent additional payment for two behavioural tasks detailed below, but received no money for the training itself.

Training procedure

The violent video game group (5 participants dropped out between pre- and posttest, resulting in a group of n  = 25, mean age = 26.6 years, SD = 6.0, 14 females) played the game Grand Theft Auto V on a Playstation 3 console over a period of 8 weeks. The active control group played the non-violent video game Sims 3 on the same console (6 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 24, mean age = 25.8 years, SD = 6.8, 12 females). The passive control group (2 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 28, mean age = 30.9 years, SD = 8.4, 12 females) was not given a gaming console and had no task but underwent the same testing procedure as the two other groups. The passive control group was not aware of the fact that they were part of a control group to prevent self-training attempts. The experimenters testing the participants were blind to group membership, but we were unable to prevent participants from talking about the game during testing, which in some cases lead to an unblinding of experimental condition. Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day. Participants were only reimbursed for the sessions in which they came to the lab. Our previous research suggests that the perceived fun in gaming was positively associated with training outcome [ 18 ] and we speculated that enforcing training sessions through payment would impair motivation and thus diminish the potential effect of the intervention. Participants underwent a testing session before (baseline) and after the training period of 2 months (posttest 1) as well as a follow-up testing sessions 2 months after the training period (posttest 2).

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA)

GTA is an action-adventure video game situated in a fictional highly violent game world in which players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game. The single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The gameplay focuses on an open world (sandbox game) where the player can choose between different behaviours. The game also allows the player to engage in various side activities, such as action-adventure, driving, third-person shooting, occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements. The open world design lets players freely roam around the fictional world so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts.

The Sims 3 (Sims)

Sims is a life simulation game and also classified as a sandbox game because it lacks clearly defined goals. The player creates virtual individuals called “Sims”, and customises their appearance, their personalities and places them in a home, directs their moods, satisfies their desires and accompanies them in their daily activities and by becoming part of a social network. It offers opportunities, which the player may choose to pursue or to refuse, similar as GTA but is generally considered as a pro-social and clearly non-violent game.

Assessment battery

To assess aggression and associated constructs we used the following questionnaires: Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire [ 19 ], State Hostility Scale [ 20 ], Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale [ 21 , 22 ], Moral Disengagement Scale [ 23 , 24 ], the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test [ 25 , 26 ] and a so-called World View Measure [ 27 ]. All of these measures have previously been used in research investigating the effects of violent video gameplay, however, the first two most prominently. Additionally, behavioural measures of aggression were used: a Word Completion Task, a Lexical Decision Task [ 28 ] and the Delay frustration task [ 29 ] (an inter-correlation matrix is depicted in Supplementary Figure 1 1). From these behavioural measures, the first two were previously used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay. To assess variables that have been related to the construct of impulsivity, we used the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale [ 30 ] and the Boredom Propensity Scale [ 31 ] as well as tasks assessing risk taking and delay discounting behaviourally, namely the Balloon Analogue Risk Task [ 32 ] and a Delay-Discounting Task [ 33 ]. To quantify pro-social behaviour, we employed: Interpersonal Reactivity Index [ 34 ] (frequently used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay), Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale [ 35 ], Reading the Mind in the Eyes test [ 36 ], Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire [ 37 ] and Richardson Conflict Response Questionnaire [ 38 ]. To assess depressivity and anxiety, which has previously been associated with intense video game playing [ 39 ], we used Beck Depression Inventory [ 40 ] and State Trait Anxiety Inventory [ 41 ]. To characterise executive control function, we used a Stop Signal Task [ 42 ], a Multi-Source Interference Task [ 43 ] and a Task Switching Task [ 44 ] which have all been previously used to assess effects of video gameplay. More details on all instruments used can be found in the Supplementary Material.

Data analysis

On the basis of the research question whether violent video game playing enhances aggression and reduces empathy, the focus of the present analysis was on time by group interactions. We conducted these interaction analyses separately, comparing the violent video game group against the active control group (GTA vs. Sims) and separately against the passive control group (GTA vs. Controls) that did not receive any intervention and separately for the potential changes during the intervention period (baseline vs. posttest 1) and to test for potential long-term changes (baseline vs. posttest 2). We employed classical frequentist statistics running a repeated-measures ANOVA controlling for the covariates sex and age.

Since we collected 52 separate outcome variables and conduced four different tests with each (GTA vs. Sims, GTA vs. Controls, crossed with baseline vs. posttest 1, baseline vs. posttest 2), we had to conduct 52 × 4 = 208 frequentist statistical tests. Setting the alpha value to 0.05 means that by pure chance about 10.4 analyses should become significant. To account for this multiple testing problem and the associated alpha inflation, we conducted a Bonferroni correction. According to Bonferroni, the critical value for the entire set of n tests is set to an alpha value of 0.05 by taking alpha/ n  = 0.00024.

Since the Bonferroni correction has sometimes been criticised as overly conservative, we conducted false discovery rate (FDR) correction [ 45 ]. FDR correction also determines adjusted p -values for each test, however, it controls only for the number of false discoveries in those tests that result in a discovery (namely a significant result).

Moreover, we tested for group differences at the baseline assessment using independent t -tests, since those may hamper the interpretation of significant interactions between group and time that we were primarily interested in.

Since the frequentist framework does not enable to evaluate whether the observed null effect of the hypothesised interaction is indicative of the absence of a relation between violent video gaming and our dependent variables, the amount of evidence in favour of the null hypothesis has been tested using a Bayesian framework. Within the Bayesian framework both the evidence in favour of the null and the alternative hypothesis are directly computed based on the observed data, giving rise to the possibility of comparing the two. We conducted Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVAs comparing the model in favour of the null and the model in favour of the alternative hypothesis resulting in a Bayes factor (BF) using Bayesian Information criteria [ 46 ]. The BF 01 suggests how much more likely the data is to occur under the null hypothesis. All analyses were performed using the JASP software package ( https://jasp-stats.org ).

Sex distribution in the present study did not differ across the groups ( χ 2 p -value > 0.414). However, due to the fact that differences between males and females have been observed in terms of aggression and empathy [ 47 ], we present analyses controlling for sex. Since our random assignment to the three groups did result in significant age differences between groups, with the passive control group being significantly older than the GTA ( t (51) = −2.10, p  = 0.041) and the Sims group ( t (50) = −2.38, p  = 0.021), we also controlled for age.

The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks interval (with no significant group difference p  = 0.48).

To test whether participants assigned to the violent GTA game show emotional, cognitive and behavioural changes, we present the results of repeated-measure ANOVA time x group interaction analyses separately for GTA vs. Sims and GTA vs. Controls (Tables  1 – 3 ). Moreover, we split the analyses according to the time domain into effects from baseline assessment to posttest 1 (Table  2 ) and effects from baseline assessment to posttest 2 (Table  3 ) to capture more long-lasting or evolving effects. In addition to the statistical test values, we report partial omega squared ( ω 2 ) as an effect size measure. Next to the classical frequentist statistics, we report the results of a Bayesian statistical approach, namely BF 01 , the likelihood with which the data is to occur under the null hypothesis that there is no significant time × group interaction. In Table  2 , we report the presence of significant group differences at baseline in the right most column.

Since we conducted 208 separate frequentist tests we expected 10.4 significant effects simply by chance when setting the alpha value to 0.05. In fact we found only eight significant time × group interactions (these are marked with an asterisk in Tables  2 and 3 ).

When applying a conservative Bonferroni correction, none of those tests survive the corrected threshold of p  < 0.00024. Neither does any test survive the more lenient FDR correction. The arithmetic mean of the frequentist test statistics likewise shows that on average no significant effect was found (bottom rows in Tables  2 and 3 ).

In line with the findings from a frequentist approach, the harmonic mean of the Bayesian factor BF 01 is consistently above one but not very far from one. This likewise suggests that there is very likely no interaction between group × time and therewith no detrimental effects of the violent video game GTA in the domains tested. The evidence in favour of the null hypothesis based on the Bayes factor is not massive, but clearly above 1. Some of the harmonic means are above 1.6 and constitute substantial evidence [ 48 ]. However, the harmonic mean has been criticised as unstable. Owing to the fact that the sum is dominated by occasional small terms in the likelihood, one may underestimate the actual evidence in favour of the null hypothesis [ 49 ].

To test the sensitivity of the present study to detect relevant effects we computed the effect size that we would have been able to detect. The information we used consisted of alpha error probability = 0.05, power = 0.95, our sample size, number of groups and of measurement occasions and correlation between the repeated measures at posttest 1 and posttest 2 (average r  = 0.68). According to G*Power [ 50 ], we could detect small effect sizes of f  = 0.16 (equals η 2  = 0.025 and r  = 0.16) in each separate test. When accounting for the conservative Bonferroni-corrected p -value of 0.00024, still a medium effect size of f  = 0.23 (equals η 2  = 0.05 and r  = 0.22) would have been detectable. A meta-analysis by Anderson [ 2 ] reported an average effects size of r  = 0.18 for experimental studies testing for aggressive behaviour and another by Greitmeyer [ 5 ] reported average effect sizes of r  = 0.19, 0.25 and 0.17 for effects of violent games on aggressive behaviour, cognition and affect, all of which should have been detectable at least before multiple test correction.

Within the scope of the present study we tested the potential effects of playing the violent video game GTA V for 2 months against an active control group that played the non-violent, rather pro-social life simulation game The Sims 3 and a passive control group. Participants were tested before and after the long-term intervention and at a follow-up appointment 2 months later. Although we used a comprehensive test battery consisting of questionnaires and computerised behavioural tests assessing aggression, impulsivity-related constructs, mood, anxiety, empathy, interpersonal competencies and executive control functions, we did not find relevant negative effects in response to violent video game playing. In fact, only three tests of the 208 statistical tests performed showed a significant interaction pattern that would be in line with this hypothesis. Since at least ten significant effects would be expected purely by chance, we conclude that there were no detrimental effects of violent video gameplay.

This finding stands in contrast to some experimental studies, in which short-term effects of violent video game exposure have been investigated and where increases in aggressive thoughts and affect as well as decreases in helping behaviour have been observed [ 1 ]. However, these effects of violent video gaming on aggressiveness—if present at all (see above)—seem to be rather short-lived, potentially lasting <15 min [ 8 , 51 ]. In addition, these short-term effects of video gaming are far from consistent as multiple studies fail to demonstrate or replicate them [ 16 , 17 ]. This may in part be due to problems, that are very prominent in this field of research, namely that the outcome measures of aggression and pro-social behaviour, are poorly standardised, do not easily generalise to real-life behaviour and may have lead to selective reporting of the results [ 3 ]. We tried to address these concerns by including a large set of outcome measures that were mostly inspired by previous studies demonstrating effects of short-term violent video gameplay on aggressive behaviour and thoughts, that we report exhaustively.

Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant. Two previous studies have employed longer training intervals. In an online study, participants with a broad age range (14–68 years) have been trained in a violent video game for 4 weeks [ 52 ]. In comparison to a passive control group no changes were observed, neither in aggression-related beliefs, nor in aggressive social interactions assessed by means of two questions. In a more recent study, participants played a previous version of GTA for 12 h spread across 3 weeks [ 53 ]. Participants were compared to a passive control group using the Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, a questionnaire assessing impulsive or reactive aggression, attitude towards violence, and empathy. The authors only report a limited increase in pro-violent attitude. Unfortunately, this study only assessed posttest measures, which precludes the assessment of actual changes caused by the game intervention.

The present study goes beyond these studies by showing that 2 months of violent video gameplay does neither lead to any significant negative effects in a broad assessment battery administered directly after the intervention nor at a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention. The fact that we assessed multiple domains, not finding an effect in any of them, makes the present study the most comprehensive in the field. Our battery included self-report instruments on aggression (Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, State Hostility scale, Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, Moral Disengagement scale, World View Measure and Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test) as well as computer-based tests measuring aggressive behaviour such as the delay frustration task and measuring the availability of aggressive words using the word completion test and a lexical decision task. Moreover, we assessed impulse-related concepts such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness and associated behavioural measures such as the computerised Balloon analogue risk task, and delay discounting. Four scales assessing empathy and interpersonal competence scales, including the reading the mind in the eyes test revealed no effects of violent video gameplay. Neither did we find any effects on depressivity (Becks depression inventory) nor anxiety measured as a state as well as a trait. This is an important point, since several studies reported higher rates of depressivity and anxiety in populations of habitual video gamers [ 54 , 55 ]. Last but not least, our results revealed also no substantial changes in executive control tasks performance, neither in the Stop signal task, the Multi-source interference task or a Task switching task. Previous studies have shown higher performance of habitual action video gamers in executive tasks such as task switching [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and another study suggests that training with action video games improves task performance that relates to executive functions [ 59 ], however, these associations were not confirmed by a meta-analysis in the field [ 60 ]. The absence of changes in the stop signal task fits well with previous studies that likewise revealed no difference between in habitual action video gamers and controls in terms of action inhibition [ 61 , 62 ]. Although GTA does not qualify as a classical first-person shooter as most of the previously tested action video games, it is classified as an action-adventure game and shares multiple features with those action video games previously related to increases in executive function, including the need for hand–eye coordination and fast reaction times.

Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.

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SK has been funded by a Heisenberg grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG KU 3322/1-1, SFB 936/C7), the European Union (ERC-2016-StG-Self-Control-677804) and a Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation (JRF 2016–2018).

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Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K. et al. Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study. Mol Psychiatry 24 , 1220–1234 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-018-0031-7

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The Relation of Violent Video Games to Adolescent Aggression: An Examination of Moderated Mediation Effect

1 Research Institute of Moral Education, College of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

2 The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

Yunqiang Wang

To assess the moderated mediation effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, the subjects self-reported their exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggressive behavior. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression had a mediation effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while family environment moderated the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. This moderated mediation model includes some notions of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Catalyst Model (CM), which helps shed light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression.

Introduction

Violent video games and aggression.

The relationship between violent video games and adolescent aggression has become a hot issue in psychological research ( Wiegman and Schie, 1998 ; Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ; Ferguson et al., 2012 ; Greitemeyer, 2014 ; Yang et al., 2014 ; Boxer et al., 2015 ). Based on the General Aggression Model (GAM), Anderson et al. suggested that violent video games constitute an antecedent variable of aggressive behavior, i.e., the degree of exposure to violent video games directly leads to an increase of aggression ( Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson, 2004 ; Anderson et al., 2004 ). Related longitudinal studies ( Anderson et al., 2008 ), meta-analyses ( Anderson et al., 2010 ; Greitemeyer and Mugge, 2014 ), event-related potential studies ( Bailey et al., 2011 ; Liu et al., 2015 ), and trials about juvenile delinquents ( DeLisi et al., 2013 ) showed that exposure to violent video games significantly predicts adolescent aggression.

Although Anderson et al. insisted on using the GAM to explain the effect of violent video games on aggression, other researchers have proposed alternative points of view. For example, a meta-analysis by Sherry (2001) suggested that violent video games have minor influence on adolescent aggression. Meanwhile, Ferguson (2007) proposed that publication bias (or file drawer effect) may have implications in the effect of violent video games on adolescent aggression. Publication bias means that compared with articles with negative results, those presenting positive results (such as statistical significance) are more likely to be published ( Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1991 ). A meta-analysis by Ferguson (2007) found that after publication bias adjustment, the related studies cannot support the hypothesis that violent video games are highly correlated with aggression. Then, Ferguson et al. proposed a Catalyst Model (CM), which is opposite to the GAM. According to this model, genetic predisposition can lead to an aggressive child temperament and aggressive adult personality. 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 have a violence-prone personality. This means that although the environment does not cause violent behavior, but 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 ( Ferguson et al., 2008 ). Much of studies ( Ferguson et al., 2009 , 2012 ; Ferguson, 2013 , 2015 ; Furuya-Kanamori and Doi, 2016 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ) found that adolescent aggression cannot be predicted by the exposure to violent video games, but it is closely related to antisocial personality traits, peer influence, and family violence.

Anderson and his collaborators ( Groves et al., 2014 ; Kepes et al., 2017 ) suggested there were major methodological shortcomings in the studies of Ferguson et al. and redeclared the validity of their own researches. Some researchers supported Anderson et al. and criticized Ferguson’s view ( Gentile, 2015 ; Rothstein and Bushman, 2015 ). However, Markey (2015) held a neutral position that extreme views should not be taken in the relationship between violent video games and aggression.

In fact, the relation of violent video games to aggression is complicated. Besides the controversy between the above two models about whether there is an influence, other studies explored the role of internal factors such as normative belief about aggression and external factors such as family environment in the relationship between violent video games and aggression.

Normative Beliefs About Aggression, Violence Video Games, and Aggression

Normative beliefs about aggression are one of the most important cognitive factors influencing adolescent aggression; they refer to an assessment of aggression acceptability by an individual ( Huesmann and Guerra, 1997 ). They can be divided 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. Normative beliefs about aggression reflect the degree acceptance of aggression, which affects the choice of aggressive behavior.

Studies found that normative beliefs about aggression are directly related to aggression. First, self-reported aggression is significantly correlated to normative beliefs about aggression ( Bailey and Ostrov, 2008 ; Li et al., 2015 ). General normative beliefs about aggression can predict young people’s physical, verbal, and indirect aggression ( Lim and Ang, 2009 ); retaliatory normative beliefs about aggression can anticipate adolescent retaliation behavior after 1 year ( Werner and Hill, 2010 ; Krahe and Busching, 2014 ). There is a longitudinal temporal association of normative beliefs about aggression with aggression ( Krahe and Busching, 2014 ). Normative beliefs about aggression are significantly positively related to online aggressive behavior ( Wright and Li, 2013 ), which is the most important determining factor of adolescent cyberbullying ( Kowalski et al., 2014 ). Teenagers with high normative beliefs about aggression are more likely to become bullies and victims of traditional bullying and cyberbullying ( Burton et al., 2013 ). Finally, normative beliefs about aggression can significantly predict the support and reinforcement of bystanders in offline bullying and cyberbullying ( Machackova and Pfetsch, 2016 ).

According to Bandura’s social cognitive theory ( Bandura, 1989 ), violent video games can initiate adolescents’ observational learning. In this situation, not only can they imitate the aggressive behavior of the model but also their understanding and acceptability about aggression may change. Therefore, normative beliefs about aggression can also be a mediator between violent video games and adolescent aggression ( Duan et al., 2014 ; Anderson et al., 2017 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ). Studies have shown that the mediating role of normative beliefs about aggression is not influenced by factors such as gender, prior aggression, and parental monitoring ( Gentile et al., 2014 ).

Family Environment, Violence Video Games, and Aggression

Family violence, parenting style, and other family factors have major effects on adolescent aggression. On the one hand, family environment can influence directly on 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 ( Ferguson et al., 2009 , 2012 ; Ferguson, 2013 ), while active family environment can reduce the aggressive behavior ( Batanova and Loukas, 2014 ).

On the other hand, family environment can act on adolescent aggression together with other factors, such as exposure to violent video games. Analysis of the interaction between family conflict and media violence (including violence on TV and in video games) to adolescent aggression showed that teenagers living in higher conflict families with more media violence exposure show more aggressive behavior ( Fikkers et al., 2013 ). Parental monitoring is significantly correlated with reduced media violence exposure and a reduction in aggressive behavior 6 months later ( Gentile et al., 2014 ). Parental mediation can moderate the relationship between media violence exposure and normative beliefs about aggression, i.e., for children with less parental mediation, predictability of violent media exposure on normative beliefs about aggression is stronger ( Linder and Werner, 2012 ). Parental mediation is closely linked to decreased aggression caused by violent media ( Nathanson, 1999 ; Rasmussen, 2014 ; Padilla-Walker et al., 2016 ). Further studies have shown that the autonomy-supportive restrictive mediation of parents is related to a reduction in current aggressive behavior by decreasing media violence exposure; conversely, inconsistent restrictive mediation is associated with an increase of current aggressive behavior by enhancing media violence exposure ( Fikkers et al., 2017 ).

