Violent Video Games
Video games with violent themes are a very large part of the American culture. Children and young adults spend an enormous amount of time playing video games in today’s world. It is a popular belief that video games cause violent behavior in children and young adults. There have been hundreds of studies to either prove or disprove the idea that violent video games cause violent action in real life. In my opinion, the link between violent games and the behavior problems seen in some of today’s youth is just not there. Many of the studies are inconclusive. The studies I have found that are not inconclusive, I find to have unanswered questions and missing variables.
Multiple professors have studied the effects of video games in the last few years. While researching this subject, I came across two separate groups of researchers time after time. The first group consists of Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman with other professors input throughout the study. Anderson and Bushman insist that violent video games lead to violent and aggressive behavior in youth (Bushman & Anderson, 2002.) The opposing group of Christopher J. Ferguson and Cheryl K. Olson, again with input from other professors in the study, argues that video games are not the cause of delinquency in youth (Ferguson et al. 2010.)
Anderson and Bushman have worked together on several studies and clam that violent behavior and violent video games go hand in hand. In the first article I read, “Violent Video Games and Hostile Expectations: A Test of the General Aggression Model” by Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson. This study was conducted by having college students from a psychology course play the violent video games for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes of play concluded, the students were asked to complete an essay about “What Happens Next?” The participants were instructed to list 20 possibilities of what happened next to the main character in the story (Bushman & Anderson, 2002.) Bushman and
Multiple professors have studied the effects of video games in the last few years. While researching this subject, I came across two separate groups of researchers time after time. The first group consists of Craig A. Anderson and Brad J. Bushman with other professors input throughout the study. Anderson and Bushman insist that violent video games lead to violent and aggressive behavior in youth (Bushman & Anderson, 2002.) The opposing group of Christopher J. Ferguson and Cheryl K. Olson, again with input from other professors in the study, argues that video games are not the cause of delinquency in youth (Ferguson et al. 2010.)
Anderson and Bushman have worked together on several studies and clam that violent behavior and violent video games go hand in hand. In the first article I read, “Violent Video Games and Hostile Expectations: A Test of the General Aggression Model” by Brad J. Bushman and Craig A. Anderson. This study was conducted by having college students from a psychology course play the violent video games for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes of play concluded, the students were asked to complete an essay about “What Happens Next?” The participants were instructed to list 20 possibilities of what happened next to the main character in the story (Bushman & Anderson, 2002.) Bushman and