Anderson and Dill: Investigation into aggression and violent video games

From this article, I found that playing a violent video game can increase a person's aggressive thoughts. The research conducted by Anderson and Dill at the Iowa State University of Science and Technology concludes that players' aggressive feelings and behaviour after playing violent video games can be carried out in actual life. The research findings by Anderson and Dill suggest that "... a violent video game may be more harmful than violent television and movies because the video game is interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor".

How Influential are Violent Video Games?

In one of their studies, Anderson and Dill discovered that "young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games." Therefore, people with anger and aggressive physical problems are susceptible to violent video games as they encourage and raise testosterone, due to the fact the games are more real and are intended to evoke aggressive feelings. "The other study reveals that even a brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants." By playing for a short period of time, players are filled with a growing need to express their violence and channel their aggression through different ways.

Anderson and Dill's first study

The first study involved 227 college students who completed a measure of trait aggressiveness and reported their actual aggressive behaviors (delinquency) in the recent past. They also reported their video game playing habits. The study carried out by Anderson and Dill found that "students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school were engaged in more aggressive behaviour." To some extent, playing video games consistently did tend to instill a level of violent behaviour among teenagers, as they were desensitised to real violence. As well as this, the study also found that ".. amount of time spent playing video games in the past was associated with lower academic grades in college." Interestingly, playing violent video games on a regular basis or consistently does tend to result in lower grades, therefore this is a major concern, as teenagers will end up being uneducated and will not be able to find employment, due to playing video games regularly.

Anderson and Dill's second study

In the second study, 210 college students played either a violent or nonviolent video game. A short time later, the students who played the violent video game punished an opponent (received a noise blast with varying intensity) for a longer period of time than did students who had played the nonviolent video game.

In review of the study , Dr Anderson states how "Violent video games provide a forum for learning and practicing aggressive solutions to conflict situations." As a result , violent video games are more effective in teaching players how to react to situations in conflict, therefore they learn useful self defence skills in the real world. Also, the study states that "In the short run, playing a violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts. Longer-term effects are likely to be longer lasting as well, as the player learns and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for use when real-life conflict situations arise." Effectively, as the player progresses onto the higher levels, they are educated on how to react to more realistic and dangerous situations. Here, the players' aggression levels rise, as they have to adapt to complex situations, which could potentially be useful in real life, therefore they are effective in that sense.

Yet, violent video games are still not received positively by some audiences, as the researchers conclude that "One major concern is the active nature of the learning environment of the video game." The constant exposure to violence fails to have an educational aspect, as games such as Grand Theft Auto rely on the player to carry out crime and killing. "This medium is potentially more dangerous than exposure to violent television and movies, which are known to have substantial effects on aggression and violence." In contrast to movies and television programmes which use violence to respond to public concern, violent video games are quite the opposite as they use violence as a means to channel aggression and to enable the audience to have complete freedom in terms of moral values.


http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/article/video-game