Effects of Violent Video Games

A research study conducted by Dr. Sonya Brady at the University of Californa, San Franciso, and Professor Karen Matthews at the University of Pittsburgh, was recently published in the ‘Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine’s’ April issue. The results of the study suggest that violent video games, under certain conditions, can lead to “permissive attitudes toward violence, alcohol use, marijuana use, and sexual activity without condom use.”
The study involved 100 male subjects (all college undergraduates) between the ages of 18 and 21. The research goals were to determine “the effects of media violence exposure on blood pressure, negative affect, hostile social information processing, uncooperative behavior, and attitudes toward health risk behaviors among young men varying in lifetime violence exposure within the home and community."
The men were randomly assigned to play either of two games for the study: VU Games' The Simpsons: Hit and Run (categorized as low-violence condition) or Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto III (categorized as high-violence condition). Not surprisingly, the results showed that the group who played the more violent GTA3 were measured to show more negative effects.
"Men randomly assigned to play Grand Theft Auto III exhibited greater increases in diastolic blood pressure from a baseline rest period to game play, greater negative affect, more permissive attitudes toward using alcohol and marijuana, and more uncooperative behavior in comparison with men randomly assigned to play The Simpsons," reads the study.
The study does make one caveat, "Only among participants with greater exposure to home and community violence, play of Grand Theft Auto III led to elevated systolic blood pressure in comparison with play of The Simpsons."
While this information is enough for the anti-game activists to take to heart, anyone who’s taken a basic psychology class recognizes the fallacy of these ‘results’ almost immediately. The study dealt with only a limited testing range of men from 18-21, ignoring all the other age groups and females that play video games. The effects of these active college undergraduate students’ daily lives, which are notoriously known for involving frequent parties, socializing, and even potentially unspecified drug usage, have almost undoubtedly effected the results of the study, yet mysteriously aren’t mentioned in the results of the study.
There is also no particular reason why anyone who registers a higher diastolic blood pressure would automatically be at risk for increased violent behavior; the individual in question would still have to make the personal decision to accept violence regardless of the internal fluctuations of the body. Finally, the study’s claims to accurately measure a subject’s increased likelihood for violent tendencies and delinquent behavior is dubious at best, as they would have to rely only on questionnaires submitted after the study is concluded for such a measurement.
For Dr. Brady, however, it’s easy to assuredly claim coming to a concrete conclusion from her brief study to Reuters Health in a recent interview. “Parents have been told the message that violent video games and violent media in general can influence the likelihood that their kids will be aggressive. What this study suggests is that they might increase any type of risk-taking behavior."
One can only respectfully chuckle at Brady’s/Matthews’s correlation of one group of ‘frat boys’ being more excitable when playing GTA3 to all kids becoming more violent when playing violent games (that shouldn’t even be available to children under 17 in the first place.) Hopefully the study will buckle under the weight of its own flaws, instead of becoming ammunition for anti-game activists to wreak more havoc on the industry.
from The Game Feed