MSU gaming aggression study
(Via Ars) René Weber of Michigan State University, Klaus Mathiak of RWTH Aachen, and Ute Ritterfeld of University of Southern California claimed to have found a “causal link” between a violent video game and brain activity indicating aggression. Their study has not yet been published. However, the press release indicates that the researchers performed fMRI scans on 13 gamers as they were playing a sucky FPS (Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror). As far as I can make out from the press release, the fMRI data showed that the parts of the brain responsible for aggression activated during gameplay.
What is the problem with such a study?
First, it is, essentially, proving that the sky is blue: any gamer could tell you the adrenaline rush they feel while playing. In fact, that is one of the major appeals of the FPS genre — an animal flee-or-fight state of mind that one just doesn’t encounter in everyday life. In my personal experience, after half an hour of particularly frenetic FPS — e.g. Quake 3 — my hands are shaking and I feel as if I had just run a marathon while being chased by a pack of rabid wolverines. In fact, I would be extremely surprised if playing an FPS does not activate aggression centers. In fact, I would expect the same sort of response from any similar highly competitive activity that releases one’s hormones — team sports, violent arguments, even rush-hour traffic.
Second, the study sheds no light whatsoever on the matter everyone is actually interested in — namely, whether violent games have any long-term effects on a gamer. It doesn’t matter, socially, whether aggression centers are activated during gameplay. It matters if the aggression centers remain (or do not remain) activated the next day, when the gamer is in school or at work. Do the aggression centers remain activated 5 minutes after the end of the game? 30 minutes? A week? My personal guess is that playing violent games makes one less aggressive the rest of the time, because instead of penting up your inner rage, you let it all out in a virtual environment. However, I would really like to have some hard evidence on the subject.
And third, the whole thing, in my opinion, is an exercise to get some funding by jumping on the “games are evil” bandwagon. Why issue a press release before the article is published? Why devote two paragraphs of the press release to statistics from the National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center while the study is completely orthogonal to youth violence (since aggression levels outside of gameplay were neither measured nor discussed)? To get money. Maybe the lab needs some new equipment. Maybe they need to hire another postdoc. And it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, if who cares if we fuel the anti-gaming hysteria and help limit freedom of speech, at least we get to pay rent… Hence, irrelevant research with provocative titles, and the loud press releases.
This kind of bullshit makes this gamer want to beat some clue into the researchers with a police-issue giant double-headed dildo.
October 19th, 2005 at 8:40
I totally agree!!! That is a case of pseudo science.
I also tend to think that most people let their anger out while they are playing and they are a lot less aggressive afterwards.
However what one should be studying is the psychological effect of vilonce in games and other media on immature minds. I.e. do they get used to the idea of violence being ok if there is something you realy want. If you are 13 and you kick people’s brains out on a regular basis for some it may have an effect later in a situation when there’s choice of resorting to violence or not resorting to violence. The kids who do the above, in my opinion, are more likely to chose the former.
That’s something that we really need to look into. But that ain’t that easy. A lot of other factors play a role (including genetics) and you have to have a very broad base.