The Current Study

Despite GAM and CM hold opposite views on the relationship between violent video games and aggression, both of the two models imply the same idea that aggression cannot be separated from internal and external factors. While emphasizing on negative effects of violent video games on adolescents’ behavior, the GAM uses internal factors to explain the influencing mechanism, including aggressive beliefs, aggressive behavior scripts, and aggressive personality ( Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson and Carnagey, 2014 ). Although the CM considers that there is no significant relation between violent video games and aggression, it also acknowledges the role of external factors such as violent video games and family violence. Thus, these two models seem to be contradictory, but in fact, they reveal the mechanism of aggression from different points of view. It will be more helpful to explore the effect of violent video games on aggression from the perspective of combination of internal and external factors.

Although previous studies have investigated the roles of normative beliefs about aggression and family factors in the relationship between violent video games and adolescent aggression separately, the combined effect of these two factors remains unstudied. The purpose of this study was to analyze the combined effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment. This can not only confirm the effects of violent video games on adolescent aggression further but also can clarify the influencing mechanism from the integration of GAM and CM to a certain extent. Based on the above, the following three hypotheses were proposed:

• Hypothesis 1: There is a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression.
• Hypothesis 2: Normative beliefs about aggression are the mediator of exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression.
• Hypothesis 3: The family environment can moderate the mediation effects of normative beliefs about aggression in exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression constitute a moderated mediation model.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

All subjects gave informed written consent for participation in this investigation, and their parents signed parental written informed consent. The study was reviewed and approved by the Professor Committee of School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, which is the committee responsible for providing ethics approvals. A total of 648 Chinese middle school students participated in this study, including 339 boys and 309 girls; 419 students were from cities and towns, and 229 from the countryside. There were 277 and 371 junior and high school students, respectively. Ages ranged from 12 to 19 years, averaging 14.73 ( SD  = 1.60).

Video Game Questionnaire (VGQ)

The Video Game Questionnaire ( Anderson and Dill, 2000) required participants to list their favorite five video games and assess their use frequencies, the degree of violent content, and the degree of violent images on a 7-point scale (1, participants seldom play video games, with no violent content or image; 7, participants often play video games with many violent contents and images). Methods for calculating the score of exposure to violent video games: (score of violent content in the game + score of violent images in the game) × use frequency/5. Chen et al. (2012) found that the Chinese version of this questionnaire had high internal consistency reliability and good content validity. The Chinese version was used in this study, and the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.88.

Aggression Questionnaire (AQ)

There were 29 items in AQ ( Buss and Perry, 1992 ), including four dimensions: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. The scale used 5-point scoring criteria (1, very incongruent with my features; 5, very congruent with my features). Scores for each item were added to obtain the dimension score, and dimension scores were summed to obtain the total score. The Chinese version of AQ had good internal consistency reliability and construct validity ( Ying and Dai, 2008 ). In this study, the Chinese version was used and its Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.83.

Family Environment Scale (FES)

The FES ( Moos, 1990 ) includes 90 true-false questions and is divided into 10 subscales, including cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, independence, achievement-orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, active-recreational orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization, and control. The Chinese version of FES was revised by Fei et al. (1991) and used in this study. Three subscales closely related to aggression were selected, including cohesion, conflict, and moral-religious emphasis, with 27 items in total. The family environment score was the sum of scores of these three subscales (the conflict subscale was first inverted). The Cronbach’s α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.75.

Normative Beliefs About Aggression Scale (NOBAGS)

There are 20 items in the NOBAGS ( Huesmann and Guerra, 1997 ), which includes retaliation (12 items) and general (8 items) aggression belief. A 4-point Likert scale is used (1, absolutely wrong; 4, absolutely right). The subjects were asked to assess the accuracy of the behavior described in each item. High score means high level of normative beliefs about aggression. The revised Chinese version of NOBAGS consists of two factors: retaliation (nine items) and general (six items) aggression belief. Its internal consistency coefficient and test-retest reliability are 0.81 and 0.79. Confirmative factor analysis showed that this version has good construct validity: χ 2  = 280.09, df  = 89, χ 2 / df  = 3.15, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.04, NFI = 0.95, NNFI = 0.96, and CFI = 0.96 ( Shao and Wang, 2017 ). In this study, the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the Chinese version was 0.88.

Group testing was performed in randomly selected classes of six middle schools. All subjects completed the above four questionnaires.

Data Analysis

IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used to analysis the correlations among study variables, the mediating effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, and the moderating role of family environment in the relationship between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression. In order to validate the moderated mediation model, Mplus 7 was also used.

Correlation Analysis Among Study Variables

In this study, self-reported questionnaires were used to collect data, and results might be influenced by common method bias. Therefore, the Harman’s single-factor test was used to assess common method bias before data analysis. The results showed that eigenvalues of 34 unrotated factors were greater than 1, and the amount of variation explained by the first factor was 10.01%, which is much less than 40% of the critical value. Accordingly, common method bias was not significant in this study.

As described in Table 1 , the degree of exposure to violent video games showed significant positive correlations to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; family environment was negatively correlated to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; normative beliefs about aggression were significantly and positively related to aggression. The gender difference of exposure to violent video games ( t  = 7.93, p  < 0.001) and normative beliefs about aggression ( t  = 2.74, p  < 0.01) were significant, which boys scored significantly higher than girls.

Means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations among study variables.

Mediating Effect Analysis

To examine the mediation effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, gender factor was controlled firstly. Stepwise regression analysis showed that the regression of aggression to violent video games ( c  = 0.28, t  = 6.96, p  < 0.001), the regression of normative beliefs about aggression to violent video games ( a  = 0.19, t  = 4.69, p  < 0.001), and the regression of aggression to violent video games ( c ′ = 0.22, t  = 5.69, p  < 0.001) and normative beliefs about aggression ( b  = 0.31, t  = 8.25, p  < 0.001) were all significant. Thus, normative beliefs about aggression played a partial mediating role in exposure to violent video games and aggression. The mediation effect value was 0.06, accounting for 21.43% (0.06/0.28) of the total effect.

Moderated Mediation Effect Analysis

After standardizing scores of exposure to violent videogames, normative beliefs about aggression, family environment, and aggression, two interaction terms were calculated, including family environment × exposure to violent video games and family environment × normative beliefs about aggression. Regression analysis was carried out after controlling gender factor ( Table 2 ).

Moderated mediation effect analysis of the relationship between violent video exposure and aggression.

V VE, violent video exposure; FE, family environment; NBA, normative beliefs about aggression; AG, aggression.

In the first step, a simple moderated model (Model 1) between exposure to violent video games and aggression was established. The result showed that exposure to violent video games had a significant effect on aggression ( c 1  = 0.24, t  = 6.13, p  < 0.001), while the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on aggression was not significant ( c 3  = 0.05, t  = −1.31, p  = 0.19), indicating that the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression was not moderated by family environment.

Next, a moderated model (Model 2) between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression was established. The results showed that exposure to violent video games had a significant effect on normative beliefs about aggression ( a 1  = 0.13, t  = 3.42, p  < 0.001), and the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression was significant ( a 3  = −0.13, t  = −3.63, p  < 0.01).

In the third step, a moderated mediation model (Model 3) between exposure to violent video games and aggression was established. As shown in Table 2 , the effect of normative beliefs about aggression on aggression was significant ( b 1  = 0.24, t  = 6.15, p  < 0.001), and the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression was not significant ( b 2  = 0.02, t  = 0.40, p  = 0.69). Because both a 3 and b 1 were significant, exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression constituted a moderated mediation model. Normative beliefs about aggression played a mediating role between exposure to violent video games and aggression, while family environment was a moderator between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression. Mplus analysis proved that the moderated mediation model had good model fitting (χ 2 / df  = 1.54, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.03, and SRMR = 0.01).

To further analyze the moderating effect of the family environment and exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression, the family environment was divided into the high and low groups, according to the principle of standard deviation, and a simple slope test was performed ( Figure 1 ). The results found that for individuals with high score of family environment, prediction of exposure to violent video games to normative beliefs about aggression was not significant ( b  = 0.08, SE  = 0.08, p  = 0.37). For individuals with low score of family environment, exposure to violent video games could significantly predict normative beliefs about aggression ( b  = 0.34, SE  = 0.09, p  < 0.001). Based on the overall findings, individuals with high scores of family environment showed a nonsignificant mediating effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relation of exposure to violent video games and aggression; however, for individuals with low scores of family environment, normative beliefs about aggression played a partial mediating role in the effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression.

The moderating effect of the family environment on the relationship between violent video game exposure and normative beliefs about aggression.

Main Findings and Implications

This study found a significantly positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, corroborating existing studies ( Anderson, 2004 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ; DeLisi et al., 2013 ; Greitemeyer and Mugge, 2014 ). Anderson et al. (2017) assessed teenagers in Australia, China, Germany, the United States, and other three countries and found that exposure to violent media, including television, movies, and video games, is positively related to adolescent aggression, demonstrating cross-cultural consistency; 8% of variance in aggression could be independently explained by exposure to violent media. In this study, after controlling for gender and family environment, R 2 for exposure to violent video games in predicting adolescent aggression was 0.05, indicating that 5% of variation in adolescent aggression could be explained by exposure to violent media. These consistent findings confirm the effect of exposure to violent video games on adolescent aggression and can be explained by the GAM. According to the GAM ( Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson and Carnagey, 2014 ), violent video games can make teenagers acquire, repeat, and reinforce aggression-related knowledge structures, including aggressive beliefs and attitude, aggressive perceptual schemata, aggressive expectation schemata, aggressive behavior scripts, and aggression desensitization. Therefore, aggressive personality is promoted, increasing the possibility of aggressive behavior. The Hypothesis 1 of this study was validated and provided evidence for the GAM.

As shown above, normative beliefs about aggression had a partial mediation effect on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression. Exposure to violent video games, on the one hand, can predict adolescent aggression directly; on the other hand, it had an indirect effect on adolescent aggression via normative beliefs about aggression. According to the above results, when exposure to violent video games changes by 1 standard deviation, adolescent aggression varies by 0.28 standard deviation, with 0.22 standard deviation being a direct effect of exposure to violent video games on adolescent aggression and 0.06 standard deviation representing the effect through normative beliefs about aggression. Too much violence in video games makes it easy for individuals to become accustomed to violence and emotionally apathetic towards the harmful consequences of violence. Moreover, it can make individuals accept the idea that violence is a good way of problem solving, leading to an increase in normative beliefs about aggression; under certain situational cues, it is more likely to become violent or aggressive. This conclusion is supported by other studies ( Gentile et al., 2014 ; Anderson et al., 2017 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ). Like Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2 was validated the GAM.

One of the main findings of this study was the validation of Hypothesis 3: a moderated mediation model was constructed involving exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression. Family environment moderated the first half of the mediation process of violent video games, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression. In this study, family environment encompassed three factors, including (1) cohesion reflecting the degree of mutual commitment, assistance, and support among family members; (2) conflict reflecting the extent of anger, aggression, and conflict among family members; and (3) moral-religious emphasis reflecting the degree of emphasis on ethics, religion, and values. Individuals with high scores of family environment often help each other; seldom show anger, attack, and contradiction openly; and pay more attention to morality and values. These positive aspects would help them understand violence in video games from the right perspective, reduce recognition and acceptance of violence or aggression, and diminish the effect of violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression. Hence, exposure to violent video games could not predict normative beliefs about aggression of these individuals. By contrast, individuals with low scores of family environment are less likely to help each other; they often openly show anger, attack, and contradiction and do not pay much attention to morality and values. These negative aspects would not decrease but increase their acceptance of violence and aggression. For these individuals, because of the lack of mitigation mechanisms, exposure to violent video games could predict normative beliefs about aggression significantly.

The moderated mediation model of the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression could not only help reveal that exposure to violent video games can affect aggression but also provide an elaboration of the influencing mechanism. According to this model, for individuals with high scores of family environment, exposure to violent video games had only direct effect on aggression. However, for those with low scores of family environment, there was not only a direct effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression but also an indirect effect mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. In short, exposure to violence video games affecting aggression through normative beliefs about aggression is more likely to happen to adolescents with poor family environment than those with good family environment. That is, generation of adolescent aggression is not only related to internal cognitive factors but also to external situations. As Piotrowski and Valkenburg ( Piotrowski and Valkenburg, 2015 ; Valkenburg, 2015 ) pointed out, the effect of violent video games/media on adolescents is a complex interaction of dispositional, developmental, and social factors, and individual differences in susceptibility to these three factors determine the nature and the extent of this influence. The proposed model incorporated some perspectives of GAM and CM: while confirming the effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression occurrence, the combined effect of individual and environmental factors was verified.

Compared with the simple mediation or moderation model, the present moderated mediation model provided deeper insights into the internal mechanism of the effect of violent video games on aggression, providing inspirations for preventing adolescent aggression. First, in view of the close relationship between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, relevant government departments should continue to improve the grading system of video games; meanwhile, parents should appropriately monitor the types of video games used by teenagers as well as the time spent and reduce the degree of exposure to violent video games. Second, by allowing teenagers to objectively distinguish between violence in games and reality, the mediating role of normative beliefs about aggression could inspire people to identify rational ways to solve violence problems and to experience the hurtful consequences of aggression. This would help adolescents change normative beliefs about aggression, establish a correct view of right and wrong, and reduce the occurrence of aggression. Finally, the moderating effect of family environment on the mediation process suggests that more attention should be paid to the important role of family environment. On the one hand, family education is closely related to adolescent aggression. Then, parents should create a good family atmosphere, publicly show anger and aggression as little as possible, and advocate and practice positive moral values. Parents should adopt authoritative styles, abandoning autocratic and indulgent parenting styles ( Casas et al., 2006 ; Sandstrom, 2007 ; Underwood et al., 2009 ; Kawabata et al., 2011 ) to minimize the negative effect of exposure to violent video games. On the other hand, for teenagers with poor family environment, while reducing exposure to violent video games, it is particularly important to change their normative beliefs about aggression, no longer viewing aggression as an alternative way to solve problems.

Limitations

Limitations of the current study should be mentioned. First, only Chinese school students were assessed, in a relatively small number, which could affect sample representativeness. A large sample of teenagers from different countries and in different ages, also including juvenile offenders, would be more accurate in revealing the effect of violent video games on adolescent aggression. Second, this study only focused on violent video games, not involving violent media such as internet and television, daily life events, wars, and other major social events. Indeed, these factors also have important effects on adolescent aggression, and their influencing mechanisms and combined effect are worth investigating further. Third, this study mainly adopted the self-report method. Use of peer, parent, or teacher reports to assess exposure to violent video games and aggression would help improve the effectiveness of the study. Fourth, there might be other mediators, moderating variables and relational models. In addition to normative beliefs about aggression and family environment, individual emotions, personality characteristics, school climate, and companions may play mediating or moderating roles in the relationship between violent video games and aggression. This study developed a moderated mediation model between family environment and normative beliefs about aggression, but the possibility of multiple mediation and mediated moderation models cannot be ruled out.

The current study showed that exposure to violent video games is positively related to adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression have a mediating effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while the family environment regulates the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with good family environment, exposure to violent video games only has a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, there is an indirect effect mediated by normative beliefs about aggression alongside a direct effect. This moderated mediation model incorporates some perspectives of GAM and CM, enriching studies of generative mechanism of adolescent aggression.

Author Contributions

YW and RS conceived the idea of the study. RS analyzed the data. YW and RS interpreted the results and wrote the paper. YW discussed the results and revised the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This study was supported by a grant from the National Social Science Foundation of China (14CSH017) to YW.

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Do Video Games Influence Violent Behavior?

By:  Roanna Cooper, MA and Marc Zimmerman, PhD, MI-YVPC Director

An op-ed article appeared recently in the The New York Times  discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down California’s law barring the sale or rental of violent video games to people under 18.  The author, Dr. Cheryl Olson,   describes how the proposed law was based on the erroneous assumption that such games influence violent behavior in real life.

Dr. Olson suggests that the deliberately outrageous nature of violent games, though disturbing, makes them easily discernible from real life and suggests that the interactivity could potentially make such games less harmful.

She raises the question of how these two behaviors can be linked if youth violence has declined over the last several years while violent video game playing has increased significantly during the same period.

This analysis ignores the fact that such variation may be explained by factors other than the link between the two. A spurious variable–a third variable that explains the relationship between two other variables—may explain the negative correlation of video game playing and violent behavior. As one example, socioeconomic status may explain both a decline in violent behavior and an increase in video game playing. More affluent youth have the means and time to buy and play video games, which keeps them safely inside while avoiding potentially violent interactions on the street.  Dr. Olsen also cites several studies that have failed to show a connection between violent video game playing and violent behavior among youth.

This conclusion, however, may not be as clear cut as it appears.

Youth violence remains a significant public health issue

The decline of youth violence notwithstanding, it remains a significant public health issue that requires attention.Youth homicide remains the number one cause of death for African-American youth between 14 and 24 years old, and the number two cause for all children in this age group. Furthermore, the proportion of youth admitting to having committed various violent acts within the previous 12 months has remained steady or even increased somewhat in recent years ( http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/5/1222.full.pdf+html ).  Although the Columbine tragedy and others like it make the headlines, youth are killed everyday by the hands of another.  A more critical analysis of the link between video game playing and violence is necessary for fully understanding a complex problem like youth violent behavior that has many causes and correlates.

Studies support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

Researchers have reported experimental evidence linking violent video games to more aggressive behavior, particularly as it relates to children who are at more sensitive stages in their socialization.  These effects have been found to be particularly profound in the case of child-initiated virtual violence.

• In one study, 161 9- to 12-year olds and 354 college students were randomly assigned to play either a violent or nonviolent video game.  The participants subsequently played another computer game in which they set punishment levels to be delivered to another person participating in the study (they were not actually administered).  Information was also gathered on each participant’s recent history of violent behavior; habitual video game, television, and move habits, and several other control variables.  The authors reported three main findings: 1) participants who played one of violent video games would choose to punish their opponents with significantly more high-noise blasts than those who played the nonviolent games; 2) habitual exposure to violent media was associated with higher levels of recent violent behavior; and 3) interactive forms of media violence were more strongly related to violent behavior than exposure to non-interactive media violence.
• The second study was a cross-sectional correlational study of media habits, aggression-related individual difference variables, and aggressive behaviors of an adolescent population.  High school students (N=189) completed surveys about their violent TV, movie, and video game exposure, attitudes towards violence, and perceived norms about violent behavior and personality traits.  After statistically controlling for sex, total screen time and aggressive beliefs and attitudes, the authors found that playing violent video games predicted heightened physically aggressive behavior and violent behavior in the real world in a long-term context.
• In a third study, Anderson et al. conducted a longitudinal study of elementary school students to examine if violent video game exposure resulted in increases in aggressive behavior over time.  Surveys were given to 430 third, fourth, and fifth graders, their peers, and their teachers at two times during a school year.  The survey assessed both media habits and their attitudes about violence.  Results indicated that children who played more violent video games early in a school year changed to see the world in a more aggressive way and also changed to become more verbally and physically aggressive later in the school year.  Changes in attitude were noticed by both peers and teachers.
• Bushman and Huesmann, in a 2006 Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine article , examined effect size estimates using meta-analysis to look at the short- and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults.  They reported a positive relationship between exposure to media violence and subsequent aggressive behavior, aggressive ideas, arousal, and anger across the studies they examined.  Consistent with the theory that long-term effects require the learning of beliefs and that young minds can easier encode new scripts via observational learning, they found that the long-term effects were greater for children.
• In a more recent review, Anderson et al. (2010) also analyzed 136 studies representing 130,296 participants from several countries.  These included experimental laboratory work, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal studies.  Overall, they found consistent associations between playing violent video games and many measures of aggression, including self, teacher and parent reports of aggressive behavior.  Although the correlations were not high (r=0.17-0.20), they are typical for psychological studies in general and comparable with other risk factors for youth violence suggested in the 2001 Surgeon General’s Report on youth violence .

