Final Blog: The Complete Reserch Paper

Rodrigo Capurro

English 103

Professor McCormick

8 December 2010

“Headshot!” –Unreal Tournament

Most educators, politicians, local media, parents, tutors, your neighbor and their mom will tell you that video games are bad for you; they’re violent, pointless and make children more violent because they try to imitate what they see.  Research has been conducted to prove all of this to be true.  But what if the research/researcher was biased when the research was conducted?  When it comes to research, methodology is everything.  The researchers that tried to prove their theory that violent video games led to children being more aggressive and violent misinterpreted the results and made exaggerated claims based on the available data.  Past and current studies show that there is no connection with violent video games and aggression.  It also shows that video games can be beneficial for children.

“Video games are bad for you!”  How many times have things of that nature been said?  Although it has been said for as long as video games have existed, where do these researchers get their information?  According to the largest, in-depth and “unbiased study of violent video games,” conducted by Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for the Mental Health and Media, the link between playing video games and aggression in children is small.  The results were mixed and a bit surprising.  Boys were likely to act aggressively towards someone if they played video games every day, regardless if it’s violent or not, girls were more likely to get into fights if they played any type of video game, boys who didn’t play video games at all got into more fights than boys that played everyday, most children that play video games are not bullies and the vast majority of children that played M-rated (mature rated) video games, did not show any sign of behavioral issues (“Lessons We’ve Learned”).  This study has been the biggest of its kind.  Past researchers were unbiased in showing all the results and not just the positive ones that opponents would argue with.

What is a well designed test/experiment supposed to measure?  It is supposed to accurately represent the population as a whole using only a sample.  But what of the things that cannot possibly be measured in an experiment?  Opponents of violent video games would have you believe that the research and experiments they conduct are as accurate as possible but with a closer look, you can see that their methodology has its shortcomings.  In experimental studies conducted to measure aggression and violent video games, adolescents were asked to play a violent video game while they were measuring blood pressure, heart rate while things like hostility were measured using self-reports where the participant would answer questions based on their experience.  The issue is that when researchers use self-reports is that people taking them lie, especially when the sample size is small.  Also they cannot be trusted to accurately measure their experience in a way the researchers can use their results.  With those numbers, then they would measure aggression “indirectly because its actual manifestations between participants cannot be permitted on ethical grounds.”  Also it is impossible to “control for variables such as ‘excitement,’ which confound the interpretation of findings” (Porter and Starcevic).  Experiments conducted in this way cannot be accurate because the researchers themselves say that most of their data is and cannot be directly measured.  So how is it that they can still draw conclusions from their experiments knowing that all their evidence is circumstantial?

Saying that violent video games are directly linked to aggressive children has no merit.  Some opponents of violent video games admit that a direct link does not exist.  According to Jeffrey Goldstein, a psychologist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and a consultant to video game companies, although “there is good evidence that children who are exposed to violent media, including video games, are more aggressive,” he says it is not simple cause and effect; violent children get more attached to violent video games than children who do not already have violent tendencies (Muir).  There is no direct link between violent video games and children being violent although children that play these video games tend to be more aggressive.  With that being said, why would you give a child that already has violent tendencies violent video games?  Would you let a registered sex offender babysit your children or give a pyromaniac a job at a lighter factory? So why let a child with a tendency for violence play a violent video game?

It seems a little strange saying that video games are beneficial.  As a gamer, you are probably thinking, “how has Tetris ever helped me?” but it does not work like that.  Specific games are purposely designed to test and refine motor skills.  In nursing homes across the United States, the Nintendo Wii has been used with stroke and Parkinson’s disease patients.  The “Wii-hab,” as they call it, has been linked with increased coordination and quality of life (Taylor).  A separate eight-week study by the Medical College of Georgia showed that patients had “significant improvements in movement, fine motor skills and energy levels were experienced by all participants, and there was a decrease in their levels of depression” (Taylor).  This shows how video games are beneficial just to motor skills and coordination.

Video games can even be useful in a classroom setting.  Schools across the United States and the United Kingdom use games like Drawn to Life and Beateratorare to “encourage greater interest in art and music” (Taylor).  Companies like Microsoft even recognize the rise in video games usage in the classroom for educational purposes.  Microsoft’s Worldwide Innovative Schools Program recognized Silverton Primary School in Melbourne for its innovative use of the Nintendo Wii and DS consoles in the classroom (Taylor).  It is important for companies in the industry of developing or publishing video games to recognize that their video games have a positive influence in an area where it has long believed that they cause more issues.

