Research.

16 results

• Technical Report2021

  EN

  The impacts of violent video games from an Australian perspective

  Şiddet İçeren Video Oyunlarının Etkileri: Avustralya Perspektifi

  Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications · Australian Government, Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications

  Twelve years after the Attorney-General's review, the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications commissioned this follow-up to revisit whether violent video games (VVGs) harm Australian players, this time addressing aggression, attitudes toward women and youth mental health. Synthesising studies from 2009 to 2021 against explicit quality criteria (sample size, design, controls), the report draws three findings: exposure to VVGs is unlikely to meaningfully impact real-world aggressive behaviour; VVGs do not appear to shape attitudes toward women or worsen youth mental-health outcomes; and international evidence from North America, Europe and Asia generalises to the Australian context. The authors note that effect sizes shrink to negligible once gender, prior aggression and other third variables are controlled, and recommend against commissioning further Australian-specific research on these questions because new local studies are unlikely to change the cross-jurisdictional conclusion.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Behaviour
  • Mental Health
  • Methodology

  Download PDF↗View details
• Brief Report2021

  EN

  Exposure to Bullying, Childhood Trauma, and Violence in Video Games Among Perpetrators of Mass Homicides: A Brief Report

  Toplu Cinayet Faillerinde Akran Zorbalığına, Çocukluk Travmasına ve Video Oyunlarındaki Şiddete Maruz Kalma: Kısa Bir Rapor

  Sanchez, E. & Ferguson, C. J. · Stetson University · Journal of Mass Violence Research

  Sanchez and Ferguson tested three childhood-life-event factors that public discourse has long pinned on perpetrators of mass shootings — childhood trauma and abuse, exposure to bullying, and exposure to violent video games — using a preregistered comparison of 169 male firearm mass-homicide perpetrators against existing research samples of same-age, same-gender non-perpetrators. Mass-homicide perpetrators reported substantially higher rates of childhood trauma and abuse than the comparison samples, but no elevation in exposure to bullying. On video games, the perpetrators had played fewer violent games than the matched non-perpetrator samples, contradicting the cultural narrative that violent gameplay is a meaningful risk marker for mass violence. The authors argue that public-policy and prevention efforts should be redirected toward childhood-trauma intervention rather than media-violence regulation.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Mental Health

  Download PDF↗View details
• Meta-analysis2020

  EN

  Reexamining the Findings of the American Psychological Association’s 2015 Task Force on Violent Media: A Meta-Analysis

  Amerikan Psikoloji Derneği’nin 2015 Şiddet İçeren Medya Görev Gücü Bulgularını Yeniden İnceleme: Bir Meta-Analiz

  Ferguson, C. J., Copenhaver, A., & Markey, P. · Stetson University, Lindsey Wilson College & Villanova University · Perspectives on Psychological Science

  Ferguson, Copenhaver and Markey reanalysed the evidence base used in the American Psychological Association’s 2015 Task Force on Violent Media — the report whose technical document is also indexed in this library — to test whether its conclusions about violent video games and aggression were warranted. They argue that the original task-force meta-analysis omitted most of the relevant studies in the field and did not control for study quality, citation bias, or unstandardised aggression measures. After re-running the analysis on a more complete and quality-weighted study pool, the authors find that violent video games are not meaningfully linked to aggressive behaviour and that the data did not justify the strength of the 2015 statement. They call on the APA to retract or substantially revise the 2015 resolution and accompanying technical report.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Methodology

  Read article↗View details
• Meta-analysis2020

  EN

  Do longitudinal studies support long-term relationships between aggressive game play and youth aggressive behaviour? A meta-analytic examination

  Boylamsal çalışmalar, saldırgan oyun oynama ile gençlerde saldırgan davranış arasında uzun vadeli ilişkileri destekliyor mu? Meta-analitik bir inceleme

  Drummond, A., Sauer, J. D., & Ferguson, C. J. · Massey University, University of Tasmania & Stetson University · Royal Society Open Science