Violent video games may increase precursors to violent behavior, such as bullying

Although playing violent video games may not necessarily determine violent or aggressive behavior, it may increase precursors to violent behavior.  In fact, Dr. Olson points out that violent video games may be related to bullying, which researchers have found to be a risk factor for more serious violent behavior. Therefore, video game playing may have an indirect effect on violent behavior by increasing risk factors for it.  Doug Gentile notes that the only way for violent video games to affect serious criminal violence statistics is if they were the primary predictor of crime, which they may not be.  Rather, they represent one risk factor among many for aggression ( http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/virtual-violence.aspx ).

Should video games be regulated?

L. Rowell Huesmann (2010) points out that violent video game playing may be similar to other public health threats such as exposure to cigarette smoke and led based paint .  Despite not being guaranteed, the probability of lung cancer from smoking or intelligence deficits from lead exposure is increased.  Nevertheless, we have laws controlling cigarette sales to minors and the use of lead-based paint (and other lead-based products such as gasoline) because it is a risk factor for negative health outcomes.  Huesmann argues the same analysis could be applied to video game exposure.  Although exposure to violent video games is not the sole factor contributing to aggression and violence among children and adolescents, it is a contributing risk factor that is modifiable.

Violent behavior is determined by many factors

Finally, most researchers would agree that violent behavior is determined by many factors which may combine in different ways for different youth. These factors involve neighborhoods, families, peers, and individual traits and behaviors. Researchers, for example, have found that living in a violent neighborhood and experiencing violence as a victim or witness is associated with an increased risk for violent behavior among youth. Yet, this factor alone may not cause one to be violent and most people living in such a neighborhood do not become violent perpetrators. Similarly, researchers have found consistently that exposure to family violence (e.g., spousal and child abuse, fighting and conflict) increases the risk for youth violent behavior, but does not necessarily result in violent children. Likewise, researchers have found that first person killing video game playing is associated with increased risk for violent behavior, but not all the time. Yet, constant exposure to violence from multiple sources, including first person violent video games, in the absence of positive factors that help to buffer these negative exposures is likely to increase the probability that youth will engage in violent behavior.

Despite disagreements on the exact nature of the relationship between violent video game playing and violent or aggressive behavior, significant evidence exists linking video game playing with violent behavior and its correlates.  Although we are somewhat agnostic about the role of social controls like laws banning the sale of violent video games to minors, an argument against such social controls based on the conclusion  that the video games have no effect seems to oversimplify the issue. A more in-depth and critical analysis of the issue from multiple perspectives may both help more completely understand the causes and correlates of youth violence, and provide us with some direction for creative solutions to this persistent social problem.

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Blame Game: Violent Video Games Do Not Cause Violence

What research shows us about the link between violent video games and behavior..

Updated June 9, 2024 | Reviewed by Matt Huston

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In February 2018, President Trump stated in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida that “the level of violence (in) video games is really shaping young people’s thoughts.” He’s far from the first to suggest that violent video games make children violent.

It certainly looks like they do. Jimmy Kimmel humorously pointed this out when he challenged parents to turn off their children’s TVs while they were playing the popular shooter game Fortnite and film the results. Unsurprisingly, many of the children lashed out, some cursing, others striking their parents.

The research

Decades of research seem to support this, too. Three common ways that researchers test levels of aggression in a laboratory are with a “hot sauce paradigm,” the “Competitive Reaction Time Test,” and with word or story completion tasks.

In the hot sauce paradigm , researchers instruct participants to prepare a cup of hot sauce for a taste tester. They inform them that the taste tester must consume all of the hot sauce in the cup and that the taste tester detests spicy food. The more hot sauce the participants put into the cup, the more “aggressive” the participants are said to be.

In the Competitive Reaction Time Test , participants compete with a person in the next room. They are told that both people must press a button as fast as possible when they see a light flash. Whoever presses the button first will get to “punish” the opponent with a blast of white noise. They are allowed to turn up the volume as loud and as long as they want. In reality, there is no participant in the next room; the test is designed to let people win exactly half of the games. The researchers are measuring how far they turned the dial and how long they held it for. In theory, people who punish their opponent more severely are more aggressive.

During a word or story completion task , participants are shown a word with missing letters or a story without an ending. Participants are asked to guess what word can be made from those letters or to predict what will happen next in a story. When participants choose “aggressive” words (such as assuming that “M _ _ _ E R” is “murder” instead of “mother”) or assuming that characters will hurt one another, they are considered more aggressive.

These tests have been used to examine whether violent games increase aggression. Several representative studies are summarized below. In each study, the participants assigned to play a violent game seemed more prone to acting or thinking aggressively than those who played a non-violent game for an equivalent amount of time.

• 2000: Undergraduate psychology students played a video game for 30 minutes and were given the Competitive Reaction Time Test. Those who played Wolfenstein 3D (a violent game) turned the “ punishment ” dial for a longer period of time than those who played Myst (a non-violent game).
• 2002: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given a story completion task. Players who played Carmageddon , Duke Nukem , Mortal Kombat , or Future Cop (violent games) were more likely to predict that the characters in an ambiguous story would react to conflict aggressively than those who had played Glider Pro , 3D Pinball , Austin Powers , or Tetra Madness (non-violent games).
• 2004: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given a word-completion task. Players who played Dark Forces , Marathon 2 , Speed Demon , Street Fighter , and Wolfenstein 3D (violent games) were more likely to predict that word fragments were part of aggressive words than non-aggressive words than those who had played 3D Ultra Pinball , Glider Pro , Indy Car II , Jewel Box , and Myst (non-violent games).
• 2004: Participants played a video game for 20 minutes and were given the Competitive Reaction Time Test. Those who played Marathon 2 (a violent game) turned the “noise punishment” dial to higher levels than those who had played Glider PRO (a non-violent game).
• 2014: Participants played a video game for 30 minutes and were given the hot sauce test. People who played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (a violent game) put more hot sauce into the cup than people who played LittleBigPlanet 2 (a non-violent game).

It is easy to conclude from this research that violent games make people more aggressive. In 2015, The American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on Violent Media analyzed 31 similar studies published since 2009 and concluded that “violent video game use has an effect on... aggressive behavior, cognitions, and affect.”

Is this research valid?

However, experienced gamers would notice a critical problem with the studies’ construction.

Although Wolfenstein 3D , Call of Duty , and Duke Nukem are certainly more violent than Myst , LittleBigPlanet 2 , and Glider Pro , violence is far from the only variable.

For example, Wolfenstein 3D is an action-packed, exciting, and fast-paced shooting game, while Myst is a slow, methodical, exploration and puzzle game. To help illustrate this point, here is footage of people playing Wolfenstein and Myst .

Comparing the two and assuming that any differences in the level of aggression after playing must be due to the different levels of violence ignores all of these other variables.

If it’s not violence, what is it?

Some researchers have taken note of this criticism in recent years and begun exploring alternative hypotheses for the differences found, such as that the violent games chosen were also harder to master and that many people had aggressive thoughts simply because they lost . When they have conducted more nuanced studies to explore these other hypotheses, they have found that the violence was not the critical variable.

For example, one clever set of studies examined whether players acted out simply because some games “impeded competence.”

• The first study demonstrated that two of the games in the previous studies differed significantly in how difficult the games were to master; Glider Pro 4 uses just two buttons, while Marathon 2 requires the mouse plus 20 different buttons. This additional variable they identified makes it inappropriate to compare the two and draw a scientifically credible conclusion.
• The researchers then created two first-person-shooter games with differing levels of violence. In the violent game, characters who the players shot suffered horrific, bloody deaths. The other was a paintball game in which characters simply disappeared when shot. The two games were otherwise identical. When they tested the level of aggression afterward, they found no differences between the groups .
• In two other studies, these researchers manipulated the game Tetris to be more complicated for half of the participants, either by making the controls complicated or by giving them pieces that could not fit into the grid easily. The groups playing complicated, frustrating versions of the game showed more aggression afterward.

In each of these studies, it was the level of difficulty— not the presence of violence—that predicted aggressive thoughts and actions afterward. When the games were better matched than the previous studies, violence did not appear to affect aggression after playing.

In other words, these researchers concluded that games can make people angry just by being difficult to win.

A clear example of how frustration alone can lead to aggression in a non-violent game can be seen on YouTube, on well-known streamer Markiplier’s first attempt to beat Getting Over It . The game is bizarre; players try to guide a shirtless man in a cauldron up a mountain using only a hammer. It is designed to be extraordinarily unforgiving; one minor misstep might undo an hour of progress. Here ’s a video of him throwing a chair when he slipped down the mountain.

Others have suggested that it is the level of competition present in many games which fosters aggressive thoughts and actions. This is easy to understand—how many of us have yelled at friends or overturned the board at the end of a tense game of Monopoly? One gaming writer quipped , “What makes you angrier: dying to a horde of violent aliens in Gears of War , or losing a close match to your taunting brother in the very non-violent Mario Kart ?”

Anecdotally, I have found these two hypotheses to be true for my clients. I frequently hear from them or their parents that they act aggressively while playing video games, e.g. breaking controllers or yelling at their parents or other players. When I ask my clients about the situation, they talk about feeling frustrated, usually because of difficult gameplay, opponents playing unfairly, losing, or having to stop playing at an inopportune time in the game. These outbursts happen for violent and non-violent games alike.

What if violence is the variable?

In order to understand the results of the experiments, it is important to understand the difference between “statistical significance” and “clinical significance.” Statistical significance is a way to assess whether the results of the study were due to a real difference between groups or whether the results might have been due to chance. Clinical significance is whether the results are important for individuals or the population as a whole.

For example, the 2000 study which found that, on average, players turned the “punishment” dial longer when they played Wolfenstein 3D than those who had played Myst did reach statistical significance.

However, the actual difference was between 6.81 and 6.65 seconds, a difference of 0.16 seconds. To put that number into context, blinking takes roughly 0.1 to 0.4 seconds . That is, subjects who played violent and non-violent games both chose to punish an imaginary opponent for roughly seven seconds. The difference between how long the groups held the dial was less than the blink of an eye .

A 2 percent difference in how long someone holds a dial in a laboratory is hardly cause for alarm. Further, studies have shown that this tiny increase in aggression fades quickly, lasting less than 10 minutes .

Despite this, the researchers linked violent video games to the school shooting at Columbine High School in the first paragraph of the paper.

The APA’s Society for Media Psychology and Technology has since firmly stated that this kind of comparison is inappropriate : “Journalists and policymakers do their constituencies a disservice where they link acts of real-world violence with the perpetrators’ exposure to violent video games...there’s little scientific evidence to support the connection...Discovering that a young crime perpetrator also happened to play violent video games is no more illustrative than discovering that he or she happened to wear sneakers or used to watch Sesame Street.”

In fact, the Secret Service’s report studying characteristics of school shooters showed that only 14 percent of school shooters enjoyed violent video games , compared to 70 percent of their peers.

What about long-term effects?

Some researchers who study aggression use the General Aggression Model (GAM) , a unified theory of aggression created by the researcher who authored many of the papers that found a link between aggression and violent video games. The theory explains that many things may increase aggression in the short-term, including being insulted, unpleasant noises, and the temperature of the room.

The GAM theory further suggests that repeatedly acting on aggressive impulses may push people toward becoming permanently more aggressive. For example, a normally peaceful person may act out when insulted. The more times the person acts out, the more “accessible” violent responses become and the more likely this person is to act violently in future situations.

This makes intuitive sense, and researchers sometimes state that even a tiny increase in aggression, like the aforementioned 2 percent, could be cumulative and lead to long-term aggressive tendencies.

However, it does not appear that this is true. Researchers recently surveyed more than 1,000 British teens ages 14-15 on how often they play games, independently examined how violent those games are, and asked their parents to report how aggressively their children acted over the past month. They examined whether each variable was connected and found no evidence of a correlation. Teens who played violent games many hours per week did not act more aggressively than those who played peaceful games or no games at all.

Should children play violent games?

Of course, I am not suggesting that it is appropriate for young children to play violent games. I would not recommend that young children play Call of Duty for the same reason that I would not recommend they watch Saving Private Ryan until they are mature enough to understand it.

Even though it is not likely to make peaceful people aggressive, media which contains graphic violence can be frightening and hard to understand, especially for young people. Parents should take reasonable steps to ensure that their children are playing age-appropriate games, in the same way that they should ensure their children are watching age-appropriate movies.

Some parents choose to play video games with their children, ask them to play in a common area, or sit with them while they play to help provide context to the content of the games. These are great ideas; they allow parents to teach their children the difference between violence in games and in real life, to have conversations about the actions their characters take, and to comfort children who become scared.

It also helps parents understand what their children are experiencing while playing games so they can help them learn to manage these feelings of frustration. Parents who are familiar with their children’s video games can determine whether they are age-appropriate, their children’s motivations for play, how their children are affected, and how to set appropriate limits.

Adachi, P.J.C. & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of video game competition and violence on aggressive behavior: Which characteristic has the greatest influence? Psychology of Violence, 1 (4). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c375259442c9dc7d…

Allen, J.J., Anderson, C.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2017). The General Aggression Model. Current Opinion in Psychology, 19 . Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316119742_The_General_Aggressi…

Anderson, C.A., Carnagey, N.L., & Eubanks, J. (2003). Exposure to violent media: The effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (5). Retrieved from http://www.craiganderson.org/wp-content/uploads/caa/abstracts/2000-2004…

Anderson, C.A. & Dill, K.E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78 (4). Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.583.6828&rep=r…

APA Task Force on Violent Media (2015). Technical report on the review of the violent video game literature. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/families/review-video-games.pdf

Barlett, C., Branch, O., Rodeheffer, C., & Harris, R. (2009). How long do the short-term violent video game effects last? Aggressive Behavior, 35 . Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23996782_How_Long_Do_the_Short…

Breuer, J., Scharkow, M., & Quandt, T. (2013, December 23). Sore Losers? A Reexamination of the Frustration–Aggression Hypothesis for Colocated Video Game Play. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/ppm0000020 Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261794000_Sore_losers_A_reexam…

Bushman, B.J. & Anderson, C.A. (2002). Violent video games and hostile expectations: A test of the General Aggression Model. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237308783_Violent_Video_Games_…

Chester, D.S. & Lasko, E. (2018). Validating a standardized approach to the Taylor Aggression Paradigm. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325749887_Validating_a_Standar…

CNN. (2018, February 22). Trump blames video games, movies for violence [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RKZn2Sf7bo

Doommaster1994 [Doommaster1994]. (2008, November 13). Wolfenstein 3D Gameplay [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=561sPCk6ByE

Ferguson, C.J. (2008). The school shooting/violent video game link: Causal relationship or moral panic? Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 5. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/725227/The_school_shooting_violent_video_game_…

Ferguson, C. (2017, Spring/Summer). News Media, Public Education and Public Policy Committee: Societal violence and video games: Public statements of a link are problematic. The Amplifier Magazine . Retrieved from https://div46amplifier.com/2017/06/12/news-media-public-education-and-p…

Filardodesigns [filardodesigns]. (2008, September 8). MYST - Chapter 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-8CFun3nEw

Fischbach, M.E. [Markiplier]. (2017, December 7). I LITERALLY THROW A CHAIR IN RAGE | Getting Over It - Part 1 [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/dH9w9VlyNO4

Hollingdale, J. & Greitemeyer, T. (2014). The effect of online violent video games on levels of aggression. PLoS ONE 9 (11). Retrieved from https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.01117…

Jimmy Kimmel Live [Jimmy Kimmel Live]. (2018, December 13). YouTube Challenge - I Turned Off the TV During Fortnite [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AggZU8sg5HI

Lieberman, J.D., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H.A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior, 25 . Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3a78/9895c3e18f9e3356e98feda68521b726f…

Milo, R., Jorgensen, P., Moran, U., Weber, G., & Springer, M. (2009). BioNumbers - the database of key numbers in molecular and cell biology. Nucleic Acids Research, 38 . Retrieved from https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?&id=100706&ver=4

Przybylski, A.K., Deci, E.L., Rigby, C.S., & Ryan, R.M. (2014). Competence-impeding electronic games and players’ aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106 (3). Retrieved from http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2014_Przy…

Przybylski, A.K. & Weinstein, N. (2019). Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents’ aggressive behaviour: Evidence from a registered report. Royal Society Open Science, 6 (2). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331409534_Violent_video_game_e…

Schreier, J. (2015, August 14). Why most video game “aggression” studies are nonsense. Retrieved from https://kotaku.com/why-most-video-game-aggression-studies-are-nonsense-…

Andrew Fishman is a licensed social worker in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a lifelong gamer who works with clients to understand the impact video games have had on their mental health.

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July 1, 2015

Do Video Games Inspire Violent Behavior?

Conventional wisdom suggests violent media is harming kids. But sometimes a game is just a game

By Greg Toppo

On the morning of August 12, 2013, nearly eight months after 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 26 people, Michael Mudry, an investigator with the Connecticut State Police, drove to nearby Danbury to try to solve a little mystery. Police had found a Garmin GPS unit in Lanza's house, and its records showed that the gunman had driven to the same spot nine times in April, May and June 2012, arriving around midnight each time and staying for hours.

The GPS readout took Mudry to the vast parking lot of a suburban shopping center, about 14 miles west of Lanza's home. Workers at a movie theater there immediately recognized Lanza from a photograph. He was at the theater constantly, they told Mudry, but never to see movies. He came to the lobby to play an arcade game, the same one, over and over again, sometimes for eight to 10 hours a night. Witnesses said he would whip himself into a frenzy, and on occasion the theater manager had to unplug the game to get him to leave.

Police had been scouring Lanza's home since the shootings, and on his computer hard drive they found information on weapons magazine capacities, images of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, copies of the violent movies Bloody Wednesday and Rampage , and a list of ingredients for TNT. And like many teenaged boys, Lanza owned the typical first-person shooter, fighting and action games: Call of Duty, Dead or Alive, Grand Theft Auto.

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But those weren't the games that possessed Lanza at the movie theater. The title that so consumed the Sandy Hook shooter? Dance Dance Revolution—an arcade staple that has players dance on colored squares to the rhythm of Asian techno-pop. That discovery not only surprised investigators, it also was at odds with overheated speculation in the media and around dinner tables that violent video games had helped turn Lanza into a killer.

Yet no one knows how any of these games—Dance Dance Revolution included—might have affected a kid who was clearly struggling. The truth is that decades of research have turned up no reliable causal link between playing violent video games and perpetrating actual violence. This is not to say that games have no effect. They're built to have an effect. It's just not necessarily the one that most people think.

A tradition of worry The implicit connection between violent media and violent behavior is so old that, like a barnacle clinging to a hull, it's not easily dislodged. The notion dates at least to the Victorian era, when educators, tastemakers and clergymen began criticizing what was then a fairly raucous popular culture. Violent, sex-soaked dime novels and penny-dreadful magazines were immensely popular, and upstanding publications such as Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly took delight in denouncing them. Author and critic Harold Schechter, whose 2005 book Savage Pastimes lays out a social history of violent entertainment, notes that the trend divided the literati of the time. Ralph Waldo Emerson complained about his countrymen “reading all day murders & railroad accidents,” but Nathaniel Hawthorne loved the scandal sheets so much that he had a friend ship stacks of them to Liverpool, England, while he lived abroad as a U.S. consul. The belle of Amherst herself, Emily Dickinson, relished stories of “those funny accidents where railroads meet each other, and gentlemen in factories get their heads cut off quite informally.”

The 20th century saw criticism grow more robust. In 1936 Catholic scholar John K. Ryan laid out what he called the “mental food of American children,” as seen through the media they consumed. It was a long menu, one that included “sadism, cannibalism, bestiality. Crude eroticism. Torturing, killing, kidnapping.” He was talking about daily newspaper comic strips. In 1947 critic and actor John Houseman lodged similar complaints about cartoons on television. They “run red with horrible savagery,” he wrote.

Into this fray entered Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura, now 89, whose experimental studies in the early 1960s established the theoretical basis for limiting kids' access to violent media. In a 1961 study, Bandura and his colleagues gathered 72 preschoolers. Laboratory assistants led the kids, one at a time, into a playroom, where they sat at a small table and received instruction on how to make potato-print pictures. Soon another adult entered the room and settled into the opposite corner with a Tinkertoy set, a mallet and a five-foot, inflated Bobo clown doll, the kind that rights itself if knocked over. The adult then either quietly assembled the Tinkertoys, ignoring Bobo, or turned to the doll and began “aggressing toward it”—punching it, sitting on it, kicking it around the room, all the while saying things such as “Sock him in the nose!” and “Pow!”