Can video games provide a learning experience that someone cannot receive in a classroom?  Educational professor James Paul Gee agrees.  The author of Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy believes that games with a challenging degree of difficulty engage children and “help players to develop a number of important cognitive skills” (McCormick).  Other research by Wood et al. also showed that playing video games increased problem solving skills, communication, and team-building skills (Barenthin & Puymbroeck).  By developing the skills that are required to take on the increasingly difficult challenges of a game, children “are constantly engaged in active and interactive learning in a way they may rarely experience in their classrooms” (McCormick).  It may seem like a child is glued to a television because of a video game but the reason is, they are absorbed by the game due to the increased concentration required to successfully accomplish what the game asks of them.  It is a function of the video game’s escalating difficultly scale that really tests a child’s cognitive skills.

Because video games come in many types and sizes, they have different benefits to many different people.  According to Steve Johnson, author of the book Everything Bad is Good for You, due to the bigger presentation and more complex story plots and harder problem-solving puzzles in video games, IQ scores are rising (Phillips).  Good video games test all of the things Johnson argues about, especially in the latter portion of a game.  Researchers at the University of Rochester in New York showed that “regular computer gamers have improved visual attention and can take in more information.”  They also showed increases in being able to pay attention and switching attentions (Phillips).  Spatial rotation (the ability to rotate an image in your head and keep it the same shape) was improved in women at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute.  Women tend to do worse than men.  Jonathon Roberts found that by exposing women to 3D video games, the gap between men and women disappear (Phillips).  Video games which are made in a first-person perspective (they have to be in 3D) constantly test a person’s ability to perceive spatial rotation.  James Rosser of Beth Israel Medical Center in New York found that future surgeons benefit from their gaming experience (Phillips).  Due to the intricate movements required for many video games, surgical skills should come naturally unless they were always bad at video games. 

Video games have always had a big social aspect.  One of the biggest changes in the social aspect is the rise in popularity of online multiplayer.  You don’t have to go to your local arcade, which are practically extinct, or go to a friend’s house to play.  According to Dr. Lawrence Kutner and Dr. Cheryl K. Olson, the social aspect of gaming is important, especially for boys.  Video game social network like Xbox Live or PSN (PlayStation Network) have more resources for socializing than a child would normally have than just from school and playing outside.  Video games also provide both boys and girls topics to socialize about.  Since video games are so social, if children play them a lot in isolation, it can be used as an indicator of problems developing in the child (“Lessons We’ve Learned”).  Researchers like Lucas and Sherry, and Messerly agree with Kutner and Olson.  They believe that playing video games have a huge social factor since they require a lot of team work and getting to know each other.  They believe that video games can be a social activity or at least be socially motivated (Barenthin & Puymbroeck).  Whether talking about video games, playing with a friend or playing online, the social aspect in video games is essential for children to learn how to socialize and provide warning signs for potentially other issues a child might have.

Another benefit of playing video games is role-playing, the ability to assume the role of someone else in a different world with, possibly, similar or different set of morals than the player, depending on the flexibility of the game.  According to James Gee, the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, he calls role-playing “projective identity,” enabling the player to “experience the world from alternative perspectives.”  Gee believes that identity should be projected on to the character through choices made in the game and game play rather than imposed on to.  He takes the game Ethnic Cleansing by the Aryan Nation as an example.  The game promotes a message of white supremacy.  Instead of becoming racist bigots in real life, most players will think critically “about the roots of racism and reaffirm their own commitments to social justice rather than provoking race hatred” (Jenkins).  A game like Ethnic Cleansing, after role-playing in the shoes of one of the characters, will only reinforce the beliefs that the gamers have towards racism.

Even though most popular video games are violent, it doesn’t mean that simple arcade games cannot frustrate people and make people angry.  Hospitals like Children’s Hospital Boston have been using old arcade games like Space Invaders to help treat children with aggression.  With the use of a heart rate monitor, they measured the child’s heart rate as they increased the difficulty of the game.  They asked the players to control their heart rate with the increasing stress of the increasing difficulty.  Exercises like this prepare children for stresses in the real world (Taylor).  This is one way for an already aggressive child to deal with it in a positive and constructive way.  Similar games have been made or designed specifically for those with issues from divorce, physically disabilities, Asperger’s Syndrome and autism.

