Scientists prove games make kids aggressive

 

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Posted on 5 Nov 2008 at 11:28

Researchers have found scientific evidence that children get more aggressive by playing violent computer games. Experiments conducted in the US and Japan found that kids who play a lot of video games that involve violence become more hostile, regardless of nationality.

The study, carried out at Iowa State University's (ISU) Center for the Study of Violence, consisted of tests on 364 American children aged between nine and 12, and two similar studies of more than 1,200 children from Japan aged between 12 and 18. The results showed increased aggression over a three to six month period in all three groups of children.

"It is important to realise that violent video games do not create schools shooters," explained Douglas Gentile, assistant professor of Psychology at ISU. "They create opportunities to be vigilant for enemies, to practice aggressive ways of responding to conflict and to see aggression as acceptable."

"In practical terms, that means that when bumped in the hallway, children begin to see it as hostile and react more aggressively in response to it. Violent games are certainly not the only thing that can increase children's aggression, but these studies show that they are one part of the puzzle in both America and Japan."

The researchers assessed the children's video game habits and their level of physical aggression against each other at two different times during the school year.

"Basically what we found was that in all three samples, a lot of violent video game play early in a school year leads to higher levels of aggression during the school year, as measured later in the school year - even after you control for how aggressive the kids were at the beginning of the year," explained professor of psychology Craig Anderson, director of the ISU Center for the Study of Violence

Anderson began collaborating with Japanese researchers when he visited Japan several years ago. He said that Japan's cultural differences with the US made it attractive for the comparison studies. He said that the culture is so different and their overall violence rate is much lower than in the US.

"It's not a very good argument, but it's been made by the video game industry - that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate," said Anderson.

"By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, 'Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?' And of course, they aren't. They're affected pretty much the same way American kids are."

Author: Dawinderpal Sahota