After 10 minutes, each child was led into another room and invited to play with some “relatively attractive toys,” such as a fire engine, a spinning top and a doll set. But after two minutes, a lab assistant announced that these were “her very best toys” and that she'd decided to reserve them for other children. The kids were swept into a third room that held more toys, both “aggressive and nonaggressive”: a tea set, crayons, dart guns, a mallet … and a three-foot Bobo doll. You see where this is going.

Faced with the frustration of having nice new toys suddenly snatched away, the preschoolers who had watched Bobo get mistreated were more likely than the others to take out their aggression on the mini Bobo. Bandura repeated the experiment in 1963, using film and cartoon depictions of Bobo's mistreatment, with similar results. The conclusions seemed clear: watching unchecked aggression in real life, on film or in cartoons makes us more aggressive because it provides us with “social scripts” to guide our behavior. Bandura's conclusions opened a floodgate of “media effects” research that continues today.

The problem is that many of the findings, especially when applied to children's media and play, are misleading at best. Critic Gerard Jones, whose 2003 book Killing Monsters makes a case for giving kids access to “make-believe violence,” writes: “There is no evidence to suggest that punching an inflatable clown has any connection to real-life violence.” In many cases, he and others say, researchers mistake natural competitiveness or the effects of discomfort for aggression or mislabel the subjects' temporary aggression as behavior that holds the potential for violence. In an often quoted 1976 study led by Brian Coates at Washington State University, researchers found that preschoolers who watched the famously mild Mister Rogers' Neighborhood were three times more aggressive afterward. Jones suggests that the experiment itself may have made kids anxious or even angry by compelling them to “sit in a hard plastic chair in a strange room” and watch TV on cue.

It was the 1999 Columbine High School shootings that got many Americans thinking about violent video games. After the attacks, victims' families sued more than two dozen game makers, saying titles such as Doom, a first-person shooter that the two teen gunmen played, desensitized them to violence. A judge dismissed the lawsuits, but the post-Columbine uproar led more researchers to begin dissecting games, much as Bandura did for TV, in search of the roots of aggression.

Deciphering the data A few studies tried to draw distinctions between good and bad games. In a 2010 experiment, Tobias Greitemeyer, then at the University of Sussex in England, and Silvia Osswald of Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany asked subjects to play one of three video games—either a “prosocial” game, an “aggressive” game or the “neutral” game Tetris. After eight minutes, an experimenter reached for a stack of questionnaires but “accidentally” knocked a cup of pencils off the table and onto the floor. Participants who had played the prosocial game were twice as likely to help pick up the pencils as those who played the neutral or aggressive game.

Others have tried to tease out the aftereffects of playing violent games. In a 2012 study, André Melzer of the University of Luxembourg, along with Mario Gollwitzer of Philipps University Marburg in Germany, found that inexperienced players felt a need to “cleanse” themselves after playing a violent video game (the so-called Macbeth effect: “Out, damned spot!”). Researchers asked subjects to play either a driving game or the mayhem-heavy Grand Theft Auto for 15 minutes, then pick gifts from an assortment, half “hygienic” (shower gel, deodorant, toothpaste) and half nonhygienic (gummy bears, Post-it notes, a box of tea). Inexperienced players who played Grand Theft Auto were more likely to pick out hygienic products than were experienced players or inexperienced players who had played the driving game.

But neither of those studies make the case that these games lead to real-word violence. Although drawing conclusions about small population subgroups—such as kids at risk of violence—from broad population trends can be dicey, it is still worth noting that as violent video games proliferated in recent years, the number of violent youthful offenders fell—by more than half between 1994 and 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. This trend is not what you would expect if these games had the power to make good boys go bad. Indeed, in a 2011 analysis of game sales from 2004 to 2008, A. Scott Cunningham of Baylor University, Benjamin Engelstätter of the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, and Michael R. Ward of the University of Texas at Arlington found that higher rates of violent game sales actually coincided with a drop in crimes, especially violent crimes. They concluded that any negative behavioral effects playing violent games might have are more than offset because violent people are drawn to such games, and the more they play, the less time they have for crime.

Even if violent video games are not turning people into killers, we might still wonder if they are harming our kids in subtler ways. As psychologist Douglas A. Gentile of Iowa State University puts it, whatever we practice repeatedly affects the brain. If we practice aggressive ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, he writes, “then we will get better at those.” In a 2008 survey on the gaming habits of about 2,500 young people, Gentile and his father, psychologist J. Ronald Gentile, found that children and adolescents who played more violent games were likelier to report “aggressive cognitions and behaviors.” They concluded that violent video games “appear to be exemplary teachers of aggression.” They also found that eighth and ninth graders who played violent games more frequently displayed greater “hostile attribution bias” (being vigilant for enemies) and got into more arguments with teachers.

The greatest worry is the impact on children who are already at risk. “Media is most powerful in our lives when it reinforces our existing values,” media scholar Henry Jenkins, now at the University of Southern California, said in a 2003 episode of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly . Indeed, Jenkins argued in an essay for PBS, a child who responds to a video game the same way he or she does to a real-world trauma could be showing symptoms of an emotional disturbance. So used in the right setting, a violent game could actually serve as a diagnostic tool.

But beyond such special circumstances, media effects research, with its Bobo dolls as markers of real-world aggression, is problematic. The fighting kids do in physical games and video games alike is just a simulation. In other words, it is play. It looks like fighting, wrote Brian Sutton-Smith, the late renowned play theorist, in his book The Ambiguity of Play , “but it is also the opposite of fighting … carried on by those who are not enemies and who do not intend to harm each other.”

In a way, we are pointing fingers at the wrong people. When we worry that a violent game is going to turn our kids into killers, aren't we the ones who can't tell fantasy from reality? Kids already know the difference.

Adapted from The Game Believes in You: How Digital Play Can Make Our Kids Smarter , with permission from Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin's Press. Copyright © 2015.

The evidence that video game violence leads to real-world aggression

A 2018 meta-analysis found that there is a small increase in real-world physical aggression among adolescents and pre-teens who play violent video games. Led by Jay Hull, a social psychologist at Dartmouth College, the study team pooled data from 24 previous studies in an attempt to avoid some of the problems that have made the question of a connection between gaming and aggression controversial.

Many previous studies, according to a story in Scientific American, have been criticized by “a small but vocal cadre of researchers [who] have argued much of the work implicating video games has serious flaws in that, among other things, it measures the frequency of aggressive thoughts or language rather than physically aggressive behaviors like hitting or pushing, which have more real-world relevance.”

Hull and team limited their analysis to studies that “measured the relationship between violent video game use and overt physical aggression,” according to the Scientific American article .

The Dartmouth analysis drew on 24 studies involving more than 17,000 participants and found that “playing violent video games is associated with increases in physical aggression over time in children and teens,” according to a Dartmouth press release describing the study , which was published Oct. 1, 2018, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

The studies the Dartmouth team analyzed “tracked physical aggression among users of violent video games for periods ranging from three months to four years. Examples of physical aggression included incidents such as hitting someone or being sent to the school principal’s office for fighting, and were based on reports from children, parents, teachers, and peers,” according to the press release.

The study was almost immediately called in to question. In an editorial in Psychology Today , a pair of professors claim the results of the meta-analysis are not statistically significant. Hull and team wrote in the PNAS paper that, while small, the results are indeed significant. The Psychology Today editorial makes an appeal to a 2017 statement by the American Psychological Association’s media psychology and technology division “cautioning policy makers and news media to stop linking violent games to serious real-world aggression as the data is just not there to support such beliefs.”

It should be noted, however, that the 2017 statement questions the connection between “serious” aggression while the APA Resolution of 2015 , based on a review of its 2005 resolution by its own experts, found that “the link between violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior is one of the most studied and best established. Since the earlier meta-analyses, this link continues to be a reliable finding and shows good multi-method consistency across various representations of both violent video game exposure and aggressive behavior.”

While the effect sizes are small, they’ve been similar across many studies, according to the APA resolution. The problem has been the interpretation of aggression, with some writers claiming an unfounded connection between homicides, mass shootings, and other extremes of violence. The violence the APA resolution documents is more mundane and involves the kind of bullying that, while often having dire long-term consequences, is less immediately dangerous: “insults, threats, hitting, pushing, hair pulling, biting and other forms of verbal and physical aggression.”

Minor and micro-aggressions, though, do have significant health risks, especially for mental health. People of color, LGBTQ people , and women everywhere experience higher levels of depression and anger, as well as stress-related disorders, including heart disease, asthma, obesity, accelerated aging, and premature death. The costs of even minor aggression are laid at the feet of the individuals who suffer, their friends and families, and society at large as the cost of healthcare skyrockets.

Finally, it should be noted that studies looking for a connection between game violence and physical aggression are not looking at the wider context of the way we enculturate children, especially boys. As WSU’s Stacey Hust and Kathleen Rodgers have shown, you don’t have to prove a causative effect to know that immersing kids in games filled with violence and sexist tropes leads to undesirable consequences, particularly the perpetuation of interpersonal violence in intimate relationships.

No wonder, then, that when feminist media critic Anita Saarkesian launched her YouTube series, “ Tropes vs. Women in Video Games ,” she was the target of vitriol and violence. Years later she’d joke about “her first bomb threat,” but that was only after her life had been upended by the boys club that didn’t like “this woman” showing them the “grim evidence of industry-wide sexism.”

Read more about WSU research and study on video games in “ What’s missing in video games .”

What do you think? Leave a respectful comment.

Christopher J. Ferguson, The Conversation Christopher J. Ferguson, The Conversation

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-why-its-time-to-stop-blaming-video-games-for-real-world-violence

Analysis: Why it’s time to stop blaming video games for real-world violence

In the wake of the El Paso shooting on Aug. 3 that left 21 dead and dozens injured, a familiar trope has reemerged: Often, when a young man is the shooter, people try to blame the tragedy on violent video games and other forms of media.

This time around, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick placed some of the blame on a video game industry that “ teaches young people to kill .” Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California went on to condemn video games that “dehumanize individuals” as a “problem for future generations.” And President Trump pointed to society’s “glorification of violence,” including “ gruesome and grisly video games .”

These are the same connections a Florida lawmaker made after the Parkland shooting in February 2018, suggesting that the gunman in that case “was prepared to pick off students like it’s a video game .”

Kevin McCarthy, the GOP House minority leader, also tells Fox News that video games are the problem following the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. pic.twitter.com/w7DmlJ9O1K — John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 4, 2019

But, speaking as a researcher who has studied violent video games for almost 15 years, I can state that there is no evidence to support these claims that violent media and real-world violence are connected. As far back as 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that research did not find a clear connection between violent video games and aggressive behavior.

Criminologists who study mass shootings specifically refer to those sorts of connections as a “ myth .” And in 2017, the Media Psychology and Technology division of the American Psychological Association released a statement I helped craft, suggesting reporters and policymakers cease linking mass shootings to violent media, given the lack of evidence for a link.

A history of a moral panic

So why are so many policymakers inclined to blame violent video games for violence? There are two main reasons.

The first is the psychological research community’s efforts to market itself as strictly scientific. This led to a replication crisis instead, with researchers often unable to repeat the results of their studies. Now, psychology researchers are reassessing their analyses of a wide range of issues – not just violent video games, but implicit racism , power poses and more.

The other part of the answer lies in the troubled history of violent video game research specifically.

An attendee dressed as a Fortnite character poses for a picture in a costume at Comic Con International in San Diego, California, U.S., July 19, 2019. Photo by REUTERS/Mike Blake

Beginning in the early 2000s, some scholars, anti-media advocates and professional groups like the APA began working to connect a methodologically messy and often contradictory set of results to public health concerns about violence. This echoed historical patterns of moral panic, such as 1950s concerns about comic books and Tipper Gore’s efforts to blame pop and rock music in the 1980s for violence, sex and satanism.

Particularly in the early 2000s, dubious evidence regarding violent video games was uncritically promoted . But over the years, confidence among scholars that violent video games influence aggression or violence has crumbled .

Reviewing all the scholarly literature

My own research has examined the degree to which violent video games can – or can’t – predict youth aggression and violence. In a 2015 meta-analysis , I examined 101 studies on the subject and found that violent video games had little impact on kids’ aggression, mood, helping behavior or grades.

Two years later, I found evidence that scholarly journals’ editorial biases had distorted the scientific record on violent video games. Experimental studies that found effects were more likely to be published than studies that had found none. This was consistent with others’ findings . As the Supreme Court noted, any impacts due to video games are nearly impossible to distinguish from the effects of other media, like cartoons and movies.

Any claims that there is consistent evidence that violent video games encourage aggression are simply false.

Spikes in violent video games’ popularity are well-known to correlate with substantial declines in youth violence – not increases. These correlations are very strong, stronger than most seen in behavioral research. More recent research suggests that the releases of highly popular violent video games are associated with immediate declines in violent crime, hinting that the releases may cause the drop-off.

The role of professional groups

With so little evidence, why are people like Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin still trying to blame violent video games for mass shootings by young men? Can groups like the National Rifle Association seriously blame imaginary guns for gun violence?

A key element of that problem is the willingness of professional guild organizations such as the APA to promote false beliefs about violent video games. (I’m a fellow of the APA.) These groups mainly exist to promote a profession among news media, the public and policymakers, influencing licensing and insurance laws . They also make it easier to get grants and newspaper headlines. Psychologists and psychology researchers like myself pay them yearly dues to increase the public profile of psychology. But there is a risk the general public may mistake promotional positions for objective science.

In 2005 the APA released its first policy statement linking violent video games to aggression. However, my recent analysis of internal APA documents with criminologist Allen Copenhaver found that the APA ignored inconsistencies and methodological problems in the research data.

The APA updated its statement in 2015, but that sparked controversy immediately: More than 230 scholars wrote to the group asking it to stop releasing policy statements altogether. I and others objected to perceived conflicts of interest and lack of transparency tainting the process.

It’s bad enough that these statements misrepresent the actual scholarly research and misinform the public. But it’s worse when those falsehoods give advocacy groups like the NRA cover to shift blame for violence onto non-issues like video games. The resulting misunderstanding hinders efforts to address mental illness and other issues, such as the need for gun control, that are actually related to gun violence.

This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original article . This story was updated from an earlier version to reflect the events surrounding the El Paso and Dayton shootings.

Christopher J. Ferguson is a professor of psychology at Stetson University. He's coauthor of " Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong ."

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El Paso shooting is domestic terrorism, investigators say

Nation Aug 04

Do Violent Video Games Contribute to Youth Violence?

Around 73% of American kids age 2-17 played  video games  in 2019, a 6% increase over 2018. Video games accounted for 17% of kids’ entertainment time and 11% of their entertainment spending. The global video game industry was worth contributing $159.3 billion in 2020, a 9.3% increase of 9.3% from 2019.

Violent video games have been blamed for school shootings , increases in bullying , and violence towards women. Critics argue that these games desensitize players to violence, reward players for simulating violence, and teach children that violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflicts.

Video game advocates contend that a majority of the research on the topic is deeply flawed and that no causal relationship has been found between video games and social violence. They argue that violent video games may provide a safe outlet for aggressive and angry feelings and may reduce crime. Read more background…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 Playing violent video games causes more aggression, bullying, and fighting. 60% of middle school boys and 40% of middle school girls who played at least one Mature-rated (M-rated) game hit or beat up someone, compared with 39% of boys and 14% of girls who did not play M-rated games. [ 2 ] A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that habitual violent video game playing had a causal link with increased, long-term, aggressive behavior. [ 63 ] Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that children who play M-rated games are more likely to bully and cyberbully their peers, get into physical fights, be hostile, argue with teachers, and show aggression towards their peers throughout the school year. [ 2 ] [ 31 ] [ 60 ] [ 61 ] [ 67 ] [ 73 ] [ 76 ] [ 80 ] Read More

Pro 2 Simulating violence such as shooting guns and hand-to-hand combat in video games can cause real-life violent behavior. Video games often require players to simulate violent actions, such as stabbing, shooting, or dismembering someone with an ax, sword, chainsaw, or other weapons. [ 23 ] Game controllers are so sophisticated and the games are so realistic that simulating the violent acts enhances the learning of those violent behaviors. [ 23 ] A peer-reviewed study found “compelling evidence that the use of realistic controllers can have a significant effect on the level of cognitive aggression.” [ 118 ] Two teenagers in Tennessee who shot at passing cars and killed one driver told police they got the idea from playing Grand Theft Auto III . [ 48 ] Bruce Bartholow, professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, spoke about the effects of simulating violence: “More than any other media, these [violent] video games encourage active participation in violence. From a psychological perspective, video games are excellent teaching tools because they reward players for engaging in certain types of behavior. Unfortunately, in many popular video games, the behavior is violence.” [ 53 ] Read More

Pro 3 Many perpetrators of mass shootings played violent video games. Kevin McCarthy, former U.S. Representative (R-CA), states: “But the idea of these video games that dehumanize individuals to have a game of shooting individuals and others – I’ve always felt that is a problem for future generations and others. We’ve watched from studies shown before of what it does to individuals. When you look at these photos of how it [mass shootings] took place, you can see the actions within video games and others.” [ 146 ] Many mass shootings have been carried out by avid video game players: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in the Columbine High School shooting (1999); James Holmes in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting (2012); Jared Lee Loughner in the Arizona shooting that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others (2011); and Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway (2011) and admitted to using the game Modern Warfare 2 for training. [ 43 ] [ 53 ] An FBI school shooter threat assessment stated that a student who makes threats of violence should be considered more credible if he or she also spends “inordinate amounts of time playing video games with violent themes.” [ 25 ] Dan Patrick, Republican Lieutenant Governor of Texas, stated: “We’ve always had guns, always had evil, but I see a video game industry that teaches young people to kill.” [ 145 ] Read More

Pro 4 Violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence. Desensitization to violence was defined in a Journal of Experimental Social Psychology peer-reviewed study as “a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence.” [ 51 ] [ 111 ] [ 112 ] The study found that just 20 minutes of playing a violent video game “can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence.” People desensitized to violence are more likely to commit a violent act. [ 51 ] [ 111 ] [ 112 ] By age 18, American children will have seen 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence depicted in violent video games, movies, and television. [ 110 ] A peer-reviewed study found a causal link between violent video game exposure and an increase in aggression as a result of a reduction in the brain’s response to depictions of real-life violence. [ 52 ] Studies have found reduced emotional and physiological responses to violence in both the long and short term. [ 55 ] [ 58 ] In a peer-reviewed study, violent video game exposure was linked to reduced P300 amplitudes in the brain, which is associated with desensitization to violence and increases in aggressive behavior. [ 24 ] Read More

Pro 5 By inhabiting violent characters in video games, children are more likely to imitate the behaviors of those characters and have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Violent video games require active participation and identification with violent characters, which reinforces violent behavior. Young children are more likely to confuse fantasy violence with real world violence, and without a framework for ethical decision making, they may mimic the actions they see in violent video games. [ 59 ] [ 4 ] Child Development and Early Childhood Education expert Jane Katch stated in an interview with Education Week , “I found that young children often have difficulty separating fantasy from reality when they are playing and can temporarily believe they are the character they are pretending to be.” [ 124 ] U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent in Brown v. ESA that “the closer a child’s behavior comes, not to watching, but to acting out horrific violence, the greater the potential psychological harm.” [ 124 ] Read More

Pro 6 Exposure to violent video games is linked to lower empathy and decreased kindness. Empathy, the ability to understand and enter into another’s feelings is believed to inhibit aggressive behavior. In a study of 150 fourth and fifth graders by Jeanne Funk, professor of psychology at the University of Toledo, violent video games were the only type of media associated with lower empathy. [ 32] A study published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin found that exposure to violent video games led to a lack of empathy and prosocial behavior (positive actions that benefit others). [ 65] [ 66] Eight independent tests measuring the impact of violent video games on prosocial behavior found a significant negative effect, leading to the conclusion that “exposure to violent video games is negatively correlated with helping in the real world.” [ 61] Several studies have found that children with high exposure to violent media display lower moral reasoning skills than their peers without that exposure. [ 32] [ 69] A meta-analysis of 130 international studies with over 130,000 participants concluded that violent video games “increase aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behaviors, and decrease empathic feelings and prosocial behaviors.” [ 123] Read More