  Drummond, Sauer and Ferguson examined whether longitudinal studies — the strongest design for testing causal claims about media effects — actually support a meaningful long-term link between aggressive video game play and youth aggressive behaviour. Their meta-analysis pooled 28 independent samples covering approximately 21,000 young participants and produced an overall effect size of r = 0.059, with no evidence of publication bias. The authors interpret an effect of that magnitude as practically negligible: it falls below conventional thresholds for clinically or socially meaningful effects, and is small enough to be plausibly explained by minor methodological artefacts such as shared-method variance. They conclude that the longitudinal evidence base does not justify framing violent gameplay as a substantive risk factor for youth aggression.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Children & Adolescents
  • Methodology

  Read article↗View details
• Technical Report2019

  EN

  Protecting America's Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence

  Amerika'nın Okullarını Korumak: ABD Gizli Servisi'nin Hedefli Okul Şiddetine İlişkin Bir Analizi

  National Threat Assessment Center · U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security

  Building on the 2002 Safe School Initiative, the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center examined 41 incidents of targeted violence at K-12 schools in the United States from 2008 to 2017. Across motives, weapons, planning, stressors, bullying, mental-health symptoms and concerning communications, the analysis finds no single profile of attacker or targeted school; most attackers used firearms acquired from a relative's home; nearly all had experienced psychological, behavioural or developmental symptoms; most had a history of school discipline and prior bullying victimisation; and almost every attacker exhibited concerning behaviour that was noticed by classmates, family or staff before the attack. The report frames these patterns as actionable inputs to multidisciplinary threat-assessment teams rather than predictive risk factors, and pairs each finding with a prevention implication aimed at school personnel, mental-health practitioners and law enforcement.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Children & Adolescents
  • Behaviour
  • Mental Health

  Download PDF↗View details
• News Article2019

  EN

  Violent video games found not to be associated with adolescent aggression

  Şiddet içeren video oyunlarının ergen saldırganlığıyla ilişkili olmadığı bulundu

  Andrew K. Przybylski & Netta Weinstein · University of Oxford

  Oxford Internet Institute researcher Andrew Przybylski and co-author Netta Weinstein report that recent violent video game play is not a meaningful predictor of aggressive behaviour in British 14- and 15-year-olds. The piece summarises a preregistered study of 1,004 adolescents and their caregivers that combined objectively coded game violence (using official PEGI and ESRB ratings) with carer-reported aggression, and found no statistically significant link between the two. The article highlights the team’s use of Open Science methods — preregistration and transparent analysis pipelines — designed to reduce researcher bias in a long-contested literature, and notes that the underlying paper is published open-access in Royal Society Open Science.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Children & Adolescents

  Read article↗View details
• Technical Report2019

  EN

  APA Task Force Report on Violent Video Games

  APA Şiddet İçeren Video Oyunları Görev Gücü Raporu

  Jerry Suls, Nancy Dess, Martin Iguchi, Babe Howell, Michael Mobley, Keith Widaman · American Psychological Association

  Does the empirical evidence published since the 2015 APA Resolution on Violent Video Games change its conclusions? The APA Board of Science Affairs and Board for the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest task force conducted a systematic review of 111 articles (including 3 meta-analyses) published between January 2014 and April 2019, with two independent coders per study, to assess the link between violent video game exposure and aggressive outcomes. The majority of task force members concluded that recent research does not substantively alter the 2015 findings: a small but reliable association persists between violent video game use and aggressive behaviour, cognition, and affect across laboratory, cross-sectional, and longitudinal designs. The report stresses that the literature has not established a causal link to lethal violence or mass shootings, and the APA Council of Representatives subsequently added an addendum warning that the resolution should not be used to attribute mass violence to violent gaming.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Methodology

  Read article↗View details
• Longitudinal Study2018

  EN

  Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

  Şiddet içeren video oyunları oynamak saldırganlığa yol açar mı? Boylamsal bir müdahale çalışması

  Kühn, S., Kugler, D. T., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. · Max Planck Institute for Human Development & University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf · Molecular Psychiatry

  Kühn and colleagues ran the first long-term intervention study on adult violent-game effects: 77 adults were assigned to play Grand Theft Auto V daily, The Sims 3 daily, or no game at all for two months (≈35 and ≈32 hours of play across the GTA V and Sims 3 groups respectively). Participants were assessed before, immediately after, and two months after the intervention with a wide test battery covering questionnaire and behavioural measures of aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, mental health, and executive control. The authors found no significant changes in any of the assessed variables — particularly not in aggression — across the three groups, with only three of 208 tests reaching significance, consistent with chance. They argue this provides strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of violent video game play in adults and that the short-term effects reported in earlier experiments are likely the result of priming rather than durable change.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Player Psychology

