:: Well, Duh.. ::

The latest issue of the APA journal (American Psychological Association) brandishes yet another research stating that, hold on to your chairs, folks, "exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive behavior in both the short term (e.g., laboratory aggression) and the long term (e.g., delinquency)". Oh my. The esteemed researchers from the Missouri-Columbia university made two experiments: In the first one the researchers asked the subjects to rate their favorite video games, and correlated that with questionnaires designed to measure violence and aggression tendencies. The correlation between liking violent video games, and having ‘violent’ answers to the questionnaire were somewhere between .36 and .46. Truly astounding. Now, as every psychology student knows, correlative results are not that indicative of anything, so they tried to make an experiment in which they could prove cause and effect. This is the second experiment: Subjects had to play either a violent game (Wolfenstein3D) or a non-violent game (Myst), and their levels of hostility and aggressive thoughts were measure during and after playing. Once again - a significant positive correlation was found.

There are three things which bug us with this research - The first being that a significant correlation was found between aggressive personality and the results of the aggressiveness testing conducted in the first experiment. This is like a chicken-and-egg question. Do people play violent video games because they are aggressive, or are they aggressive because they play violent video games?

The second thing which bugs us is this - Now all the pundits and preachers who want to ban DOOM and QUAKE, will have this quasi-scientific proof to wave in our faces. Of course, Its so much easier to blame video games for youth delinquency. Bad education? Pah! It’s the devil in the machine!

The last thing which really bothers us - Wolfenstein3D? Is this the best you can find?

Wadi Writer #3 (Maroon)

WadiList@Mail.com

Links:

The research - http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp784772.html

List Home - http://www.oocities.org/wadilist