Pro 7 Video games that portray violence against women lead to more harmful attitudes and sexually violent actions towards women. A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence found that video games that sexually objectify women and feature violence against women led to a statistically significant increase in rape-supportive attitudes, which are attitudes that are hostile towards rape victims. [ 68 ] Another study found that 21% of games sampled involved violence against women, while 28% portrayed them as sex objects. [ 23 ] Exposure to sexual violence in video games is linked to increases in violence towards women and false attitudes about rape, such as that women incite men to rape or that women secretly desire rape. [ 30 ] Carole Lieberman, a media psychiatrist, stated, “The more video games a person plays that have violent sexual content, the more likely one is to become desensitized to violent sexual acts and commit them.” [ 64 ] Target Australia stopped selling Grand Theft Auto V in response to customer complaints about the game’s depiction of women, which includes the option to kill a prostitute to get your money back. [ 70 ] Read More

Pro 8 Violent video games reinforce fighting as a means of dealing with conflict by rewarding the use of violent action with increased life force, more weapons, moving on to higher levels, and more. Studies suggest that when violence is rewarded in video games, players exhibit increased aggressive behavior compared to players of video games where violence is punished. [ 23 ] [ 59 ] The reward structure is one distinguishing factor between violent video games and other violent media such as movies and television shows, which do not reward viewers nor allow them to actively participate in violence. [ 23 ] [ 59 ] An analysis of 81 video games rated for teens ages 13 and up found that 73 games (90%) rewarded injuring other characters, and 56 games (69%) rewarded killing. [ 71 ] [ 72 ] People who played a video game that rewarded violence showed higher levels of aggressive behavior and aggressive cognition as compared with people who played a version of the same game that was competitive but either did not contain violence or punished violence. [ 71 ] [ 72 ] Read More

Pro 9 The US military uses violent video games to train soldiers to kill. The U.S. Marine Corps licensed Doom II in 1996 to create Marine Doom in order to train soldiers. In 2002, the U.S. Army released first-person shooter game America’s Army to recruit soldiers and prepare recruits for the battlefield. [ 6 ] While the military may benefit from training soldiers to kill using video games, kids who are exposed to these games lack the discipline and structure of the armed forces and may become more susceptible to being violent. [ 79 ] Dave Grossman, retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army and former West Point psychology professor, stated: “[T]hrough interactive point-and-shoot video games, modern nations are indiscriminately introducing to their children the same weapons technology that major armies and law enforcement agencies around the world use to ‘turn off’ the midbrain ‘safety catch’” that prevents most people from killing. [ 77 ] Read More

Con 1 Studies have shown violent video games may cause aggression, not violence. Further, any competitive video game or activity may cause aggression. Lauren Farrar, producer for KQED Learning’s YouTube series Above the Noise , stated: “Often times after tragic mass shooting, we hear politicians turn the blame to violent video games, but the reality is that the research doesn’t really support that claim… In general, violence usually refers to physical harm or physical acts that hurt someone– like hitting, kicking, punching, and pushing. Aggression is a more broad term that refers to angry or hostile thoughts, feelings or behaviors. So everything that is violent is aggressive, but not everything that is aggressive is violent. For example, getting frustrated, yelling, talking back, arguing those are all aggressive behaviors, but they aren’t violent. The research on the effects of violent video games and behavior often looks at these milder forms of aggressive behavior.” [ 140 ] A peer-reviewed study in Psychology of Violence determined that the competitive nature of a video game was related to aggressive behavior, regardless of whether the game contained violent content. The researchers concluded: “Because past studies have failed to equate the violent and nonviolent video games on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action simultaneously, researchers may have attributed too much of the variability in aggression to the violent content.” [ 125 ] A follow-up study tracked high school students for four years and came to the same conclusion: the competitive nature of the games led to the increased hostile behavior. [ 126 ] Read More

Con 2 Violent video games are a convenient scapegoat for those who would rather not deal with the actual causes of violence in the US. Patrick Markey, psychology professor at Villanova University, stated: “The general story is people who play video games right after might be a little hopped up and jerky but it doesn’t fundamentally alter who they are. It is like going to see a sad movie. It might make you cry but it doesn’t make you clinically depressed… Politicians on both sides go after video games it is this weird unifying force. It makes them look like they are doing something… They [violent video games] look scary. But research just doesn’t support that there’s a link [to violent behavior].” [ 138 ] Markey also explained, “Because video games are disproportionately blamed as a culprit for mass shootings committed by White perpetrators, video game ‘blaming’ can be viewed as flagging a racial issue. This is because there is a stereotypical association between racial minorities and violent crime.” [ 141 ] Andrew Przybylski, associate professor, and director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, stated: “Games have only become more realistic. The players of games and violent games have only become more diverse. And they’re played all around the world now. But the only place where you see this kind of narrative still hold any water, that games and violence are related to each other, is in the United States. [And, by blaming video games for violence,] we reduce the value of the political discourse on the topic, because we’re looking for easy answers instead of facing hard truths.” [ 139 ] Hillary Clinton, Former Secretary of State and First Lady, tweeted, “People suffer from mental illness in every other country on earth; people play video games in virtually every other country on earth. The difference is the guns.” [ 142 ] Read More

Con 3 Simple statistics do not support the claim that violent video games cause mass shootings or other violence. Katherine Newman, dean of arts and sciences at Johns Hopkins University, explained: “Millions of young people play video games full of fistfights, blazing guns, and body slams… Yet only a minuscule fraction of the consumers become violent.” [ 84 ] [ 86 ] [ 87 ] [ 91 ] [ 92 ] A report by the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Education examined 37 incidents of targeted school violence between 1974 and 2000. Of the 41 attackers studied, 27% had an interest in violent movies, 24% in violent books, and 37% exhibited interest in their own violent writings, while only 12% showed interest in violent video games. The report did not find a relationship between playing violent video games and school shootings. [ 35 ] Patrick M. Markey, director of the Interpersonal Research Laboratory at Villanova University, stated, “90% of young males play video games. Finding that a young man who committed a violent crime also played a popular video game, such as Call of Duty, Halo, or Grand Theft Auto, is as pointless as pointing out that the criminal also wore socks.” [ 84 ] Further, gun violence is less prevalent in countries with high video game use. A study of the countries representing the 10 largest video game markets internationally found no correlation between playing video games and gun-related killings. Even though US gun violence is high, the nine other countries with the highest video game usage have some of the lowest violent crime rates (and eight of those countries spend more per capita on video games than the United States). [ 97 ] Read More

Con 4 As sales of violent video games have significantly increased, violent juvenile crime rates have significantly decreased. In 2019, juvenile arrests for violent crimes were at an all-time low, a decline of 50% since 2006. Meanwhile, video game sales set a record in Mar. 2020, with Americans spending $5.6 billion on video game hardware, accessories, and assorted content. Both statistics continue a years-long trend. [ 143 ] [ 144 ] Total U.S. sales of video game hardware and software increased 204% from 1994 to 2014, reaching $13.1 billion in 2014, while violent crimes decreased 37% and murders by juveniles acting alone fell 76% in that same period. [ 82 ] [ 83 ] [ 133 ] [ 134 ] [ 135 ] The number of high school students who had been in at least one physical fight decreased from 43% in 1991 to 25% in 2013, and student reports of criminal victimization at school dropped by more than half from 1995 to 2011. [ 106 ] [ 107 ] A peer-reviewed study found that: “Monthly sales of video games were related to concurrent decreases in aggravated assaults.” [ 84 ] Read More

Con 5 Studies have shown that violent video games can have a positive effect on kindness, civic engagement, and prosocial behaviors. Research shows that playing violent video games can induce a feeling of guilt that leads to increased prosocial behavior (positive actions that benefit others) in the real world. [ 104 ] A study published in Computers in Human Behavior discovered that youths exposed to violence in action games displayed more prosocial behavior and civic engagement, “possibly due to the team-oriented multiplayer options in many of these games.” [ 103 ] Read More

Con 6 Many risk factors are associated with youth violence, but video games are not among them. The U.S. Surgeon General’s list of risk factors for youth violence included abusive parents, poverty, neglect, neighborhood crime, being male, substance use, and mental health problems, but not video games. [ 118 ] A peer-reviewed study even found a “real and significant” effect of hot weather on homicides and aggravated assaults, showing that heat is a risk factor for violence. [ 124 ] Read More

Con 7 Violent video game players know the difference between virtual violence in the context of a game and appropriate behavior in the real world. By age seven, children can distinguish fantasy from reality, and can tell the difference between video game violence and real-world violence. [ 99 ] [ 100 ] Video game players understand they are playing a game. Kids see fantasy violence all the time, from Harry Potter and the Minions to Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry. Their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality prevents them from emulating video game violence in real life. [ 9 ] Exposure to fantasy is important for kids. Fisher-Price toy company stated: “Pretending is more than play: it’s a major part of a child’s development. Fantasy not only develops creative thinking, it’s also a way for children to deal with situations and problems that concern them.” [108] Read More

Con 8 Violent video games provide opportunities for children to explore consequences of violent actions, develop their moral compasses and release their stress and anger (catharsis) in the game, leading to less real world aggression. Violent games allow youth to experiment with moral issues such as war, violence, and death without real world consequences. A researcher at the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media wrote about her research: “One unexpected theme that came up multiple times in our focus groups was a feeling among boys that violent games can teach moral lessons… Many war-themed video games allow or require players to take the roles of soldiers from different sides of a conflict, perhaps making players more aware of the costs of war.” [ 2 ] [ 38 ] A peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that children, especially boys, play video games as a means of managing their emotions: “61.9% of boys played to ‘help me relax,’ 47.8% because ‘it helps me forget my problems,’ and 45.4% because ‘it helps me get my anger out.” [ 37 ] Researchers point to the cathartic effect of video games as a possible reason for why higher game sales have been associated with lower crime rates. [ 84 ] A peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Adolescent Research concluded that “Boys use games to experience fantasies of power and fame, to explore and master what they perceive as exciting and realistic environments (but distinct from real life), to work through angry feelings or relieve stress, and as social tools.” The games serve as a substitute for rough-and-tumble play. [ 36 ] Read More

Con 9 Studies claiming a causal link between video game violence and real life violence are flawed. Many studies failed to control for factors that contribute to children becoming violent, such as family history and mental health, plus most studies do not follow children over long periods of time. [ 10 ] [ 95 ] Video game experiments often have people playing a game for as little as ten minutes, which is not representative of how games are played in real life. In many laboratory studies, especially those involving children, researchers must use artificial measures of violence and aggression that do not translate to real-world violence and aggression, such as whether someone would force another person eat hot sauce or listen to unpleasant noises. [ 84 ] [ 94 ] According to Christopher J. Ferguson, a psychology professor at Stetson University, “matching video game conditions more carefully in experimental studies with how they are played in real life makes VVG’s [violent video games] effects on aggression essentially vanish.” [ 95 ] [ 96 ] Read More

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Pro and Con: Violent Video Games

To access extended pro and con arguments, sources, and discussion questions about whether violent video games contribute to youth violence, go to ProCon.org .

Around 73% of American kids age 2-17 played video games in 2019, a 6% increase over 2018. Video games accounted for 17% of kids’ entertainment time and 11% of their entertainment spending. The global video game industry was worth contributing $159.3 billion in 2020, a 9.3% increase of 9.3% from 2019.

The debate over violent video games can be traced back to the 1976 release of the game Death Race. The object of the game was to run over screaming “gremlins” with a car, at which point they would turn into tombstones. Controversy erupted because the “gremlins” resembled stick-figure humans, and it was reported that the working title of the game was Pedestrian. After protestors dragged Death Race machines out of arcades and burned them in parking lots, production of the game ceased.

In 1993, public outcry following the release of violent video games Mortal Kombat and Night Trap prompted Congress to hold hearings on regulating the sale of video games. During the hearings, California Attorney General Dan Lungren testified that violent video games have “a desensitizing impact on young, impressionable minds.” Threatened with the creation of a federal regulatory commission, the video game industry voluntarily established the  Entertainment Software Rating Board  (ESRB) on Sep. 1, 1994 to create a ratings system. Based on the video game’s content, the ESRB assigns one of the following ratings: “Early Childhood,” “Everyone,” “Everyone 10+,” “Teen,” “Mature,” “Adults Only,” or “Rating Pending” (only for use in advertising for games not yet rated). In a Pew Research Center 2008 survey, 50% of boys and 14% of girls aged 12-17 listed a game with a “Mature” or “Adults Only” rating in their current top three favorite games.

An Aug. 2015 report from the American Psychological Association determined that playing violent video games is linked to increased aggression, but it did not find sufficient evidence of a link between the games and increased violence. The organization reaffirmed this position in 2020: “There is insufficient scientific evidence to support a causal link between violent video games and violent behavior… [T]he new task force report reaffirms that there is a small, reliable association between violent video game use and aggressive outcomes, such as yelling and pushing. However, these research findings are difficult to extend to more violent outcomes.” 

• Playing violent video games causes more aggression, bullying, and fighting.
• Simulating violence such as shooting guns and hand-to-hand combat in video games can cause real-life violent behavior.
• Many perpetrators of mass shootings played violent video games.
• Violent video games desensitize players to real-life violence.
• By inhabiting violent characters in video games, children are more likely to imitate the behaviors of those characters and have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy.
• Exposure to violent video games is linked to lower empathy and decreased kindness.
• Video games that portray violence against women lead to more harmful attitudes and sexually violent actions towards women.
• Violent video games reinforce fighting as a means of dealing with conflict by rewarding the use of violent action with increased life force, more weapons, moving on to higher levels, and more.
• The US military uses violent video games to train soldiers to kill.
• Studies have shown violent video games may cause aggression, not violence. Further, any competitive video game or activity may cause aggression.
• Violent video games are a convenient scapegoat for those who would rather not deal with the actual causes of violence in the US.
• Simple statistics do not support the claim that violent video games cause mass shootings or other violence.
• As sales of violent video games have significantly increased, violent juvenile crime rates have significantly decreased.
• Studies have shown that violent video games can have a positive effect on kindness, civic engagement, and prosocial behaviors.
• Many risk factors are associated with youth violence, but video games are not among them.
• Violent video game players know the difference between virtual violence in the context of a game and appropriate behavior in the real world.
• Violent video games provide opportunities for children to explore consequences of violent actions, develop their moral compasses and release their stress and anger (catharsis) in the game, leading to less real world aggression.
• Studies claiming a causal link between video game violence and real life violence are flawed.

This article was published on June 8, 2021, at Britannica’s ProCon.org , a nonpartisan issue-information source.

Violence in the media: Psychologists study potential harmful effects

Early research on the effects of viewing violence on television—especially among children—found a desensitizing effect and the potential for aggression. Is the same true for those who play violent video games?

• Video Games
• Physical Abuse and Violence

Television and video violence

Virtually since the dawn of television, parents, teachers, legislators, and mental health professionals have wanted to understand the impact of television programs, particularly on children. Of special concern has been the portrayal of violence, particularly given psychologist Albert Bandura’s work in the 1970s on social learning and the tendency of children to imitate what they see.

As a result of 15 years of “consistently disturbing” findings about the violent content of children’s programs, the Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior was formed in 1969 to assess the impact of violence on the attitudes, values, and behavior of viewers. The resulting report and a follow-up report in 1982 by the National Institute of Mental Health identified these major effects of seeing violence on television:

• Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others.
• Children may be more fearful of the world around them.
• Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.

Research by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Leonard Eron, and others starting in the 1980s found that children who watched many hours of violence on television when they were in elementary school tended to show higher levels of aggressive behavior when they became teenagers. By observing these participants into adulthood, Huesmann and Eron found that the ones who’d watched a lot of TV violence when they were 8 years old were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.

Interestingly, being aggressive as a child did not predict watching more violent TV as a teenager, suggesting that TV watching could be a cause rather than a consequence of aggressive behavior. However, later research by psychologists Douglas Gentile and Brad Bushman, among others, suggested that exposure to media violence is just one of several factors that can contribute to aggressive behavior.

Other research has found that exposure to media violence can desensitize people to violence in the real world and that, for some people, watching violence in the media becomes enjoyable and does not result in the anxious arousal that would be expected from seeing such imagery.

Video game violence

The advent of video games raised new questions about the potential impact of media violence, since the video game player is an active participant rather than merely a viewer. 97% of adolescents age 12–17 play video games—on a computer, on consoles such as the Wii, Playstation, and Xbox, or on portable devices such as Gameboys, smartphones, and tablets. A Pew Research Center survey in 2008 found that half of all teens reported playing a video game “yesterday,” and those who played every day typically did so for an hour or more.

Many of the most popular video games, such as “Call of Duty” and “Grand Theft Auto,” are violent; however, as video game technology is relatively new, there are fewer empirical studies of video game violence than other forms of media violence. Still, several meta-analytic reviews have reported negative effects of exposure to violence in video games.

A 2010 review by psychologist Craig A. Anderson and others concluded that “the evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior.” Anderson’s earlier research showed that playing violent video games can increase a person’s aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior both in laboratory settings and in daily life. “One major conclusion from this and other research on violent entertainment media is that content matters,” says Anderson.

Other researchers, including psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson, have challenged the position that video game violence harms children. While his own 2009 meta-analytic review reported results similar to Anderson’s, Ferguson contends that laboratory results have not translated into real world, meaningful effects. He also claims that much of the research into video game violence has failed to control for other variables such as mental health and family life, which may have impacted the results. His work has found that children who are already at risk may be more likely to choose to play violent video games. According to Ferguson, these other risk factors, as opposed to the games, cause aggressive and violent behavior.

APA launched an analysis in 2013 of peer-reviewed research on the impact of media violence and is reviewing its policy statements in the area.

Anderson, C.A., Ihori, Nobuko, Bushman, B.J., Rothstein, H.R., Shibuya, A., Swing, E.L., Sakamoto, A., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in Eastern and Western countries: A Meta-analytic review.  Psychological Bulletin , Vol. 126, No. 2.

Anderson, C. A., Carnagey, N. L. & Eubanks, J. (2003). Exposure to violent media: The effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings.  Journal of Personality and Social Psycholog y, Vol. 84, No. 5.

Anderson, C. A., & Dill, K. E. (2000). Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Vol. 78, No. 4.

Ferguson, C.J. (2011). Video games and youth violence: A Prospective analysis in adolescents.  Journal of Youth and Adolescence , Vol. 40, No. 4.

Gentile, D.A., & Bushman, B.J. (2012). Reassessing media violence effects using a risk and resilience approach to understanding aggression.  Psychology of Popular Media Culture , Vol. 1, No. 3.

Huesmann, L. R., & Eron, L. D. (1986). Television and the aggressive child: A cross-national comparison. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Huesmann, L. R., Moise-Titus, J., Podolski, C. L., & Eron, L. D. (2003). Longitudinal relations between children’s exposure to TV violence and their aggressive and violent behavior in young adulthood: 1977–1992.  Developmental Psychology , Vol. 39, No. 2, 201–221.

Huston, A. C., Donnerstein, E., Fairchild, H., Feshbach, N. D., Katz, P. A., Murray, J. P., Rubinstein, E. A., Wilcox, B. & Zuckerman, D. (1992). Big world, small screen: The role of television in American society. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Krahe, B., Moller, I., Kirwil, L., Huesmann, L.R., Felber, J., & Berger, A. (2011). Desensitization to media violence: Links with habitual media violence exposure, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive behavior.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Vol. 100, No. 4.

Murray, J. P. (1973). Television and violence: Implications of the Surgeon General’s research program.  American Psychologist , Vol. 28, 472–478.

National Institute of Mental Health (1982). Television and behavior: Ten years of scientific progress and implications for the eighties, Vol. 1. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The relation of violent video games to adolescent aggression: an examination of moderated mediation effect.

