Study finds 'conclusive evidence' of games/violence link?
by Tateru Nino 
Nov 5th 2008 at 10:00AM
Filed under: Culture, News items, Opinion, Academic
Iowa State University's Craig Anderson has led a study which claims 'conclusive evidence' of a link between violent video games and increased aggression in children. The findings (and indeed the validity of the study) have been challenged by Christopher Ferguson whose research at Texas A&M International University has found the opposite.
Ferguson finds a number of flaws in the Iowa State study, which he says demonstrates only "weak correlations". We can spot a few of our own. For example there is no definitive usefully testable method for determining aggressive tendencies. By failing to factor in extraneous variables, the study results could quite easily be interpreted to indicate that aggressive tendencies cause kids to spend more time playing violent video games. Just because two things are correlated does not mean that one causes the other. The majority of dead people have eaten meat. That doesn't mean that meat kills people.
While this has made the pages of the Washington Post, we have to disagree with the study's lead author, Anderson when he says, 'We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents.' All the indications seem to be that he's dead wrong there, there doesn't seem to be anything conclusive about this at all.
You can check out Ferguson's full letter to Pediatrics on the matter, and we're inclined to agree with him here. The Iowa State study adds little, if anything at all, to the available body of knowledge, or credible results on the matter.
There are millions of people in the MMO market (and yes, some of you out there are actually adolescent) and we don't think you're wandering around cold-cocking people outdoors between raiding sessions.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Greeen said on 1:41PM 11-05-2008
well, that is the problem which such studies - if you attack it with a certain stand-point (e.g. in this case wanting to find a connection) then you will find one. Statistics can always be manipulated and interpreted in a different way.
My favorite example is the finding of a linear correlation between the number of (human) births versus the amounts of storks in the area of Alsace, France (supposedly an old research article in the journal Nature). So does that imply that the fairy tale of storks delivering babies is true?
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Mr Angry said on 12:20PM 11-05-2008
This noob needs to stfu, or I'll tear him a new one!
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ScytheNoire said on 1:46PM 11-05-2008
My own study shows that Craig Anderson is just seeking attention and so he published something that would cater to the fear mongering the mass media does. Expect to see him on FOX "news" shortly.
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possum said on 6:20PM 11-05-2008
The study was about as accurate and insightful as the study on how MMO's create leaders, that one was written by a phd and was a joke, you first need to BE a leader (in real life) to understand the concept at all, you can ask and interview till your blue in the face and still not get it.
The need to be published makes these folks type some really humorous ideas trying to use the MMO industry to quantify their own theories. They need to do a study on why parents arent doing their jobs explaining to their children whats real and not real, that and keeping them away from innapropriate content in games.
But sadly the parents use the games industry to babysit their kids while they party or do whatever as raising a child is too much of a burden on their lives, and then they complain about kids running around in society that dont give a rats ass about anything but themselves, monkey see, monkey do.
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