Do Video Games Cause Aggression?

Video games are a growing form of entertainment. In fact, today they are the most popular form of entertainment around (D'Argenio, 2018). In the past, it seemed as though video games were an activity largely for children. Today, they have expanded to include a diverse group of people. Due to platforms accessible to a larger group of people such as iOS and Android, video platforms such as YouTube, and streaming services such as Twitch, video games are expanding into the mainstream. As a result of this popularity, games have begun to receive more attention from politicians and others in power. This is especially true given the violent nature of many popular games, which often include blood, gore, killing, and sometimes sexual content. These types of games have been targeted as potential causes for many issues occurring in society, including violence and aggression exhibited by people outside of games. For example, whenever a mass shooting occurs, there is interest in whether the shooter played violent video games or not. There has been significant debate about whether violent video games cause aggression and, consequently, violence in society. Many factors could be at play with regards to video game aggression. In the short term, there’s anger. Video games can cause anger for several reasons, including the player failing at objectives and losing to other players. Do people become more susceptible to this anger through repeated video game exposure? In the longer term, there’s desensitization. For violent games in particular, desensitization leads a person to react in an emotionally weaker way to violence through repeated exposure to it. Another factor is positive reinforcement: aggression is often rewarded in a game. The player defeats an enemy or another player and possibly earns experience points, loot, or a higher ranking. This creates an association between being aggressive and activation of the brain’s reward centers. Here, I’m going to focus on a different aspect of video game aggression: social learning theory.

Social Learning Theory

According to the social learning theory, behaviors are learned through imitation of other people. This theory can apply to aggression in the context of video games by making the assumption that the mind can’t distinguish between fantasy in a game and reality, especially when the fantasy is made to be realistic. Furthermore, the mind creates scripts. Scripts are sets of behaviors that describe how one should act for a given situation. Playing video games can generate scripts based on the actions performed in the game. Since characters in video games are often quite aggressive, scripts for aggressiveness could be generated and reinforced through repeatedly playing violent games. The question is: can these scripts have implications outside of the game? Can they make one aggressive in the real world? Consciously, one may immediately reject the idea that he or she could be influenced to act based on what is clearly not real. However, aggression and anger are not controlled by the conscious brain but rather by unconscious regions such as the amygdala and limbic system. Are those regions affected by violent video games?

What the Research Says

So far, the research on aggression from playing video games is inconclusive. At least one study that was performed, which involved participants competing in a reaction time task after either playing violent or neutral video games, provided evidence that supports the social learning theory; the participants who played the violent games performed more aggressively in the reaction time task by asking for a stronger punishment to be given to the person who lost, possibly due to the aggressive scripts that had just been activated (Scelsa, 2014). These results are only applicable to the short term, though. When it comes to long term effects from playing video games, things aren’t so clear. One longitudinal study that looked over a longer period of time found that peer influence, depression, family violence, and antisocial personality traits were a much stronger predictor of violence than video games were (Scelsa, 2014). Another longitudinal study, which looked at Western countries and Japan, showed that there is in fact a causal relationship between violent gaming and aggression; one study found that playing violent games not only increased aggression but decreased empathy and prosocial behavior (Scelsa, 2014). Yet another study showed an entirely different, and perhaps surprising, result: that playing violent video games actually decreased violence; this could have been because of the mood management theory, which suggests that people may choose violent video games because their existing mood is suited to it (Brogaard, 2012). Those people may have already been depressed or angry when choosing to play violent games. Then, the games might have helped to improve the negative feelings by letting the person take out the anger on enemies in a game, for example, or by giving some form of control over those feelings.

Conclusion

As I’ve shown above, the research has shown that video games can cause violence, and that it has no effect, and that it can even reduce violence. While social learning theory and script generation through imitation of others could explain some form of aggressiveness from playing games, it turns out there are a lot of factors involved and it is difficult to control for them all. Whether a study looks at short or long term effects, the ages and genders of the participants, how violence is even defined, how aggression is even defined, the mental status of the participants before playing, whether the game involves multiple people or not, the life history of the participants, and many more factors can change the results of the studies. In my opinion, whether or not video games have an effect on aggression, I believe they are a low priority target when it comes to explaining issues such as mass shootings. For people to get past fear of the law itself, there is likely some larger problem occurring. Maybe the people are depressed, hate the world and want vengeance against it, or they have mental health issues. Those are factors that should be looked at when these situations occur rather than video games in my view. What do you think? Do you think video games cause aggression? If so, do you think they cause aggression in a significant way?

References

Brogaard, B., D.M.Sci, Ph.D. (2012, December 18). Violence May Be the Answer. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/violence-may-be-the-answer

D'Argenio, A. M. (n.d.). STATISTICALLY, VIDEO GAMES ARE NOW THE MOST POPULAR AND PROFITABLE FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT. Retrieved July 10, 2018, from https://www.gamecrate.com/statistically-video-games-are-now-most-popular-and-profitable-form-entertainment/20087

Scelsa, V. L. (2014). The Effect of Aggressive and Prosocial Video Games on Aggressive and Prosocial Behavior. Retrieved April 10, 2019, from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ee34/71bc109734f12183ea0462fb6fcf5d708dd4.pdf