Study Links Violent Video Games to Violent Thought, Action

A study in the March issue of Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, shows that playing violent video games increases violent thinking, attitudes and behaviors among players. And it does nothing to promote positive social behaviors.Psychologist Craig Anderson of Iowa State University and his team analyzed existing studies of 130,000 people from the U.S., Europe and Japan. His fndings held for players in Western and Eastern cultures, for male and female players and for players of various ages. They also contradict some earlier studies, whose fndings the current authors say are tainted by "selection bias"  the method by which they selected studies to analyze.

The new study notes that while violence in movies and TV shows has long been examined for its potential impact on viewers' proclivity for violence, video gaming, a much newer phenomenon, has not yet been so fully explored.

In its review of data, the new research found that exposure to violent video games was associated with aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition and aggressive "affect." It desensitizes users and is associated with lack of empathy and a lack of "prosocial" behavior.