  Read article↗View details
• Meta-analysis2018

  EN

  Metaanalysis of the relationship between violent video game play and physical aggression over time

  Şiddet İçeren Video Oyunu Oynamak ile Zaman İçinde Fiziksel Saldırganlık Arasındaki İlişki Üzerine Meta-Analiz

  Prescott, A. T., Sargent, J. D., & Hull, J. G. · Dartmouth College & Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

  Prescott, Sargent and Hull conducted the first meta-analysis to focus exclusively on prospective longitudinal studies of violent video game play and overt physical aggression. They identified 24 studies covering more than 17,000 participants aged 9 to 19, with time lags of 3 months to 4 years. Across both fixed-effects (β = 0.113) and random-effects (β = 0.106) models, violent gameplay was significantly associated with subsequent physical aggression, and the effect remained significant after adjusting for available covariates, with no evidence of publication bias. Ethnicity moderated the relationship: the effect was largest in samples of White participants, intermediate among Asians, and not statistically significant among Hispanic participants.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Methodology

  Read article↗View details
• Technical Report2015

  EN

  Technical Report on the Review of the Violent Video Game Literature

  Şiddet İçeren Video Oyun Literatürünün İncelenmesi Üzerine Teknik Rapor

  APA Task Force on Violent Media · American Psychological Association

  The APA Task Force on Violent Media reviewed peer-reviewed research published since the association’s previous 2005 resolution on the relationship between violent video game use and aggressive behaviour. The report concludes that violent video game use is consistently associated with increases in aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive affect, alongside decreases in prosocial behaviour, empathy, and sensitivity to aggression. The Task Force notes that the existing evidence base is insufficient to establish a causal link between violent video game use and lethal violence or criminal behaviour, and calls for further research on long-term effects, on populations beyond college-aged adults, and with stronger methodological designs.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Methodology

  Download PDF↗View details
• Technical Report2013

  EN

  Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence

  Ateşli Silahlarla İlgili Şiddet Tehdidini Azaltmaya Yönelik Araştırma Öncelikleri

  Committee on Priorities for a Public Health Research Agenda to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence · Institute of Medicine & National Research Council of the National Academies

  Convened in response to President Obama’s January 2013 executive orders on gun violence, the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council committee lays out a public-health research agenda across five priority areas: the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, gun safety technology, and the influence of video games and other media. On the media question, the committee notes that although research on the effects of media violence on real-life violence has been carried out for more than 50 years, none of it has focused on firearm violence in particular as an outcome — so a direct relationship between media violence and real-life firearm violence has not been established. The report calls for new research designs that can isolate firearm-specific outcomes, methodologically stronger studies of long-term and cumulative exposure, and better national data infrastructure to support the field.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Methodology

  Download PDF↗View details
• Technical Report2012

  EN

  Impacts of Video Games

  Video Oyunlarının Etkileri

  Hannah Swift & Ana Padilla · Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

  Peter Border's POSTnote, prepared for the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, distils the state of evidence on how video games affect players, with a particular eye to policymakers weighing children's protection and content regulation. The briefing walks through the academic debate over violent gameplay and aggression, including the General Aggression Model and its claim that violent games activate aggressive thoughts and feelings; the note adds that the supporting evidence largely shows only short-term effects and offers limited insight into children. Beyond violence, the briefing surveys concerns about gaming addiction, the educational and developmental potential of games, and the regulatory framework protecting minors, including PEGI age classification and the Digital Economy Act 2010. The piece is positioned as a balanced reference for Members of Parliament rather than an empirical study, situating the public debate within the available research.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Children & Adolescents
  • Behaviour

  Read article↗View details
• Technical Report2011

  EN

  Våldsamma datorspel och aggression: en översikt av forskningen 2000-2011

  Şiddet İçeren Bilgisayar Oyunları ve Saldırganlık: 2000-2011 Araştırma İncelemesi

  Statens medieråd · Statens medieråd (Swedish Media Council)