• 1 Research Institute of Moral Education, College of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
• 2 The Lab of Mental Health and Social Adaptation, Faculty of Psychology, Research Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

To assess the moderated mediation effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, the subjects self-reported their exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggressive behavior. The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression had a mediation effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while family environment moderated the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. This moderated mediation model includes some notions of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Catalyst Model (CM), which helps shed light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression.

Introduction

Violent video games and aggression.

The relationship between violent video games and adolescent aggression has become a hot issue in psychological research ( Wiegman and Schie, 1998 ; Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ; Ferguson et al., 2012 ; Greitemeyer, 2014 ; Yang et al., 2014 ; Boxer et al., 2015 ). Based on the General Aggression Model (GAM), Anderson et al. suggested that violent video games constitute an antecedent variable of aggressive behavior, i.e., the degree of exposure to violent video games directly leads to an increase of aggression ( Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson, 2004 ; Anderson et al., 2004 ). Related longitudinal studies ( Anderson et al., 2008 ), meta-analyses ( Anderson et al., 2010 ; Greitemeyer and Mugge, 2014 ), event-related potential studies ( Bailey et al., 2011 ; Liu et al., 2015 ), and trials about juvenile delinquents ( DeLisi et al., 2013 ) showed that exposure to violent video games significantly predicts adolescent aggression.

Although Anderson et al. insisted on using the GAM to explain the effect of violent video games on aggression, other researchers have proposed alternative points of view. For example, a meta-analysis by Sherry (2001) suggested that violent video games have minor influence on adolescent aggression. Meanwhile, Ferguson (2007) proposed that publication bias (or file drawer effect) may have implications in the effect of violent video games on adolescent aggression. Publication bias means that compared with articles with negative results, those presenting positive results (such as statistical significance) are more likely to be published ( Rosenthal and Rosnow, 1991 ). A meta-analysis by Ferguson (2007) found that after publication bias adjustment, the related studies cannot support the hypothesis that violent video games are highly correlated with aggression. Then, Ferguson et al. proposed a Catalyst Model (CM), which is opposite to the GAM. According to this model, genetic predisposition can lead to an aggressive child temperament and aggressive adult personality. 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 have a violence-prone personality. This means that although the environment does not cause violent behavior, but 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 ( Ferguson et al., 2008 ). Much of studies ( Ferguson et al., 2009 , 2012 ; Ferguson, 2013 , 2015 ; Furuya-Kanamori and Doi, 2016 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ) found that adolescent aggression cannot be predicted by the exposure to violent video games, but it is closely related to antisocial personality traits, peer influence, and family violence.

Anderson and his collaborators ( Groves et al., 2014 ; Kepes et al., 2017 ) suggested there were major methodological shortcomings in the studies of Ferguson et al. and redeclared the validity of their own researches. Some researchers supported Anderson et al. and criticized Ferguson’s view ( Gentile, 2015 ; Rothstein and Bushman, 2015 ). However, Markey (2015) held a neutral position that extreme views should not be taken in the relationship between violent video games and aggression.

In fact, the relation of violent video games to aggression is complicated. Besides the controversy between the above two models about whether there is an influence, other studies explored the role of internal factors such as normative belief about aggression and external factors such as family environment in the relationship between violent video games and aggression.

Normative Beliefs About Aggression, Violence Video Games, and Aggression

Normative beliefs about aggression are one of the most important cognitive factors influencing adolescent aggression; they refer to an assessment of aggression acceptability by an individual ( Huesmann and Guerra, 1997 ). They can be divided 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. Normative beliefs about aggression reflect the degree acceptance of aggression, which affects the choice of aggressive behavior.

Studies found that normative beliefs about aggression are directly related to aggression. First, self-reported aggression is significantly correlated to normative beliefs about aggression ( Bailey and Ostrov, 2008 ; Li et al., 2015 ). General normative beliefs about aggression can predict young people’s physical, verbal, and indirect aggression ( Lim and Ang, 2009 ); retaliatory normative beliefs about aggression can anticipate adolescent retaliation behavior after 1 year ( Werner and Hill, 2010 ; Krahe and Busching, 2014 ). There is a longitudinal temporal association of normative beliefs about aggression with aggression ( Krahe and Busching, 2014 ). Normative beliefs about aggression are significantly positively related to online aggressive behavior ( Wright and Li, 2013 ), which is the most important determining factor of adolescent cyberbullying ( Kowalski et al., 2014 ). Teenagers with high normative beliefs about aggression are more likely to become bullies and victims of traditional bullying and cyberbullying ( Burton et al., 2013 ). Finally, normative beliefs about aggression can significantly predict the support and reinforcement of bystanders in offline bullying and cyberbullying ( Machackova and Pfetsch, 2016 ).

According to Bandura’s social cognitive theory ( Bandura, 1989 ), violent video games can initiate adolescents’ observational learning. In this situation, not only can they imitate the aggressive behavior of the model but also their understanding and acceptability about aggression may change. Therefore, normative beliefs about aggression can also be a mediator between violent video games and adolescent aggression ( Duan et al., 2014 ; Anderson et al., 2017 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ). Studies have shown that the mediating role of normative beliefs about aggression is not influenced by factors such as gender, prior aggression, and parental monitoring ( Gentile et al., 2014 ).

Family Environment, Violence Video Games, and Aggression

Family violence, parenting style, and other family factors have major effects on adolescent aggression. On the one hand, family environment can influence directly on 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 ( Ferguson et al., 2009 , 2012 ; Ferguson, 2013 ), while active family environment can reduce the aggressive behavior ( Batanova and Loukas, 2014 ).

On the other hand, family environment can act on adolescent aggression together with other factors, such as exposure to violent video games. Analysis of the interaction between family conflict and media violence (including violence on TV and in video games) to adolescent aggression showed that teenagers living in higher conflict families with more media violence exposure show more aggressive behavior ( Fikkers et al., 2013 ). Parental monitoring is significantly correlated with reduced media violence exposure and a reduction in aggressive behavior 6 months later ( Gentile et al., 2014 ). Parental mediation can moderate the relationship between media violence exposure and normative beliefs about aggression, i.e., for children with less parental mediation, predictability of violent media exposure on normative beliefs about aggression is stronger ( Linder and Werner, 2012 ). Parental mediation is closely linked to decreased aggression caused by violent media ( Nathanson, 1999 ; Rasmussen, 2014 ; Padilla-Walker et al., 2016 ). Further studies have shown that the autonomy-supportive restrictive mediation of parents is related to a reduction in current aggressive behavior by decreasing media violence exposure; conversely, inconsistent restrictive mediation is associated with an increase of current aggressive behavior by enhancing media violence exposure ( Fikkers et al., 2017 ).

The Current Study

Despite GAM and CM hold opposite views on the relationship between violent video games and aggression, both of the two models imply the same idea that aggression cannot be separated from internal and external factors. While emphasizing on negative effects of violent video games on adolescents’ behavior, the GAM uses internal factors to explain the influencing mechanism, including aggressive beliefs, aggressive behavior scripts, and aggressive personality ( Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson and Carnagey, 2014 ). Although the CM considers that there is no significant relation between violent video games and aggression, it also acknowledges the role of external factors such as violent video games and family violence. Thus, these two models seem to be contradictory, but in fact, they reveal the mechanism of aggression from different points of view. It will be more helpful to explore the effect of violent video games on aggression from the perspective of combination of internal and external factors.

Although previous studies have investigated the roles of normative beliefs about aggression and family factors in the relationship between violent video games and adolescent aggression separately, the combined effect of these two factors remains unstudied. The purpose of this study was to analyze the combined effect of normative beliefs about aggression and family environment. This can not only confirm the effects of violent video games on adolescent aggression further but also can clarify the influencing mechanism from the integration of GAM and CM to a certain extent. Based on the above, the following three hypotheses were proposed:

Hypothesis 1: There is a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression.

Hypothesis 2: Normative beliefs about aggression are the mediator of exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression.

Hypothesis 3: The family environment can moderate the mediation effects of normative beliefs about aggression in exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression constitute a moderated mediation model.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

All subjects gave informed written consent for participation in this investigation, and their parents signed parental written informed consent. The study was reviewed and approved by the Professor Committee of School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University, which is the committee responsible for providing ethics approvals. A total of 648 Chinese middle school students participated in this study, including 339 boys and 309 girls; 419 students were from cities and towns, and 229 from the countryside. There were 277 and 371 junior and high school students, respectively. Ages ranged from 12 to 19 years, averaging 14.73 ( SD  = 1.60).

Video Game Questionnaire (VGQ)

The Video Game Questionnaire ( Anderson and Dill, 2000) required participants to list their favorite five video games and assess their use frequencies, the degree of violent content, and the degree of violent images on a 7-point scale (1, participants seldom play video games, with no violent content or image; 7, participants often play video games with many violent contents and images). Methods for calculating the score of exposure to violent video games: (score of violent content in the game + score of violent images in the game) × use frequency/5. Chen et al. (2012) found that the Chinese version of this questionnaire had high internal consistency reliability and good content validity. The Chinese version was used in this study, and the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.88.

Aggression Questionnaire (AQ)

There were 29 items in AQ ( Buss and Perry, 1992 ), including four dimensions: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger, and hostility. The scale used 5-point scoring criteria (1, very incongruent with my features; 5, very congruent with my features). Scores for each item were added to obtain the dimension score, and dimension scores were summed to obtain the total score. The Chinese version of AQ had good internal consistency reliability and construct validity ( Ying and Dai, 2008 ). In this study, the Chinese version was used and its Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.83.

Family Environment Scale (FES)

The FES ( Moos, 1990 ) includes 90 true-false questions and is divided into 10 subscales, including cohesion, expressiveness, conflict, independence, achievement-orientation, intellectual-cultural orientation, active-recreational orientation, moral-religious emphasis, organization, and control. The Chinese version of FES was revised by Fei et al. (1991) and used in this study. Three subscales closely related to aggression were selected, including cohesion, conflict, and moral-religious emphasis, with 27 items in total. The family environment score was the sum of scores of these three subscales (the conflict subscale was first inverted). The Cronbach’s α coefficient of the questionnaire was 0.75.

Normative Beliefs About Aggression Scale (NOBAGS)

There are 20 items in the NOBAGS ( Huesmann and Guerra, 1997 ), which includes retaliation (12 items) and general (8 items) aggression belief. A 4-point Likert scale is used (1, absolutely wrong; 4, absolutely right). The subjects were asked to assess the accuracy of the behavior described in each item. High score means high level of normative beliefs about aggression. The revised Chinese version of NOBAGS consists of two factors: retaliation (nine items) and general (six items) aggression belief. Its internal consistency coefficient and test-retest reliability are 0.81 and 0.79. Confirmative factor analysis showed that this version has good construct validity: χ 2  = 280.09, df  = 89, χ 2 / df  = 3.15, RMSEA = 0.07, SRMR = 0.04, NFI = 0.95, NNFI = 0.96, and CFI = 0.96 ( Shao and Wang, 2017 ). In this study, the Cronbach’s α coefficient of the Chinese version was 0.88.

Group testing was performed in randomly selected classes of six middle schools. All subjects completed the above four questionnaires.

Data Analysis

IBM SPSS Statistics 22 was used to analysis the correlations among study variables, the mediating effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, and the moderating role of family environment in the relationship between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression. In order to validate the moderated mediation model, Mplus 7 was also used.

Correlation Analysis Among Study Variables

In this study, self-reported questionnaires were used to collect data, and results might be influenced by common method bias. Therefore, the Harman’s single-factor test was used to assess common method bias before data analysis. The results showed that eigenvalues of 34 unrotated factors were greater than 1, and the amount of variation explained by the first factor was 10.01%, which is much less than 40% of the critical value. Accordingly, common method bias was not significant in this study.

As described in Table 1 , the degree of exposure to violent video games showed significant positive correlations to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; family environment was negatively correlated to normative beliefs about aggression and aggression; normative beliefs about aggression were significantly and positively related to aggression. The gender difference of exposure to violent video games ( t  = 7.93, p  < 0.001) and normative beliefs about aggression ( t  = 2.74, p  < 0.01) were significant, which boys scored significantly higher than girls.

Table 1 . Means, standard deviations, and Pearson correlations among study variables.

Mediating Effect Analysis

To examine the mediation effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression, gender factor was controlled firstly. Stepwise regression analysis showed that the regression of aggression to violent video games ( c  = 0.28, t  = 6.96, p  < 0.001), the regression of normative beliefs about aggression to violent video games ( a  = 0.19, t  = 4.69, p  < 0.001), and the regression of aggression to violent video games ( c ′ = 0.22, t  = 5.69, p  < 0.001) and normative beliefs about aggression ( b  = 0.31, t  = 8.25, p  < 0.001) were all significant. Thus, normative beliefs about aggression played a partial mediating role in exposure to violent video games and aggression. The mediation effect value was 0.06, accounting for 21.43% (0.06/0.28) of the total effect.

Moderated Mediation Effect Analysis

After standardizing scores of exposure to violent videogames, normative beliefs about aggression, family environment, and aggression, two interaction terms were calculated, including family environment × exposure to violent video games and family environment × normative beliefs about aggression. Regression analysis was carried out after controlling gender factor ( Table 2 ).

Table 2 . Moderated mediation effect analysis of the relationship between violent video exposure and aggression.

In the first step, a simple moderated model (Model 1) between exposure to violent video games and aggression was established. The result showed that exposure to violent video games had a significant effect on aggression ( c 1  = 0.24, t  = 6.13, p  < 0.001), while the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on aggression was not significant ( c 3  = 0.05, t  = −1.31, p  = 0.19), indicating that the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression was not moderated by family environment.

Next, a moderated model (Model 2) between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression was established. The results showed that exposure to violent video games had a significant effect on normative beliefs about aggression ( a 1  = 0.13, t  = 3.42, p  < 0.001), and the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression was significant ( a 3  = −0.13, t  = −3.63, p  < 0.01).

In the third step, a moderated mediation model (Model 3) between exposure to violent video games and aggression was established. As shown in Table 2 , the effect of normative beliefs about aggression on aggression was significant ( b 1  = 0.24, t  = 6.15, p  < 0.001), and the effect of family environment × exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression was not significant ( b 2  = 0.02, t  = 0.40, p  = 0.69). Because both a 3 and b 1 were significant, exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression constituted a moderated mediation model. Normative beliefs about aggression played a mediating role between exposure to violent video games and aggression, while family environment was a moderator between exposure to violent video games and normative beliefs about aggression. Mplus analysis proved that the moderated mediation model had good model fitting (χ 2 / df  = 1.54, CFI = 0.99, TLI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.03, and SRMR = 0.01).

To further analyze the moderating effect of the family environment and exposure to violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression, the family environment was divided into the high and low groups, according to the principle of standard deviation, and a simple slope test was performed ( Figure 1 ). The results found that for individuals with high score of family environment, prediction of exposure to violent video games to normative beliefs about aggression was not significant ( b  = 0.08, SE  = 0.08, p  = 0.37). For individuals with low score of family environment, exposure to violent video games could significantly predict normative beliefs about aggression ( b  = 0.34, SE  = 0.09, p  < 0.001). Based on the overall findings, individuals with high scores of family environment showed a nonsignificant mediating effect of normative beliefs about aggression on the relation of exposure to violent video games and aggression; however, for individuals with low scores of family environment, normative beliefs about aggression played a partial mediating role in the effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression.

Figure 1 . The moderating effect of the family environment on the relationship between violent video game exposure and normative beliefs about aggression.

Main Findings and Implications

This study found a significantly positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, corroborating existing studies ( Anderson, 2004 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ; DeLisi et al., 2013 ; Greitemeyer and Mugge, 2014 ). Anderson et al. (2017) assessed teenagers in Australia, China, Germany, the United States, and other three countries and found that exposure to violent media, including television, movies, and video games, is positively related to adolescent aggression, demonstrating cross-cultural consistency; 8% of variance in aggression could be independently explained by exposure to violent media. In this study, after controlling for gender and family environment, R 2 for exposure to violent video games in predicting adolescent aggression was 0.05, indicating that 5% of variation in adolescent aggression could be explained by exposure to violent media. These consistent findings confirm the effect of exposure to violent video games on adolescent aggression and can be explained by the GAM. According to the GAM ( Bushman and Anderson, 2002 ; Anderson and Carnagey, 2014 ), violent video games can make teenagers acquire, repeat, and reinforce aggression-related knowledge structures, including aggressive beliefs and attitude, aggressive perceptual schemata, aggressive expectation schemata, aggressive behavior scripts, and aggression desensitization. Therefore, aggressive personality is promoted, increasing the possibility of aggressive behavior. The Hypothesis 1 of this study was validated and provided evidence for the GAM.

As shown above, normative beliefs about aggression had a partial mediation effect on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression. Exposure to violent video games, on the one hand, can predict adolescent aggression directly; on the other hand, it had an indirect effect on adolescent aggression via normative beliefs about aggression. According to the above results, when exposure to violent video games changes by 1 standard deviation, adolescent aggression varies by 0.28 standard deviation, with 0.22 standard deviation being a direct effect of exposure to violent video games on adolescent aggression and 0.06 standard deviation representing the effect through normative beliefs about aggression. Too much violence in video games makes it easy for individuals to become accustomed to violence and emotionally apathetic towards the harmful consequences of violence. Moreover, it can make individuals accept the idea that violence is a good way of problem solving, leading to an increase in normative beliefs about aggression; under certain situational cues, it is more likely to become violent or aggressive. This conclusion is supported by other studies ( Gentile et al., 2014 ; Anderson et al., 2017 ; Huesmann et al., 2017 ). Like Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2 was validated the GAM.

One of the main findings of this study was the validation of Hypothesis 3: a moderated mediation model was constructed involving exposure to violent video games, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression. Family environment moderated the first half of the mediation process of violent video games, normative beliefs about aggression, and aggression. In this study, family environment encompassed three factors, including (1) cohesion reflecting the degree of mutual commitment, assistance, and support among family members; (2) conflict reflecting the extent of anger, aggression, and conflict among family members; and (3) moral-religious emphasis reflecting the degree of emphasis on ethics, religion, and values. Individuals with high scores of family environment often help each other; seldom show anger, attack, and contradiction openly; and pay more attention to morality and values. These positive aspects would help them understand violence in video games from the right perspective, reduce recognition and acceptance of violence or aggression, and diminish the effect of violent video games on normative beliefs about aggression. Hence, exposure to violent video games could not predict normative beliefs about aggression of these individuals. By contrast, individuals with low scores of family environment are less likely to help each other; they often openly show anger, attack, and contradiction and do not pay much attention to morality and values. These negative aspects would not decrease but increase their acceptance of violence and aggression. For these individuals, because of the lack of mitigation mechanisms, exposure to violent video games could predict normative beliefs about aggression significantly.

The moderated mediation model of the relationship between exposure to violent video games and aggression could not only help reveal that exposure to violent video games can affect aggression but also provide an elaboration of the influencing mechanism. According to this model, for individuals with high scores of family environment, exposure to violent video games had only direct effect on aggression. However, for those with low scores of family environment, there was not only a direct effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression but also an indirect effect mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. In short, exposure to violence video games affecting aggression through normative beliefs about aggression is more likely to happen to adolescents with poor family environment than those with good family environment. That is, generation of adolescent aggression is not only related to internal cognitive factors but also to external situations. As Piotrowski and Valkenburg ( Piotrowski and Valkenburg, 2015 ; Valkenburg, 2015 ) pointed out, the effect of violent video games/media on adolescents is a complex interaction of dispositional, developmental, and social factors, and individual differences in susceptibility to these three factors determine the nature and the extent of this influence. The proposed model incorporated some perspectives of GAM and CM: while confirming the effect of exposure to violent video games on aggression occurrence, the combined effect of individual and environmental factors was verified.