The opponents of video games do have a compelling case when they say violent video games are somehow connected to increased aggression.  They believe it is, not just video games but the media in general.  According to John Murray, a developmental psychologist from Kansas States University, one of the editors of Children and Television: Fifty Years of Research and several government funded studies, society as a whole has gotten more violent do to modern media and that video games are worse because they are interactive (Phillips).  Murray tends to ignore all the research on how the most beneficial part of video games, even violent ones, is its interactivity.  You cannot interact with other forms of media, from books to T.V., like you can with video games.  Murray goes on to defend his position by disregarding the organizations that sponsor the research that says otherwise without any real explanation.  Murray also mentions sarcastically that instead of the ideal experiment “researchers have to rely on long-term surveys that don’t prove causality, and lab experiments that do not demonstrate long-term effects” (Phillips).  Even after saying that their ideal experiment is impossible, researchers like Murray still try to make links and theory based on substantial evidence.

Opponents of violent video games also tend to use outdated behavioral models to help identify a link between violent video games and increased aggression.  According to David Grossman, a retired military psychologist and West Point instructor says that violent video games teach violence to children the same way that military soldiers are trained.  They learn how to kill effectively and then are rewarded by doing it well.  Video games use operant conditioning to get the player to achieve what the game tells them to.  Children are exposed to so much violence that they lose their ability to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  Grossman believes it was this conditioning that led to school shootings (Jenkins).  It seems easy to agree with Grossman and this claim of cause-and-effect but behavioral methods like that have long been discredited.  Grossman “assumes almost no conscious cognitive activity on the part of the gamers, who, in his view,” have little self-consciousness.  He believes that games shape our entire personality regardless of the player’s own morals and experiences.  With these two assumptions, he forms his opinion (Jenkins).  The fact that gamers are living, feeling people with consciouses, disproves Grossman’s theory.  Henry Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

Add to this the fact that video game players don't sit down at their consoles to learn a lesson. Their attention is even more fragmented; their goals are even more personal; they aren't going to be tested on what they learn. And they tend to dismiss anything they encounter in fantasy or entertainment that is not consistent with what they believe to be true about the real world. The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a clear need for the information and skills being transmitted. Soldiers have signed up to defend their country with their lives, so there are clear consequences for not mastering those skills. Grossman's model only works if we assume that players are not capable of rational thought, ignore critical differences in how and why people play games, and remove training or education from any meaningful cultural context.

Gamers have a different intention when they sit down to play a video game, violent or not, but in the end, they play to be entertained and engrossed by their virtual world, not to interpret it as real life military training.  The video game that Grossman mentions in his theory is America’s Army.  It was released by the U.S. military in 2004 to help with recruitment efforts.  They had made the game to excite young people about joining the military.  Instead of training real life killers as Grossman believes, The game wound up creating a venue for veterans and civilians to discuss the effect that war had on them (Jenkins).  This is just one example of how a video game was created for a purpose and then evolved into something more important.

Can a researcher contradict himself? Even after countless studies trying to find a connection with violent video games and aggression there is no direct link but a weak association.  Some of them would agree with Jeffrey Goldstein’s theory that there is no simple cause-and-effect with playing violent video games and aggression.  According to research conducted by Anderson & Dill in 2000, the research they conducted showed that there is only an association between violent video games “but the mechanism underlying the association is not consistent across studies” (Barenthin & Puymbroeck).  The most important aspect of research is the scientific method, meaning that if any other researcher conducts the same study the proper way SHOULD reproduce the same number or there was a mistake in one or both of the studies.  The fact that these researchers come up with different data every time doesn’t make it conclusive.

It is one issue if lawmakers, educators and whoever thinks negatively about violent video games because of personal issues but it is another to force consumers/parents/children into their bias based on bad information.  The claim that opponents say about violent video games is not founded on concrete data.  Some researchers even say that the connection between violent video games and increased aggression is weak yet still try to draw negative conclusions from it.  The only thing they mentioned that I agree with is how violent video games increase aggression in children that already have issues with aggression.  If parents were to give violent video games to violent children, then that says something about the parents.  There is just not enough good press for video games, violent or not, because they’ve always seemed to carry a reputation as a negative influence especially after all the school shootings.  A closer look at the children who committed the school shootings reveals that they had anti-social, aggression and other psychological issues.  There are many benefits from video games that if researchers spent as much time as they did trying to figure how it’s bad for you, they could have found out even more uses for video games.

Works Cited

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Eureka Street

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