200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study
from the dissension-in-the-ranks dept
We've been covering stories here about studies and claims linking real-world violence and video games for about as long as I've been a reader/writer. An even cursory review of our own record can only lead a reader to conclude that such links are, at best, nebulous, and are perhaps less likely than likely to exist. When coupled with some recent and fascinating revelations about just how easy it is to get a study to say exactly what you want it to say, and to get that study published and reported in supposedly reputable arenas, we're left with the troubling impression that such studies linking violence and gaming are more back-patting endeavors than they are true intellectual efforts.
With that in mind, you may have heard of a recent American Psychology Association report that strongly affirms the link between gaming and aggression, which is in this context meant to be synonymous with violence. This was the product of the APA's task force for studying the existence of such a link. It might represent a scientific victory for those who have long claimed that such a link exists, were it not for the predictably massive problems associated with the task force, the studies it took into account, and the methodology for the conclusions it drew. These problems are evidenced by the over two hundred academics who have submitted an open letter to the APA sharing their collective concerns over how this all went down.
One of those signees, Stetson University psychology professor Chris Ferguson, spoke with Game Informer, detailing the problems with the task force. Among those problems are details such as the task force being mostly comprised of scholars who have demonstrated in the past a willingness to link violence and aggression, the measures they used for aggression, and task force members having previously publicly supported legislation aimed at keeping games away from children.
Ferguson tells me that of the seven task force members, four had at anti-media leanings, with another that uses aggression measures that have been called into question by some factions of the psychology community. "To some degree, they're really commenting on their own product," he says. "I think people interpret these things as neutral. You have to remember that they are commenting on their own product. These are people looking at their own research and declaring it beyond further debate. All of us would love to do that, but we don't really get that chance, nor should we."For those of us that worship at the altar of science, this serves as a welcome reminder that science is only as good as those conducting it. Bias is omnipresent and omnidirectional and it is something we must always be vigilant against. For instance, cited in the open letter is the fact that the APA previously stated as a matter of policy that violent games should see a reduced exposure to children and that the APA had already made recommendations to the gaming industry about exactly how violence should be portrayed in games, specifically suggesting that real-world consequences should be visited upon violent actors in digital media.
He also notes that all seven members of the task force were over the age of 50, citing a correlation between views on media and age. "I point that out because there is solid evidence that age is a correlate for attitudes about video games, even amongst scholars," Ferguson explains. "Age and negative attitudes toward youth predict anti-game attitudes."
In other words, as the letter states, the APA task force essentially reached the conclusion that the APA's previous work and recommendations were on point, using a hand-picked team comprised of researchers perfectly biased to reach just that conclusion. Adding to the letter's concern over some of the sloppy methodology for drawing the task force's conclusions is the kind of simple real-world analysis of data that has me wondering just how any of this made it past the APA's review to begin with.
Ferguson and his colleagues also point to data evidencing a decrease in youth violence, which contradicts assertions that media (video games and non-interactive forms) are a public health concern. Ferguson cites colleagues at Oxford, Villanova, Western Michigan University, and more that have presented recent findings in peer-reviewed journals. These studies indicate that there is no connection between violent video games and aggression. A study by Patrick Markey at Villanova indicates that "participants who were not angry tended to be relatively unaffected by exposure to violent video games."In other words, at the exact moment that the APA suggests violence and video games are linked, and at the exact moment that violent video games have exploded in popularity and dissemination, violence amongst youth (and the general public) is trending downward. One would think that if a link existed, we might see some evidence of it outside of ham-fisted studies utilizing questionable methodologies.
But, alas, this is the way of things. And you should expect this to continue, probably right up to the point when most of the research of this issue is being done by a generation in which gaming was prevalent in their youth. Then the studies will likely show something more interesting than a self-created echo-chamber of moral outrage.
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Filed Under: academics, scholars, studies, video games, violence
Companies: american psychological association
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According to their twisted logic this automatically means games are making the world less violent*. MOAR BULLETS AND BLOOD PLEASE!
*I personally believe it, I've restrained myself from beating the crap out of some idiots while gladly impaling virtual thugs in Madworld. offline, no swearing morons spoiling my gory fun.
