Russell Marion

3 COLUMN NOTES
SOURCE

ANNOTATION

THOUGHTS/CONNECTIONS

Kleinman, Zoe.

In this article, BBC News

Its important to remember that the

Do video games make

reporter Zoe Kleinman

study points out how video games

people violent? BBC News.

discusses a report that

is a risk factor to an increase in

17 Aug. 2015. Web. 12 Nov

was released by the APA.

aggression and not the only reason

2015.

This report claims that

for such behaviour.

video games is a risk

I have felt the same way when I
factor to an increase in
play games, its more important to
aggression. The report
master the game then the actual
also said The research
violence in the game.
demonstrates a consistent
relation between violent

Video games do increase

video game use and

aggressive behavior so its

increases in aggressive

important for parents to know that.

behaviour, aggressive

Limiting game use per week is a

cognitions and aggressive

way to limit the amount of time a

affect, and decreases in

child is exposed to this content that

prosocial behaviour,

has been proven to increase

empathy and sensitivity

aggressive behaviour.

to aggression". This also

means that video games

is a risk factor to an
increase in aggression
and not the sole
perpetrator. The question
about whether violent
games inspire violent
behaviour "in real life" is
a subject that strongly
divides opinion. Its a
very controversial subject
because it is said that
these games have been a
motivating factor in
shootings. For example,
the Columbine High
School massacre shooter
in 1999 used a gun he
called "Arlene" allegedly after a character
in a novel inspired by the
computer game Doom.
Another study from the
Oxford Internet Institute

last year suggested

frustration at being
unable to play a game
was more likely to bring
out aggressive behaviour
than the content of the
game itself. "We focused
on the motives of people
who play electronic
games and found players
have a psychological
need to come out on top
when playing," said Dr
Andrew Przybylski at the
time.
"If players feel thwarted
by the controls or the
design of the game, they
can wind up feeling
aggressive. "This need to
master the game was far
more significant than
whether the game
contained violent
material."
Stuart, Keith. Video games

This source goes over a

are not making us more

couple of studies that

violent, study shows The

Christopher Ferguson, a

Guardian. 10 Nov. 2014.

psychologist at Stetson

Web. 12 Nov 2014.

University in Florida,
carried out two studies
into media violence. In
the first, his team
correlated US homicide
rates between 1920 and
2005, with instances of
violence depicted in
motion pictures.
Although there was
evidence of a moderate
correlation between a rise
in screened and real-life
violence during the
1950s, this reversed
throughout the rest of the
century, with instances of
screen violence inversely
related to homicide rates
in the 1990s. It is hard to
determine whether this

rise in screened violence

has had any real effect
towards real life violence.
In the second study,
consumption of violent
video games was
measured against youth
violence rates in the
previous 20 years. The
study concluded that
playing video games
coincided with a fall in
violent crime perpetrated
by those in the 12-17 age
group. This study shows
that the rise of video
game use had no effect on
an increase in violence
among youth. Anders
Behring Breivik claimed
to have played the
military shooter Call of
Duty in preparation for
the killing of 77 people in
Norway in 2011.

Carey, Benedict. Shooting

In this article, New York

in the Dark The New York

Times reporter Benedict

Times. 11 Feb. 2013. Web 14 Carey reports on video

Nov 2015

game violence and how it

has some effects on social
behaviour. One study
showed how people are
slightly more rude or
harmful after playing a
violent game. Sure
enough, compared with a
group who had played a
nonviolent video game,
those who had been
engaged in Mortal
Kombat were more
aggressive across the
board. They gave their
fellow students
significantly bigger
portions of the hot sauce.
Many similar studies
have found the same
thing: A dose of violent

Carnagey, N.L., &

Anderson, C.A..
The effects and
rewards and
punishment in
violent video games
on aggressive
affect, cognition,
and behavior.
Psychological
Science, 16, 882889. Dec 2 2015.

