Do aggressive films and video games increase aggressiveness in young people?

Answer

Dear Elias,
You are asking an important but also very difficult question that has already led to a lot of heated discussions within psychology.

The problem is that your question “Do aggressive movies and video games increase aggressiveness in young people?” read in two ways.

(1) Does watching these movies and playing these games CAUSE increased aggressiveness in young people? For many researchers, the answer to this is negative. You can’t just say that someone shows aggressive behavior BECAUSE he or she plays a lot of aggressive video games.

(2) Is there a relationship between aggression and watching and playing aggressive games? In other words, if I measure how many hours someone plays aggressive games and how many aggressive acts this person commits, do they add up? In most cases, a small positive association was found (r = .15) between games and behavior and a slightly smaller association between watching TV and aggressive behavior (r = .10).

But beware, it is not because these two phenomena are connected that one is the cause of the other. You can already read it in two directions to begin with. You are aggressive and that’s why you play aggressive games or you play aggressive games and that’s why you get aggressive. There may also be a third factor determining both. Men play aggressive games more often, men are also more aggressive on average than women, so gamers will also be more aggressive (but not because they play games).

The reason psychology doesn’t get to the bottom of this right away is because it’s a complex problem with many difficulties. I only give two.

How do you measure aggressiveness? Do you only limit yourself to serious aggression? Just verbal aggression? Do you ask the person himself via questionnaires, for example? Do you use existing situations or do you work experimentally?

Publication bias. To answer your question, we base ourselves on scientific research. But which research is published in the leading journals? Usually those with striking results, so mostly studies that show that there is a connection. But how do you solve the problem of this publication bias? Different researchers have different solutions.

To get an idea of ​​these discussions, you can read the research by Anderson et al (2010) and the reply by Ferguson et al (2010). You can easily download both articles via Google Scholar. They are technical, scientific articles.

Anderson, CA, Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, EL, Bushman, BJ, 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, 136(2), 151–173.

Ferguson, CJ, & Kilburn, J. (2010). Much ado about nothing: The misestimation and overinterpretation of violent video game effects in Eastern and Western nations: Comment on Anderson et al.(2010). Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 174–178.

Dr. Hugo Schouppe
Visit me at cogpsy.info