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Not all Games
In the Article they say "85% of games played by youth contain violence"...how do they get that number, what metric did they use?
There is violence in gaming, but are you really going to compare the violence in Super Smash Brothers to Halo to Hotline Miami to Resident Evil?
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Re: Not all Games
On the other hand, violence seems to be *the default* in modern games. Mario stomps on his enemies and sets them on fire. Kirby gobbles them up. Minecraft has suicide bomber critters and sniper skeletons. It's hard to think of a popular game with no element of violence.
Oh! Got one: SimCity.
P.S. Please note that I'm definitely *not* against presence of violence in games. I like to play violent games myself -- and I definitely not think of myself more violent because of it.
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Re: Re: Not all Games
Why do we play games? To be excited and escape our doll-drum lives. So of course most games contain some grade of violence.
But they key there is the "grade" of violence. There is a whole host of difference between stomping a goomba, shooting a gun, and chainsawing somebody in half.
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...unless you're Alexey Pajitnov, of course. :P
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There are interesting puzzle games that do not contain any violence. Any sports game modeled after a non-violent sport will be non-violent. There are probably other areas I haven't thought of too.
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While I agree with you, this particular example is not helping your case.
Don't believe me? Quick, name a popular sports videogame. First one that comes to mind is about football, an inherently violent sport. So is the second, and the third...
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Candy crush? I realise the title is a bit misleading.
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Sure, it's a few bucks for the next bit of 'help', but you've spend so much time in the game, and it's only a few bucks, you spend that much on a coffee and/or snack... Standard(if more than a little sleazy) sales trick, keep the individual costs low, and people will only pay attention to the smaller amounts, rather than realize just how huge the overall amount has risen to.
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Why do you limit this comment to single player games? Multiplayer games don't get off the hook here either.
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HATS! HATS! HATS! HATS! HATS!
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I didn't mean to let multiplayer games off the hook, just that I understand why people pay for multiplayer games - the "prestige" of being seen at the top of the leaderboards.
Not that I could ever see myself spending *that much* on any game; I'm happy to drop $5 or $10 on a game that I enjoy, but sending the rest to my mortgage means I got to pay it off in 10 years instead of 35.
@That One Guy: And maybe that's the rub. I wonder how many of these games would rake in so much money if kids were taught how to budget, and why living on credit is so bad, in school? (Never mind the rest of the economy...)
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Ahh, I understand. What you said. I'll never understand why peple pay for the "prestige" of leaderboards. Personally, I hate leaderboards and consider them a "feature" that makes the game less desirable (unless you can opt out of them).
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I thought we'd worked this out years ago. For the benefit of anyone who's still somehow missed it, the correlation runs in the other direction. The reason you see so many examples of violent video games together with violent kids is because the games attract violent kids. They don't create them.
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Even that's overstating it. They attract lots of people, not just violent ones. Everyone enjoys pretend violence. Everyone enjoys seeing bad guys get their comeuppance. We all enjoy morality plays. "Good guys always win. Bad guys always lose."
I think this is all trumped up BS from weasel politicians trying to exploit a made up issue. The Columbine kids played violent video games. Blame the video games! I suspect damned near every kid in that school played video games, but only those two malcontents shot up the school.
I love WWII and Vietnam War histories, Gladiator, and Chronicles of Riddick, yet I'm about the last person you'll catch anywhere near an angry confrontation.
There is no correlation between the two. It's made up by exploiters relying on the ignorance and credulity of their audience.
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You appear to be reading an "only" into my statement that, if you look closely, I never actually wrote. Violent video games attract violent kids (which is why you see a strong correlation there)... and they attract plenty of other people as well, and there's never been any evidence that they somehow magically turn them into murderers.
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Games have a reset, you can start over. Real life doesn't. If you can't tell the difference between a game and RL your problems are more than a game and the game isn't the root cause.
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Response to: Tom Czerniawski on Aug 24th, 2015 @ 7:44am
Only way APA will redeem itself is if some country gets the remote chance to try the officials who set up the torture program and the APA decides to testify against them.
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Well Said!!!
Science has become the new religion for a lot of people. There is an extremely dogmatic approach to a lot of things in the scientific community that is not of a scientific origin.
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Re: Well Said!!!