  The Swedish Media Council (Statens medieråd) gathered 161 international journal articles published from 2000 to 2011 on violent video games (VVGs) and aggression, yielding 106 unique empirical studies across laboratory experiments, cross-sectional surveys and longitudinal designs. Two-thirds of the studies are laboratory experiments which show short-term aggression effects but suffer from methodological weakness, including the absence of pre and post symmetric measurement (only 7 per cent compared aggression before and after play) and reliance on noise-blast or trait proxies that lack a clear bridge to real-world physical violence. Cross-sectional surveys split evenly on whether VVG play correlates with everyday aggression, and those with richer background data find that family environment, low self-esteem and prior psychological difficulties account for both the preference for VVGs and elevated aggression. Of twelve longitudinal studies, those that controlled for background factors found those factors explained the VVG to aggression link. The council concludes that any direct causal effect, if it exists, is weak compared with established drivers of youth violence.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Behaviour
  • Methodology

  Read article↗View details
• Working Paper2011

  EN

  Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime

  Şiddet İçeren Video Oyunlarının Şiddet Suçları Üzerindeki Etkilerini Anlamak

  Cunningham, S., Engelstätter, B., & Ward, M. R. · ZEW – Centre for European Economic Research (Discussion Paper No. 11-042)

  Cunningham, Engelstätter and Ward bring an economics-of-crime lens to the violent-video-game debate, arguing that lab-based psychological studies — which consistently report a positive link between violent gameplay and aggression — lack external validity because they cannot account for what gameplay substitutes for in real life or for self-selection of more aggressive players into violent titles. Using US-wide weekly data on video game sales paired with crime statistics, they estimate the net effect of violent and non-violent game releases on violent crime. The findings are consistent with two opposing forces operating at once: a behavioural effect that pushes aggression up (mirroring the psychology literature) and a larger voluntary-incapacitation effect in which time spent playing — violent or non-violent — keeps potential offenders off the streets and depresses crime. On balance, increased violent-game sales coincide with decreases in violent crime, complicating any simple "violent games cause violent crime" narrative.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Behaviour

  Download PDF↗View details
• Technical Report2010

  EN

  Literature review on the impact of playing violent video games on aggression

  Şiddet İçeren Video Oyunları Oynamanın Saldırganlık Üzerindeki Etkisine Dair Literatür Taraması

  Attorney-General's Department · Australian Government, Attorney-General's Department

  Commissioned by Australia's Attorney-General's Department to inform a 2010 decision on whether to introduce an R 18+ classification for computer games, this Commonwealth-prepared review surveys post-2000 research on whether violent video games (VVGs) cause aggression. The synopsis reports that experimental, correlational and longitudinal studies show a small to moderate short-term link between VVG play and aggressive behaviour, but raises sustained concerns about the policy relevance of those findings: definitional problems for both game violence and aggression, weak external validity of laboratory measures, thin long-term evidence, under-explored third variables (aggressive personality, family and peer influence, socio-economic status), and the failure of causationist researchers to engage with critic models like the catalyst hypothesis. The review treats short-term effects as real but small, doubts they translate into real-world violent crime, and concludes that the academic literature is contested and inconclusive rather than settled.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Behaviour
  • Methodology

  Download PDF↗View details
• Technical Report2002

  EN

  The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative: Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the United States

  Güvenli Okul Girişimi'nin Nihai Raporu ve Bulguları: Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'ndeki Okul Saldırılarının Önlenmesine Yönelik Çıkarımlar

  Bryan Vossekuil, Robert A. Fein, Marisa Reddy, Randy Borum & William Modzeleski · U.S. Secret Service & U.S. Department of Education

  Following the Columbine attack, the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center and the U.S. Department of Education jointly examined every targeted school attack in the United States from December 1974 to June 2000, covering 37 incidents and 41 attackers. The team coded primary-source investigative, school, court and mental-health records, and supplemented the file review with interviews of 10 of the attackers, in order to characterise pre-attack thinking, planning and behaviour. Ten findings frame the report: incidents were rarely impulsive, most attackers planned the attack in advance, peers (not adults) usually knew, no demographic profile fits the attackers, most engaged in pre-attack behaviour that worried others, many had considered suicide, many felt bullied to a tormenting degree, and most attacks were stopped without law-enforcement intervention. The authors argue for a behaviour-focused threat-assessment approach over profiling, and the report grounds two decades of subsequent school-safety practice.

  • Violence & Aggression
  • Children & Adolescents
  • Behaviour
  • Methodology

  Download PDF↗View details