Compared with the simple mediation or moderation model, the present moderated mediation model provided deeper insights into the internal mechanism of the effect of violent video games on aggression, providing inspirations for preventing adolescent aggression. First, in view of the close relationship between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, relevant government departments should continue to improve the grading system of video games; meanwhile, parents should appropriately monitor the types of video games used by teenagers as well as the time spent and reduce the degree of exposure to violent video games. Second, by allowing teenagers to objectively distinguish between violence in games and reality, the mediating role of normative beliefs about aggression could inspire people to identify rational ways to solve violence problems and to experience the hurtful consequences of aggression. This would help adolescents change normative beliefs about aggression, establish a correct view of right and wrong, and reduce the occurrence of aggression. Finally, the moderating effect of family environment on the mediation process suggests that more attention should be paid to the important role of family environment. On the one hand, family education is closely related to adolescent aggression. Then, parents should create a good family atmosphere, publicly show anger and aggression as little as possible, and advocate and practice positive moral values. Parents should adopt authoritative styles, abandoning autocratic and indulgent parenting styles ( Casas et al., 2006 ; Sandstrom, 2007 ; Underwood et al., 2009 ; Kawabata et al., 2011 ) to minimize the negative effect of exposure to violent video games. On the other hand, for teenagers with poor family environment, while reducing exposure to violent video games, it is particularly important to change their normative beliefs about aggression, no longer viewing aggression as an alternative way to solve problems.

Limitations

Limitations of the current study should be mentioned. First, only Chinese school students were assessed, in a relatively small number, which could affect sample representativeness. A large sample of teenagers from different countries and in different ages, also including juvenile offenders, would be more accurate in revealing the effect of violent video games on adolescent aggression. Second, this study only focused on violent video games, not involving violent media such as internet and television, daily life events, wars, and other major social events. Indeed, these factors also have important effects on adolescent aggression, and their influencing mechanisms and combined effect are worth investigating further. Third, this study mainly adopted the self-report method. Use of peer, parent, or teacher reports to assess exposure to violent video games and aggression would help improve the effectiveness of the study. Fourth, there might be other mediators, moderating variables and relational models. In addition to normative beliefs about aggression and family environment, individual emotions, personality characteristics, school climate, and companions may play mediating or moderating roles in the relationship between violent video games and aggression. This study developed a moderated mediation model between family environment and normative beliefs about aggression, but the possibility of multiple mediation and mediated moderation models cannot be ruled out.

The current study showed that exposure to violent video games is positively related to adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression have a mediating effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while the family environment regulates the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with good family environment, exposure to violent video games only has a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, there is an indirect effect mediated by normative beliefs about aggression alongside a direct effect. This moderated mediation model incorporates some perspectives of GAM and CM, enriching studies of generative mechanism of adolescent aggression.

Author Contributions

YW and RS conceived the idea of the study. RS analyzed the data. YW and RS interpreted the results and wrote the paper. YW discussed the results and revised the manuscript.

This study was supported by a grant from the National Social Science Foundation of China (14CSH017) to YW.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: violence video games, aggression, family environment, normative beliefs about aggression, moderated mediation effect

Citation: Shao R and Wang Y (2019) The Relation of Violent Video Games to Adolescent Aggression: An Examination of Moderated Mediation Effect. Front. Psychol . 10:384. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00384

Received: 25 September 2017; Accepted: 07 February 2019; Published: 21 February 2019.

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*Correspondence: Yunqiang Wang, [email protected] ; [email protected]

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Video Games, Violence Justification and Child-to-Parent Violence

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• Published: 05 September 2024

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• Miriam Junco-Guerrero 1 ,
• Ana Ruiz-Fernández 1 &
• David Cantón-Cortés   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4399-4506 1  

During the past decade, video games have become the main industrial entertainment sector, although research on the effects of violence in video games on juvenile aggressiveness has raised concerns that they may pose a significant social risk. The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship of exposure to violent video games, pathological video-gaming, and justification of violence with the perpetration of Child-to-Parent Violence (CPV) against the mother and the father, controlling for the sex, educational level, and violent TV exposure of the participant. The sample consisted of 439 students from Compulsory Secondary Education, (238 boys and 201 girls), aged between 13 and 18. Exposure to video games was assessed through an author-elaborated questionnaire, violence justification, and pathological video-gaming were evaluated with the Exposure to Violence Questionnaire and the Assessment of Pathological Computer-Gaming, respectively, and CPV was assessed through the Child-to-Parent Aggression Questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that pathological video-gaming and, specially, justification of violence, were related to the perpetration of CPV against both mothers and fathers. However, a relationship of exposure to violent video games and violence on TV with the perpetration of CPV was not found. These results suggest a potential new target for CPV prevention, as well as for the treatment of juvenile offenders.

Pathological video-gaming and justification of violence are related to the perpetration of CPV against both mothers and fathers.

However, exposure to violent video games and violence on TV are not associated with CPV rates.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Parental abuse by children, or child-parent violence (CPV), is a phenomenon of great social importance that is generating interest among researchers and professionals due to its notable increase and impact on family dynamics. At present, CPV is an emerging phenomenon, with an increase in cases in recent years (Cortina & Martín, 2021 ). The Spanish Society for the Study of Child-Parent Violence (Spanish acronym, SEVIFIP) defines it as:

“Repeated behaviors of physical, psychological (verbal or non-verbal), or economic violence, directed at the parents, or those who take their place. Specific aggressions are excluded, those that occur in a state of decreased consciousness which disappear when it is recovered (intoxications, withdrawal syndromes, delusional states, or hallucinations), those caused by psychological alterations (transient or stable), and parricide without a history of previous aggressions” (Pereira et al., 2017 , p. 6).

Despite research conducted to establish the prevalence rate of CPV, studies show controversial results. This discrepancy is due to the different definitions of CPV, as well as differences in data collection methods (Gallego et al., 2019 ). In addition, estimating the prevalence of CPV is challenging due to underreporting, with only a small number of cases ever being reported. This may occur because parents often experience feelings of guilt and shame when considering reporting their child’s behavior (Loinaz & de Sousa, 2019 ). Moreover, prevalence figures vary depending on the sample studied. Clinical samples tend to exhibit similar prevalence figures to those found in the general population, whereas judicial samples demonstrate higher rates of physical and psychological violence (Calvete et al., 2013 ; Ibabe et al., 2014 ).

International prevalence rates of CPV vary depending on economic status, sociodemographic variables or family structure. Previous research indicates that CPV occurs in a range between 5 and 22% of the population (Holt, 2016 ; Lyons et al. ( 2015 ); O’Hara et al., 2017 ). Studies involving specialized samples, such as young people referred from clinics, justice centers or from homes where domestic violence is present, suggest rates near the upper end of this range. Longitudinal studies carried out with community samples in the United States and Canada have shown that the prevalence of physical CPV ranges between 11% and 22%, while psychological CPV ranges between 51% and 75% (Margolin & Baucom, 2014 ). In Canada, a study by Pagani et al. ( 2004 ) reported prevalence rates of 12% for physical aggression and 60% for verbal aggression, over a 6-month period. In Spain, where most field studies have been conducted, the prevalence rate ranged from 21% for physical violence and 46% for emotional abuse (Jaureguizar & Ibabe, 2013 ). On the other hand, research on this phenomenon in countries such as Latin America is very limited. However, in Chile, recent studies shown a prevalence of psychological CPV towards both parents of 76.4%, 7.4% of physical violence, and 40.8% of economic violence (Jiménez-García et al., 2020 ). This lack of knowledge about the prevalence of this phenomenon and its frequency indicates a need for further research.

CPV is recognized as a growing phenomenon. Consequently, recent research has focused on identifying the risk factors for its occurrence. Regarding individual factors, studies suggest that variables such as alcohol and drug use, symptoms of depression in offenders, and the presence of dysfunctional components of social-cognitive processing in aggressors are associated with a higher risk for CPV (Calvete et al., 2012 ; Contreras et al., 2020 ). Other studies have identified family variables as risk factors for CPV. These variables include childhood abuse from parents to children, which supports the hypothesis of bidirectionality of violence, as well as exposure to violence at home and the use of punitive strategies (Beckmann et al., 2021 ; Calvete et al., 2015 ; Cano-Lozano et al., 2021 ). Social factors have been less extensively studied to date, but research suggests that negative social influence or experiencing intimate partner violence during adolescence may increase the risk of engaging in CPV (Del Hoyo-Bilbao et al. ( 2018 ); Izaguirre & Calvete, 2017 ).

Along these lines, some authors have proposed theoretical frameworks to explain CPV, with the aim of guiding professional intervention and legislative guidelines. The General Strain Theory (Agnew, 1992 ) proposes that CPV is an aggressive response to the stress and problems faced by young people in their social environment. Furthermore, the Social Learning Theory (Bandura ( 1973 )) posits that CPV is a behavior that can be learned by young people through modeling by parents, siblings, or other peers. Similarly, Cottrell and Monk ( 2004 ) attempted to apply the Nested Ecological Theory to explain CPV, concluding that it can occur as a result of a combination of psychological, sociological, and cultural factors. Subsequently, Hong et al. ( 2012 ) generated the Social Ecology Theory, according to which CPV is produced by factors pertaining to the youth’s microsystem (child maltreatment, parenting styles); mesosystem (influence of conflicting peers); exosystem (influence of media); macrosystem (socialization); and chronosystem (change in family structure). The present research focuses on the analysis of some risk factors that could lead to an increase in CPV rates, such as the use of violent video games, the pathological gaming or the justification of violence.

The theoretical underpinning for this research will be based on social learning theory, as it can explain how young people can learn violent behavior through social media, such as violent video games (Bandura ( 1973 )). Social learning theory can also explain how the justification of violence, as a cognitive variable, may mediate the relationship between exposure to violent video games or pathological gaming and CPV. According to social learning theory, children may imitate the behaviors they observe from others, but they may also make cognitive inferences that lead to generalizing the behaviors they observe. Several authors have related the development of CPV to social learning theory (Contreras & Cano, 2014 ; Ibabe et al. ( 2013 )). These authors indicate that children can learn violent behavior through modeling, not only from their parents but also from peers and social influences. Additionally, other authors suggest that this learning can become internalized as a part of the identity in adolescence (Papamichail & Bates, 2022 ). Per social cognitive theory, there are three interacting components that determine how behavioral learning can occur: contextual variables, personal cognitive variables, and behavioral outcomes. In the present research, the contextual variables studied will be exposure to violent video games and pathological gaming, the cognitive variable will be the justification of violence, and the behavioral outcome will be CPV.

Exposure to violence in video games and television

Previous research has shown an association between CPV and exposure to violence. Martín and Hernández ( 2020 ), for example, conducted a study to investigate the relationship between exposure to violence and CPV in juvenile offenders. These authors found a relationship between the two variables, concluding that exposure to violence could occur in various settings, such as at home or in school. Similarly, Pereira and Bertino ( 2009 ), from the review of other studies, concluded that the multitude of violent messages in the media leads to the normalization of violence and its use to resolve conflicts, which could make up a social factor for the perpetration of CPV. On another hand, Brockmyer ( 2013 ) stated that exposure to violence in the media and video games can lead to the development of beliefs, attitudes, and aggressive behaviors, as well as to a greater desensitization to violence in general, with its consequent justification.

Today, scholars are engaged in a central discussion concerning the effects of violent video games and whether their use is linked to aggressive behavior. The General Aggression Model by Anderson and Bushman ( 2002 ) was one of the first theories arguing that repeated exposure to violent video games may lead to changes in aggression-related beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Their research concluded that violent video games increase physiological arousal, aggressive thoughts and feelings and aggressive behaviors, while decreasing prosocial behaviors. However, other authors hold a different perspective, arguing that violent video games do not actually increase aggression in young people (Ferguson et al., 2015 ; Przybylski & Weinstein, 2019 ). In support of this idea, Johannes et al. ( 2021 ) reported that young people who play video games for longer periods of time in the past few weeks tend to have a higher well-being. This finding is consistent with other authors who have identified a correlation between video game use and positive effects on mental health (Granic et al., 2014 ).

The significance of this discussion led the American Psychological Association (APA) to establish a Working Group on Violent Media in 2015, with the goal of investigating the association between violent video game and aggression. Their study concluded that violent video games indeed increase aggression while reducing prosocial behavior (American Psychological Association ( 2015 )). However, more recently, Ferguson et al. ( 2020 ) re-examined this research and found that the evidence for the effects of violent video games on aggression was weak, with the exception of desensitization. The authors pointed out that recent meta-analyses show small effects on the relationship between violent video game use and aggression or reduced prosocial behavior, and the interpretation of these results as significant is questionable. In fact, they state that the results of many of the studies linking these variables may be explained by publication bias or questionable researcher practices. In the same vein, Drummond et al. ( 2020 ) conducted a meta-analysis involving 28 independent samples. The authors reported smaller effect sizes over longer longitudinal periods regarding the relationship between aggressive play content and aggression. Additionally, effects sizes were smaller in better-designed studies. Therefore, these authors reveal that longitudinal studies do not seem to find significant long-term relationships between aggressive game content and aggression in young people.

At the theoretical level, approaches to the effects of video games are very different. For example, there is research that relies on the displacement hypothesis to explain media effects and other studies that rely on theories of human motivation. These different approaches and contradictory findings make it difficult to build evidence. Second, previous research also raises methodological limitations in research on the negative effect of video games. The operationalization of video games is one of them. It is based on experiments that are designed to mimic game play but are not accurate in how game play occurs naturally. Moreover, studies on this topic are based on the use of self-reports, which are not objective measures of actual behavior. Also, studies tend to be cross-sectional, not addressing possible causal relationship. Finally, research usually uses a limited set of games, compromising generalizability to video games in general (Johannes et al., 2021 ; Przybylski & Weinstein, 2019 ; Vuorre et al., 2022 ). An example of the need for caution in such research is the study by Hilgard et al. ( 2017 ), who re-analysed meta-analytical data on this issue, bringing together results on GAM research. In their study they noted the existence of a publication bias. When adjusting for bias, the observed effect sizes were smaller than the original ones.

To date, despite growing interest in the relationship between violent video game consumption and violence, only the study of Ruiz-Fernández et al. ( 2021 ) has analyzed the relationship between video game consumption and CPV, finding that to the extent that the consumption of video games causes engagement in the player, then it was associated with higher levels of CPV. The ongoing controversy surrounding the relationship between the use of violent video games and violent behavior indicates a clear need for further research in this field.

Pathological gaming

Problematic gaming has typically been defined in the literature based on measures of pathological gambling. However, a variety of definitions and criteria have been used, leading to inconsistent estimates of the prevalence of problematic gaming (Desai et al., 2020 ). Following Lemmens et al. ( 2009 ), pathological gaming can be defined as excessive and compulsive use of computer or video games that causes social or emotional problems to the extent that game users cannot control their use of the game.

Previous research has investigated the consequences of pathological gaming, finding a relationship with anxiety disorders, low self-esteem, decreased school performance, increased hostility, or decreased empathy and social skills (Desai et al., 2020 ; Lloret et al., 2013 ; Rehbein et al., 2010 ). In fact, Desai et al. ( 2020 ) found that adolescents with problematic gaming were more likely to be engaging in risk behaviors such as smoking, drug use, and violence, as well as more likely to report depression.

On the contrary, some research has noted that some previous research has made it is unclear whether there is a relationship between self-difficulties and pathological gaming (e.g., Van Rooij et al., 2018 ). In fact, some authors suggest the need to exercise caution when approaching any diagnostic assessment related to pathological gaming, as the quality of previous research in this area is considered to be low and there is still no consensus on the symptomatology and assessment of pathological gaming (Aarseth et al., 2017 ). Vuorre et al. ( 2022 ) state that current evidence on the negative effects of violent video game use may be inadequate.

However, in spite of the potential role of pathological gaming on adolescent psychological adjustment, to date no study has analyzed its potential relationship with the commission of child-to-parent violence. Thus, due to the controversial results of previous literature on the relationship of pathological gambling and pathological video-gaming with violence, the association between the two variables needs to be further investigated (Aarseth et al., 2017 ; Di Blasi et al., 2019 ; Johannes et al., 2021 ; Przybylski and Weinstein ( 2019 ); Rehbein et al., 2010 ).

Justification of violence

Continuing with social learning theory, one of the components that influence behavioral learning are personal cognitive variables. In the area of CPV, a cognitive risk factor that contributes to its development is the justification of violence, this is, the belief in the acceptance of violent behavior. Galán ( 2018 ) indicated that young people who are exposed to violence in different contexts may become desensitized to violence, and, therefore, normalize violent behavior.

In this line, Orue et al. ( 2019 ) state that CPV could be predicted by the social information processing components of aggressive response and anger, for example, the justification of violence. More recent studies find that exposure to domestic violence is positively associated with the justification of violence, and this, in turn, with CPV (Contreras et al., 2020 ; Junco-Guerrero et al., 2021 ). This implies that adolescents who commit CPV could normalize the use of violence, so they can more easily access aggressive responses and they consider aggression to be an appropriate conflict resolution strategy.

On the other hand, social cognitive theories, such as the General Aggression Model (Anderson & Bushman, 2002 ), emphasize the significance of cognitive components, including normative beliefs about aggression or aggressive scripts, which may contribute to an increase in aggressive behavior. In this context, Gilbert et al. ( 2013 ) examined the influence of three cognitive structures related to aggression (behavioral scripts, early maladaptive schemas, and normative beliefs), and found a positive association of violence-accepting beliefs with increased aggressive behavior.

To date, numerous studies have tried to analyze the relationship between the use of violent video games and the development of violent behaviors, their results not being conclusive though. Conversely, some research has tried to study the relationship between pathological gaming and aggressive behavior. However, despite that violent video games have consistently been identified as the most popular among consumers (Dill et al. ( 2005 )), to date no study has analyzed the influence of violence in video games and pathological gaming on CPV. On another hand, although some studies have found a relationship between the justification of violence and CPV perpetration, to date, no research has analyzed the role of video games in this context.

Therefore, the main objective of this study was to analyze, in a sample of secondary education students, the relationship of the exposure to violent video games, pathological video-gaming and justification of violence with the perpetration of Child-to-Parent Violence (CPV), controlling for the sex, educational level and violent TV exposure of the participant. All these relationships were analyzed both in the case of CPV against the mother and the father.

Based on prior research, we propose the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1 (H1). Regarding exposition to violence in videogames and CPV no specific hypothesis was made, due to the incongruent results in previous studies results regarding the association with aggressive behavior.

Hypothesis 2 (H2). Pathological gaming would be associated with higher levels of CPV.

Hypothesis 3 (H3). Justification of violence would be associated with higher levels of CPV.

Hypothesis 4 (H4). The exposure to violence on television would be associated with higher levels of CPV.

Sampling method and study population

The current study follows a correlational and cross-sectional design and has been conducted in Málaga (Spain). The sample of this study consisted of 439 participants, 238 males, and 201 females, from 7 different centers of Secondary Education. All the participating centers were located in neighborhoods with a medium socioeconomic level, except for two of them, which belonged to a neighborhood with a medium-high socioeconomic level. Three centers were private subsidized schools, and four centers were public schools. Convenience sampling was employed because it provides easier access to the sample and implies a greater willingness of the participants to take part in the study.

Participants’ ages ranged from 13 to 18 years ( M  = 15.30, SD  = 1.17), with 147 of them (33.5%) aged 13 to 14, 205 (46.7%) aged 15 to 16, and 87 (19.8%) aged 17 to 18. Regarding how often they play video games, 121 adolescents (27.6%) play less than once a month, 62 (14.1%) play between once or 3 times a month, 92 (21%) play once or twice a week, 70 (15.9%) play three or four times a week, 27 (6.2%) play five or six times a week, and 67 (15.3%) play at least once a day. With respect to the marital status of the parents, most of them were married (69.4%), followed by those who were separated or divorced (21.9%). A smaller percentage cohabited without being married (4.8%), while in some cases, one or both parents were deceased (3.1%). Additionally, a small percentage represented single parents (0.5%) or adoptive parents (0.4%).