There are foolish, credulous, ignorant, and outright biased people in all walks of life including science, agreed. Why should this be a surprise to anyone? Remember Eugenics and phrenology (Gall's craneology)? The same people who designed the bomb in the Manhattan Project wanted it to be used against the Nazis and were horrified to hear it would be continued to attack Japan after the Nazis were defeated. That seems pretty odd whatever you think of the bomb.
Bad science, like bad speech, can be corrected with good science or good speech respectively. We don't have to respect bad science just because it calls itself science.
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"Science" is not a new religion
Or to word it better, ideologies that are allegedly backed by scientific understanding of the world (rather than revealed in sacred scripture) is not a new fad. It's been around.
Social Darwinism for example took the notion of natural selection and suggested that we were doing the species a favor by subjecting our folks to harsher conditions in the workplace. While there are plenty of problems with the notion, the biggest one is the is/ought fallacy. Just because harsher conditions will compel species do (over many, many generations) adapt, migrate or die out doesn't mean that human beings should make things harder for each other. In fact, cooperation, technology and specializations are tools we use to adapt.
That said, science doesn't say what we should do. It's not an ideology in and of itself. Science predicts chains of consequences, and if we decide we want a specific outcome, we can look to science to draw a map there.
/nitpicky rant
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Re: "Science" is not a new religion
Religion is the continued belief in a model of the world in opposition to observed facts. Science is the evaluation of observed facts to construct a model of the world.
Just because some people who call themselves scientists break the scientific rules and behave more along the lines of religious beliefs does not make science itself a religion. Science cannot work if conducted as a religious world view, it would be selfcontradictory.
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That may be his observation of religion, but it certainly isn't what the word means.
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Opiate of the masses?
Some religions may coincidentally fit into your definition, but that's not the definition that all religions fit.
But while the intelligentsia may regard science with the balance of respect and skepticism that it deserves (or attempt at least to determine that balance) there are a lot of folk who take science as gospel, even pseudoscience or unscientific opinions by people who allegedly practice science sometimes.
So ideologies are often driven by science, or notions that are attributed to science. And in this way, they compare to religions.
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The biggest problem with science has always been that people do it.
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That's just nuts, they don't even have correlation on their side.
In other words, at the exact moment that the APA suggests violence and video games are linked, and at the exact moment that violent video games have exploded in popularity and dissemination, violence amongst youth (and the general public) is trending downward.
Because violent games are cathartic, allowing one to relieve one's feelings in a safe environment. At least, that's how I've always used them.
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Science is the art of...
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Based on that I would say that science is 90% ethical, and the other half, mental.
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Key point here: for anything to be accepted in the scientific community both process and results must be replicatable. In other words: any scientist in the world must be able to perform the same process and get the same result every time for it to be accepted. If the same process produces different results the objective can still be considered scientific theory but will never be considered scientific fact.
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Old Problem, Not Just Games
As a responsible society we should only ever mention puppies, rainbows and unicorns.
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Ah, I know that level of Diablo 3. Never slaughtered that many fluffy things in my life before.
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Statistics and their lies
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Is there a study yet...
Or a review of how the APA was slow to condemn their members who worked as consultants on the US Extrajudicial Detention and Interrogation Program?
Not that the psychology sector, the study of psychology or common regard of crazy people need any more kicks in the teeth, but if they wanted to talk about how media is dangerous for a society, the thing with torture has shown to have more of a negative influence than video games on kids or (for that matter) lolicon art on pedophiles.
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Criminal Acts In Games
Is it because the offences in one case are morally worse than in the other case?
If not, why not?
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Criminal acts in games...
I suppose there are exceptions like Custer's Revenge, but for the most part they also are of the same quality.
Interestingly, in most games enemy mooks are male. And most female mooks are zombies.
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You're not a true gamergater...
Not that we couldn't use more games like Gone Home, and fewer COD titles.
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The 200 wrote a letter in 2013 regarding an APA policy statement from 2005
Pause for a moment and think that if you were a real journalist you'd have to be finding these stories for yourself, or at least fact checking the ones you find -y'know, to see if they're correct.
Then you can write your stuff.
Idiot.
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200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study
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There are important facts missing from this story
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