Essay on Violent video game exposure and aggression
To begin with, it is important to mention that the debates about video games’ impact to humans’ psychology have reached incredible level of relevance today. This point is mostly based on relatively young nature of the issue. Both advocates and prosecutors are able to bring numerous facts to support their views. In this paper, we are going to make a brief literature review on “video game exposure and aggression” theme, considering the latest ideas about the topic.
The conversation around video games’ threat is actually rooted to the same issue about TV and media in general. In this regard, some of conclusions are made on the base of previously obtained data. The appropriateness of such approach is strongly argued by video games attorneys. Thus, these people propose to address several issues and themes to evaluate the real threat of video games exposure that were not studied well before. One of the most interesting of them is the reference to chicken – and – egg problem (Engelhardt). In other words, we have to answer next question – do children become more aggressive because they play video games, or aggressive children are more predisposed to this way of entertainment? If the correct answer is second, increased aggressiveness is not the outcome but the reason of video games playing.
On the other hand, it is not surprising that most of available thematic literature stands for negative impact of video games’ exposure. As the reasonable prove to this idea, several scientific and sociological researches were conducted. Thus, Anne Handring presents readers pretty interesting results of Iowa State University in Ames study. This study was looking at how children and teen’s video game habits at one time point related to their behavior three to six months later. The study involved three groups of children: 181 Japanese students ages 12 to 15; 1,050 Japanese students aged 13 to 18; and 364 U.S. children ages 9 to 12. As the outcome, it was found that children who played more violent video games really become more aggressive in comparison to watched teenagers who were less exposed by video gaming. It is extremely important that the researches took into account how much aggressive were children before the study (Harding). Eventually the study in some way has empirically solved already noted chicken – and – egg dilemma, by evidencing that video games exposure really increases initial level of children’s aggressiveness.
Even notwithstanding previously noted research, video games advocates stand for exposure’s safeness. As the main argument, they claim for not absolute meaning of their opponents’ studies, by making the references to less numerous empirical results that prove their point of view. In this regard, we should refer to Craig A. Anderson PhD, who made rather impressive work with on topic studies’ results generalization. This work was done on the basis meta-analytic techniques. As the outcome, the scholar refutes myth about video game studies that showed very mixed results. He outlines five separate effects, which appear with considerable consistence according to all relevant empirical data. They are: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased helping behavior. He concludes with next idea “Average effect sizes for experimental studies (which help establish causality) and correlational studies (which allow examination of serious violent behavior) appear comparable” (Anderson). In this way, the scholar found “a common denominator” which proves that video games exposure really influences level of children’s aggressiveness.
On the base of conducted analysis, we are able to state that contemporaries did not reach common idea on video game exposure and aggression issue. Herewith, the prosecutors’ of video games exposure position looks a little more grounded in the aspect of available data. However, both opposing parties agree that this filed requires some more scientific studies on such relevant themes as: testing the link between habitual violent video game exposure and later aggression; delineate the processes underlying short and long term media violence effects; potential differences in effect sizes of television versus video game violence etc. (Anderson). Seemingly, some later works on announced points will help to study the impact of computer games more comprehensively.