To obtain the sociodemographic data of the participants, a set of questions regarding the city of origin, sex, age, and school grade was included. A question on the marital status of the parents was also included. The measures used to evaluate the variables of interest for the study are described below:

Exposure or use of violent video games

This questionnaire was designed based on the items elaborated by Przybylski and Weinstein ( 2019 ). Participants had to indicate, on the one hand, the frequency with which they play video games, the names of the video games they have played in the last 6 months, and the number of hours played. On the other hand, they had to indicate the names of the three video games they have played the most in their whole life. In order to categorize these video games as non-violent or violent, the classification proposed by the European PEGI (Pan European Game Information; https://pegi.info ) system was used. PEGI is a rating system used in more than 35 European countries, developed by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE). The criteria followed to consider a participant as a violent video game player were as follows: (1) one of the video games described as the most played in their lifetime is either a video game suitable for over-18-year-olds or two video games suitable for over-16-year-olds; or (2) participants indicate that they have played violent video games for more than 50 h in the last 6 months, taking into account the age rating of the games (multiplying by 1 the number of hours in the case of games suitable for over-16-year-olds, and by 2 if the game is suitable for over-18-year-olds).

Cuestionario de Exposición a la Violencia (CEV, Exposure to Violence Questionnaire; Orue & Calvete, 2010 )

This questionnaire has a total of 21 items, which evaluate exposure to violent behaviors in different contexts. Participants indicate the frequency with which violent actions have occurred in the different contexts. Each item is scored on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 0 ( never ) to 4 ( every day ). In this case, only scores for violence exposure on television (e.g., “How often have you seen a person insult someone on TV?”) were taken into account. In this study, Cronbach’s alpha internal consistency coefficient for the Television Violence Exposure scale was 0.82.

Justification of Violence Subscale from the “Escala de Creencias Irracionales para Adolescentes” (ECIA; Adolescents’ Irrational Belief Scale; Cardeñoso & Calvete, 2004 )

This subscale consists of 9 items that evaluate the justification of the use of violence, that is, adolescents’ approval of aggression in certain circumstances (e.g., “Sometimes they may hit us for our own good”). The items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( very much ). In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.80.

Assessment of Pathological Computer-Gaming (AICA-S; Wölfling et al., 2010 )

This 15-item scale assesses addicted video gaming behavior not quantified with the criteria of pure time spent playing, which is considered an important but not sufficient criterion, but also by means of further criteria such as craving, tolerance, and continued consumption. The items on the scale represent all the established criteria of pathological computer-gaming. Using patterns (e.g., “How many hours do you spend playing on a day of the weekend?”) and aspects of emotion regulation of video game behavior (“How often do you play to avoid negative feelings such as boredom and grief?”) were included. The items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale or in an open answering pattern. For the purpose of the study, the 2 open-answer items (“How many hours do you play on an average weekday? ”and “How many hours do you play on a day of the weekend?”) were codified in a 1- to 4-point scale.

Child-to-Parent Aggression Questionnaire (CPAQ; Calvete et al., 2013 )

This instrument assesses violence performed by adolescents against their parents. It consists of 20 parallel items: 10 referring to the mother, and 10 to the father. In each block of 10 items, 7 of them refer to psychological violence (e.g., “You yelled at your mother/father when you were angry”), and 3 to physical aggression (e.g., “You have pushed or hit your mother/father in a fight”). In addition to the items in the original questionnaire, an item was included to assess financial violence (“You have taken money from your father/mother without permission”). Participants should indicate how often they have committed these types of aggressions against their parents in the past year on a Likert scale ranging from 0 ( never, this has not happened in my relationship with my mother or father ) to 3 ( very often, it has occurred 6 times or more ). In the present study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.72 and 0.68 for physical violence against fathers and mothers, and 0.71 and 0.73 for psychological violence against fathers and mothers, respectively.

First, the approval of the Ethical Committee of Experimentation of the University of Málaga was obtained, with registration number 44-2020-H. Permission was sought from the different schools to administer the survey within them. Thus, at each school, the first contact was held with the School Board and the Department of Educational Guidance, explaining the nature and objective of the research to obtain their consent. All the center Managers we contacted were willing to participate in the research. The questionnaire was applied in 7 centers in southern Spain.

To collect data, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to the students after providing them with general information about the survey. To ensure student privacy, the participation was anonymous and voluntary. The participants were requested to give their informed consent and were informed that the completion of the questionnaire was strictly confidential and voluntary, so none of them should specify data that could identify them. All the students who were requested to participate were willing to do so. Parents were notified and given the option of refusing to allow their child’s participation. None of the parents refused to allow their child to participate. The administration of the questionnaire was carried out in groups, in school classrooms or the assembly hall, leaving a space between the participants to avoid influence between classmates. The survey was conducted in the presence of a teacher, with two trained researchers administering it. They remained present in the classroom throughout the survey and readily addressed any doubts or queries that the participants had.

Data analysis

The statistical analyzes of the present ex post facto study were carried out using the statistical package SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), version 26. Multiple hierarchical linear regression analyses were used (with a probability for input F of p  = 0.05 and output of p  = 0.10), in order to analyze the relationship of violent video games, pathological video-gaming, justification of violence, sex, educational level, and violent TV exposure of the participant with CPV. Following the usual protocol (Cohen & Cohen, 1983 ), centered scores were used in order to avoid multicollinearity problems. Previously, a partial correlation matrix between the variables in the study, controlling for participants sex and academic level, was calculated to verify the pattern of relationships and to identify excessively high correlations between variables.

Data was made openly available at the repository osf.io: https://osf.io/6cb2y/?view_only=4c947e8ab61340b6ba556b591df71e23 .

Table 1 shows descriptive data on exposure to video games and television violence, pathological video-gaming, justification of violence, and CPV (psychological, physical, and economic, against both parents).

For this study, the CPV variables (psychological, physical, and financial) were combined into the variables total CPV against the mother and total CPV against the father. The partial correlation matrix between the variables in the study, controlling for participants sex and academic level, was calculated to verify the pattern of relationships, and to identify excessively high correlations between variables ( r  > 0.90; Kline, 2015 ), which indicate collinearity. As can be seen in Table 2 , collinearity was not a problem. The pattern of correlations was as expected, -with a global relationship between pathological video-gaming, exposure to television violence, justification of violence, and violence against the mother and the father- with the exception of the exposure to violent videogames, which was not related to CPV towards mother nor father.

In order to analyze the proportion of variance explained by each variable, an analysis of the CPV predictor variables was performed using 2 linear multi-step regressions for total CPV, towards the father and total CPV towards the mother. In a first step, the control variables (sex, the academic level of the participant, and exposure to violent TV) were introduced and, in a second step, the violent videogames exposure, pathological video-gaming and violence justification variables Tables 3 , 4 .

In relation to the total CPV towards the mother, results yielded a multiple linear regression model with R² = 0.23, F (6, 419) = 21.10, p  < 0.001. This model shows a relationship of participant sex ( β  = 0.14, p  < 0.01), academic level ( β  = 0.13, p  < 0.01), violence justification ( β  = 0.39, p  < 0.001), and pathological video-gaming ( β  = 0.12, p  < 0.01) with the total CPV towards the mother. However, a relationship between violent videogames exposure and CPV towards mother wasn´t found ( β  = −0.04, p  < 0.403). Although the relationship with violent TV exposure was statiscally significant, its effect size was too small ( β  = 0.10, p  < 0.05) (Ferguson & Heene, 2021 ).

In relation to the total CPV towards the mother, results yielded a multiple linear regression model with R² = 0.15, F (6, 414) = 12.20, p  < 0.001. This model shows a relationship of violence justification ( β  = 0.30, p  < 0.001) and pathological video-gaming ( β  = 0.16, p  < 0.001) with the total CPV towards the father. However, the relationships of participants sex ( β  = 0.04, p  < 0.423), academic level ( β  = 0.04, p  < 0.360) and violent videogames exposure ( β  = −0.07, p  < 0.191) with CPV towards father weren´t significant. Again, in spite of the relationship with violent TV exposure being statiscally significant, its effect size was too small ( β  = 0.10, p  < 0.05).

The present study contributes to increase the knowledge about CPV, a growing type of intrafamilial violence in our society, analyzing the relationship between this type of violence and various variables that could be as risk factors for its development. The main objective of the study was to analyze the associations of the exposure to violent video games, pathological video-gaming, and justification of violence with the perpetration of Child-to-Parent Violence (CPV) against the father and the mother, controlling for the sex, educational level, and violent TV exposure of the participant.

Regarding the first hypothesis proposed in the study, the results do not suggest the existence of a relationship between exposure to violence in video games and levels of CPV. These results are in line with previous research, which suggests that exposure to violent video games does not lead to an increasement of violence behavior in young people, and even link such exposure to increased well-being (Ferguson et al., 2015 ; Johannes et al., 2021 ; Przybylski & Weinstein, 2019 ). In fact, a research of Beerthuizen et al. ( 2017 ) in which they analyzed the effects of the launching of a specific video game ( Grand Theft Auto V ), found a decrease in juvenile delinquency records in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2014, obtained from the Dutch Offenders Index (DOI) and the Public Prosecutor’s Services (PPS). However, other studies have found that exposure to violent video games can be associated with an increase of aggressive thoughts and feelings and aggressive behaviors while decreasing prosocial behaviors (Anderson & Bushman, 2001 ; Romanchych ( 2018 ); Shao and Wang ( 2019 )). Therefore, we are facing a little-explored topic in which contradictory data are found, in addition to a shortage of studies referring to the effects on CPV in particular. This emphasizes the necessity for additional research on the relationship between exposure to violent video games and violent behavior, as well as the requirement for longitudinal studies that can establish causal relationships.

With regard to the second hypothesis (H2. Pathological gaming would be associated with higher levels of CPV), the results show a significant relationship of pathological gaming with CPV committed against both the mother and the father. However, the fact that the effect sizes found were small ( β  = 0.12 and β  = 0.16 regarding CPV towards mother and father respectively) requires interpreting these results with caution. These findings align with those found by authors such as Vara ( 2017 ) regarding general aggressiveness. Vara ( 2017 ), for example, confirmed the hypothesis of the relationship between pathological gaming and aggressiveness in secondary school students in Peru. However, due to the controversial results of previous literature on the relationship between pathological gambling and violence, the association between the two variables needs to be further investigated (Aarseth et al., 2017 ; Di Blasi et al., 2019 ; Johannes et al., 2021 ; Przybylski & Weinstein, 2019 ; Rehbein et al., 2010 ).

With regard to the third hypothesis of the study (H3: The justification of violence would be associated with higher levels of CPV), this relationship is suggested by results. A significant relationship was found with CPV against both the mother and the father. These data are consistent with the research of Junco-Guerrero et al. ( 2021 ) in which children who justified hostile behaviors were found to commit higher rates of CPV. In this line, some studies suggest that CPV could be predicted by the social information processing components, for example, the justification of violence (Orue et al., 2019 ).

Finally, regarding the fourth hypothesis (H4: The exposure to violence on television would be associated with higher levels of CPV), the existence of a relationship of TV exposure with CPV committed against the mother and father wasn´t supported by our data. This finding contradicts several studies showing that television violence has a direct effect on the learning and acquisition of hostile behaviors, as well as desensitization to violence, which is perceived as being socially accepted and habitual (Orue & Calvete, 2012 ). Fitzpatrick et al. ( 2016 ) also suggest that exposure to violence, especially in the case of television, during the preschool years is a risk factor for the development of aggressive behaviors.

This research presents some limitations that should be taken into account. The main limitation is the correlational nature of the study. The findings of the present study should be replicated through longitudinal designs, which would allow examining the directions and strength of causal relationships. In addition, the sample is limited to a single informant from the Andalusian region, which could compromise the generalization of the results. It would also be important to carry out future studies that include other informants, such as parents or educators. Finally, in this research, we make inferences about the consequences of video game playing on the adolescent population as a whole. But specific groups of players who share factors associated with the use of technology, such as material deprivation, may be influenced differently by video game use.

Conclusions and Implications

Despite the previous limitations, this study contributes to increasing knowledge about CPV in general and, specifically, the variables that could be associated with this phenomenon. Therefore, it provides valuable information for the prevention of this type of violence. Although much research has analyzed the influence of video games, almost no study had done so to date in the context of CPV. In this research, we found that the exposure to violent in video games is not associated with CPV rates. However, we found a significant relationship between pathological gaming and CPV committed against both parents. This could imply that the impact of exposure to video games on CPV varies depending on the presence of pathological gaming, but not on violent video games consumption per se. However, the fact that the strength of the relationships found between pathological gaming and CPV is not very high suggests the existence of other variables that undoubtedly also play a role in the origin of CPV. For example, recent studies have shown that violent behavior has significant biological, evolutionary, and genetic origins (Ferguson & Beaver, 2009 ).

Therefore, considering the ongoing debate about the relationship between exposure to general and violent video games with violent behavior, it becomes essential to conduct research that can test causal relationships between these variables. As this study is of a correlational nature, it is not possible to draw such conclusions. In addition, the results also show a significant relationship of justification of violence and CPV committed against both parents.

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60 Violence in Video Games Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best violent games essay topics and examples, 📌 most interesting video game argument topics, 🎮 video games cause violence – essay topics, ❓ research questions about video games and violence.

• The Negative Effects of Video Games on Children Essay Development of knuckle pads in children is associated with addiction to playing video games. Most of the young children tend to think that what they see in video games is a reality.
• Examining the Perception of Violence in Video Games To examine the perception of violence in video games and their effects a survey was conducted addressing the current view on video games in general and the visualized violence in particular.
• Violence in Video Games To conclude, it is assumed that the dispute among researchers, the public, and authorities on the question of the relationship between violent video games and aggressive behavior may not have a universal answer.
• Does Violence in Video Games Affect Youth? Our concern in this paper is to concentrate on the violent video games, the effects to the youths through participation in the violent video games, the counter arguments and finally the remarks or conclusion.
• Research of Violence in the Media The left frontal lobe of the participants was analyzed and found to be more active in the control group than in the exposed group. Exposure of children to violence in the mass media leads to […]
• Video Games and Violent Behavior As opposed to watching the violence on TV, in these video games the player is the one who commits the acts of violence. In the survey, a group of 10 young men were allowed to […]
• Violent Video Games and How They Affect Youth Violence However, despite the overwhelming outcry against the youth playing violent video games, there are a number of researchers and advocates who oppose the idea of directly linking the exposure of young adults to violent scenes […]
• Violence exposure in real-life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: Is there desensitization? The article under consideration entitled “Violence exposure in real-life, video games, television, movies, and the internet: Is there desensitization?” investigates the links between the violent content of TV programs, video games and the increase of […]
• Do Violent Video Games Lead to Aggressive Behavior? Everyone is however in agreement that the violent video games are in compromise of morals and expose the young kids to in appropriate content.
• Video Games and Violence in Children There have been arguments that such behavior is as a result of a pre-disposition to violence in the media as well as in video games.
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• Positive Influence of Violence in Video Games
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• The Depiction of Violence in Video Games
• The Impact of Violence in Video Games on the Intellectual Development of Young People: Grand Theft Auto
• The Problem of Violence in Video Games
• The Use Of Violence In Video Games And Its Impact On Young
• The Vehement Vilification Of Violence In Video Games
• Violence In Video Games and Aggression
• Violence in Video Games and the Role of the Government
• Violence in Video Games Can Be Transferred to the Children’s Real-Life Attitudes and Behaviors
• Violence in Video Games Does Not Create Violence
• Violence in Video Games Do Not Affect Agression
• Violence in Video Games Increases Violence in Children
• What Is Your Take on Violence in Video Games, Movies, and Music?
• Can Violence in Video Games Have a Bad Influence on Our Children?
• What Could Be the Analysis of the Negative Consequences of Violence in Video Games?
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• Violence in Video Games Contributes to Violence in Real Life?
• What Are the Arguments Against the Opinion About the Consequences of Violence in Video Games?
• Does Violence in Video Games Affect Children?
• How Does Violence in Video Games Relate to Violence in Reality?
• Can Video Game Violence Affect Players in Mass Shootings?
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• How Do Video Game Depictions of Violence Can Affect Children?
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• How Is Youth Aggression Related to Video Game Violence?
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• How Does Violence in Video Games Cause Ethical Issues?
• What Can Be Done To Prevent the Development of Violence in Children?
• How Can Parents Influence the Development of Violence in Children?
• How Does Violence in Video Games Affect the Maladaptive?
• How Does Violence in Video Games Generally Affect Society?
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Do violent video games make young people more aggressive? Not necessarily, research suggests

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Friday, 06 Sep 2024

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Unsurprisingly, the study confirms that boys generally play more violent video games than girls. — AFP Relaxnews

Violent video games are often blamed for making young people more aggressive. However, a recent study conducted in the Czech Republic challenges this preconception.

According to this research, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior , there is no evidence that playing violent video games increases physical aggression in adolescents.

Individuals who play violent video games do not necessarily become more aggressive, according to a study involving 3,010 Czech teenagers and titled "Does violence in video games impact aggression and empathy? A longitudinal study of Czech adolescents to differentiate within- and between-person effects”.

The paper is available via the ScienceDirect platform. "Presented findings contradict the (General Aggression Model), which posits that repeated exposure to violent content results in an increase in aggression and a decrease in empathy," the study reads.

With their findings, the researchers differentiate between two different effects: between-person effects and within-person effects. Between-person effects highlighted by the study reveal that individuals who play more violent games tend to have slightly higher scores on cognitive empathy and verbal aggression.

On the other hand, findings relating to within-person effects, which examine how changes in an individual's gaming habits affect their behaviour over time, show no significant impact of violent video games on aggression or empathy.

The study did, however, reveal some interesting nuances. For example, participants who displayed increased empathy during the third stage of data collection tended to play fewer violent video games by the fourth stage. Those who showed an increase in physical aggression in the third stage, on the other hand, tended to play more violent games in the fourth stage.

This finding could signal a possible harmful effect, but should be treated with caution, the researchers say. "The only effect observed in this context was that an increase in affective empathy is associated with a decrease in (violent video games).

“This is consistent with the selection hypothesis; however, since the effect was observed only from T3 to T4, it is possible that these effects are less stable than assumed and could change under various circumstances that were not captured in this longitudinal study focused on long-term effects (e.g., exposure patterns to other digital media, individual life events, changes in social environment)."

External factors to take into account

For the researchers, the relationship between violent video games and aggression is more complex, influenced by a combination of individual differences and contextual factors.

“In essence, while adolescents with higher general aggression may prefer [violent video games], it is not indicative that increased engagement in [violent video games] leads to heightened aggression. Therefore, much of the prior evidence may have been influenced by the higher variability present at the between-person level.

“This study underscores the imperative need to differentiate between these two levels of analysis to elucidate the genuine causal relationships between [violent video games] and aggression,” the study reads.

External factors, such as the global Covid-19 pandemic, can also influence teenage gamers' general aggressiveness.

“They may be influenced by unmeasured situational variables, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, another potential explanation could stem from the Covid-19 situation that arose during our data collection period, particularly in the impact upon the initial waves of data collection.

“This global crisis led to significant changes in behavior, notably among isolated children and adolescents, who reported increased gaming hours, especially in multiplayer games, as a coping mechanism for psychological distress and to mitigate social isolation,” the study explains.

To measure aggression, the researchers used the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire - Short Form, a recognized tool for assessing various forms of aggression, including physical and verbal aggression. Empathy was assessed using the Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy, which measures both cognitive empathy (the ability to understand the emotions of others) and affective empathy (the ability to share the emotional experiences of others).

While data collection was conducted from June 2020 to December 2022, only 1,052 people completed all four stages of the study, largely younger individuals, which may have influenced the study findings, the researchers point out.

The researchers also qualify the results by pointing out that gamers had been free to name the video games they played the most, with Minecraft topping the list, followed by Roblox , Fortnite , the GTA games and Brawl Stars .

“Despite (violent video games) not being assessed by the criticized self-report of the assessment of violence and instead by expert ratings obtained from Common Sense Media and two independent raters, it still relies on the self-reports of participants for video game names and their order. Thus, it might not be entirely reliable, because participants could omit or forget some played video games.

“Time spent in games was also not assessed. Future research should, therefore, utilize objective measurements for played video games and time spent on them,” the researchers write.

Other, previous studies have demonstrated that playing video games does not necessarily lead to violence or aggression. Some have even found positive effects in terms of mental well-being and humanitarian awareness. – AFP Relaxnews

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