Villanova Research Video: Violent Games Only Make Angry People Aggressive

August 24, 2007 -

Unless you're already experiencing anger management issues, violent video games will not make you more aggressive.

At least, that's the conclusion of researchers at Villanova University, led by Prof. Patrick Markey. The study, which measured the responses of 167 students who played violent games like Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein as well as non-violent fare such as Tetris Worlds and Project Gotham Racing. Said Prof. Markey:

So probably what's happening is these school shooters aren't doing the shootings because they played the violent video games. They're doing the school shootings because they are angry and maybe they've been provoked in life. Perhaps one of these provocations might be about video games but there's all the other daily provocations that happen. So it's not the video game's fault for these school shootings. It's the person's fault for these school shootings.

The news of the research goes back to mid-April, but this is the first we've seen of this video report.




I agree, I've never felt more aggressive after just playing a game.... Unless the game caused me some degree of frustration. But that frustration only lasted until I either cleared the area/cause of the frustration or quit playing.

I've also used games to blow off steam as well.

He makes a good point, but you also have take into account about the shooter's mental health.

Im glad to see a report in the media that isnt completely biased. Thank god! We need more news reports like this

Again, if what JT, Dr.Phil and every other idiot says about video games is true then nearly every single male(or female) over 15 lets say, are COLD blooded, expert gun shooters and killers.

But that cant be, because 1 million + kidds HAVENT gone on shooting sprees or killed people....

I really cant understand how people can spew such bullshit and i REALLY cant understand the people that actually listen...

Since everyone else beat me to the important points I'll just add my "IT'S ABOUT TIME!" to the rest of the crowd.

No study is perfect, but I'd love to read it. I especially want to know if they had their own drfinition of aggression and anger, or if the used pre-defined values in the psychology literature. I'll have to find it later.
-Mike Schwinger

No shit sherlock....


"If you look in the dictionary, under 'redundant' it says 'see redundant'" -Robin Williams

Whilst I agree with the findings, what kind of sample is 167 people though?

I'm sick of ALL these crap surveys. They are NEVER peer reviewed, making them unscientific, and furthermore the whole (pseudo) science behind it is fundamentally flawed.

100 or even 1000 people can NEVER be a proper sample group. It is simply statistically too small.

There are billions on people on the planet, millions of whom play games. A study of 167 people is only going to show you how those 167 people react in that very narrow experimental situation.

And I'm not even going to get into the issues behind what is "aggression", and what are normal levels in humans are. The whole normalisation of human activity is also a flawed measure.

@Funky J is a peer reviewed paper (you could easily check this out). Its published in the Journal of Research in Personality (a highly ranked journal -- I'm a psychology PhD student). Also samples of 100 are extremely common and can be very relevant. Statistically if the effect is large enough an even smaller sample can detect it. If you have access to this paper (or others like it) you can read that the results are statistically significant (i.e., it is extremely unlikely -- even with this small sample -- they happen just due to chance).

[...] High Anger & High Aggression: Video Game Violence October 2, 2007 on 12:41 am | In Uncategorized | Yesterday just featured a research study I blogged about back in April. [...]

I think that violence can affect some people.. if they are young and impressionable or they already have some sort of mental problems. Most parents just give there kid any video game that they want to just shut them up and i think that this does make the kids more violent because they are learning from the game and not there parents. The parents should judge when they think there kid is ready to play those video games and tell them before they start playing a violent video game for the first time that it is all fake and you should never do this stuff in real life then the kid should turn out fine... at least thats how it worked out for me ;D.

[...] Therefore, figure 1 is what needs to look at, but I haven’t been taught on how to read logistical regressions. so i’m just reading from the text. So controlling all these variables, they found that playing multiple video games influence kids concept of aggression as a normal thing and will see things in aggressive terms, so with an aggressive cognition, which would result in more aggressive behaviours. Unfortunately, I do know they have a significant effect, but how large is the effect? Well, i don’t know. Maybe it’s small like Patrick Markey said? [...]

I am new boy . i reading these bage and now i have some information
for thises tobic

i am araby i study languge english before one years ago .. if i have any mestake tell me please .. thank you
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