Discussion: Violence in Video Games; Adolescents; Aggressive Behavior

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Mummelmann said:
I've always though that if there was some clear, unmistakeable link between games and violent behavior; there would have been mutliple discoveries in psychhology a long time ago with the amount of research that has been put into this.
In the 80's, there was the same discussion and subesquent research done on movies, in the heyday of Arnold, Stallone, Van Damme and other action heroes, it was argued that these movies caused people to be violent.
I guess one could say that it is different participating in the violence through an interactive medium but movies are a lot more realistic in their portrayal of violence for obvious reasons.
The research on violent movies hasn't really yielded anything that shows a correlation between watching them and becoming violent, or even increasing the violent nature of individuals who are already prone to such.
I suspect; after 30-35 years of the same research on gaming, the results will be much the same, the primary reasons this is such a debated subject is, in my opinion;

A: The average person is rather ignorant when it comes to gaming, its culture and suncultures and the motivations behind playing video games.

B: It is the perfect scapegoat; a private industry that can alleviate the responsibility from parents, governments and institutions such as schools for kids behaving violently.

Welllll a lot of studies have had similar results. One could argue that the result of their findings is the ERSB rating on games and movies. To your other points: I think the reason this is still such a debated subject is because nobody can seem to agree on it. After Columbine, research increased, but early research was shitty. A lot of the more modern research has resulted in better findings.