Most of his current

research focuses on
aggression, especially on
the potentially harmful
effects of exposure to
violent entertainment
media. Other aggression
research under way in my
lab includes work on
jealousy, aggressive
personality,
desensitization, the
weapons effect, and
public policy issues
regarding violent media.
In this study, there are
three separate
experiments that test how
video games affect
human behavior and
cognition. The first test

This statistic is important because it

shows there is a staggering majority of
video games that have some kind of
violence. Since there are more video
games that have
Children Now. (2001). Children and the
media. Retrieved July 1, 2001, from
http://www.childrennow.org. Web. Dec 2
2015.

Recent content
analyses reveal that as
many as 89% of video
games contain some
violent content

Dill, K.E., Gentile, D.A., Richter, W.A., &

Dill, J.C. (in press). Violence, sex, race,
and age in popular video games: A content
analysis. In E. Cole & D.J. Henderson
(Eds.), Featuring females:
Feminist analyses of the media.
Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association. Web. Dec 2 2015.
Harris, M.B., & Williams, R. (1985).
Video games and school performance.
Education, 105, 306309. Web. Dec 8
2015.

Approximately half
of video games include
serious violent actions
toward other game
characters

Playing time by
children has increased
from about 4 hr per
week in the mid-1980s

Anderson, C.A., Gentile,

D.A., & Buckley, K.E. (2005). Violent video game effects on
children and adolescents: Further developments and tests of the
general aggression model. Manuscript submitted for publication.

More violence in video games means

players will be exposed to violent
actions therefore becoming more and
more desensitized to the violence each
time they play. Since the kids of the
past three decades are playing more
video games per week they will be
affected by this media violence more
than people or decades before so this
has to have some affect on the
different generations.

Gentile, D.A., Lynch, P.L., Linder, J.R., & Walsh, D.A. (2004).
The effects of violent video game habits on adolescent hostility,
aggressive behaviors, and school performance. Journal of
Adolescence, 27, 522. Web. Dec 2 2015.

Gentile, D.A., & Walsh, D.A. (2002). A normative study of family

media habits.
Journal of Applied Developmental
Psychology, 23, 157 178. Web. Dec 2 2015.

to more than 9 hr
per week, with
girls playing about
5.5 hr per week
and boys playing
13 hr per week

More than 90% of

U.S. children ages
2 through 17 play
video games

1. The percentage
of children ages
2 through 17
play video
games.

(e.g., Anderson & Ford, 1986; Funk,

Flores, Buchman, & Germann, 1999),
(e.g., Calvert & Tan, 1994; Kirsh,
Olczak, & Mounts, 2005; Krahe & Mo
ller, 2004), (e.g., Anderson & Dill,
2000; Irwin & Gross, 1995).

Because violent video games are a relatively new type of

violent media, the literature examining negative effects on
players is small compared with the literature on negative
effects of television and film violence. However, a clear
consensus has already been reached: Playing violent video
games increases aggression. Numerous studies have
demonstrated that exposure to violent video games increases
aggressive affect aggressive cognitions , and aggressive
behavior

Suddath, Claire. Brief History:

Video Game Violence Time Inc.
May 10. 2010. Web. Dec 2 2015.

In this article, Claire Suddath gives a brief summary of video game

violence and the courts system. The first major campaign came in 1976,
over Death Race, an 8-bit arcade game in which a vaguely car-shaped blob
runs over stick figures, turning them into tombstones. In 1993 two games-Mortal Kombat (with its hyper violent, torso-ripping "fatality" moves) and
the lesser known Night Trap (in which a male protagonist protects a
houseful of scantily clad women from vampires)--caused such a stir that a
Senate hearing led by Senator Joe Lieberman proposed federal video-game
regulations. In an effort to preempt congressional legislation, toy stores
pulled Night Trap from shelves, and the video-game industry founded the
Entertainment Software Rating Board, a self-monitoring panel that
instituted a tiered rating system to track games' sexual and violent content.
This history is important to my research because it shows that this issue is a
controversial problem is this country and need addressing. The creation of
the ESRB is important because it is the first time games are categorized
based on their content. The ratings determine what age group it is best the
player is before they begin to play the game. This is