AMES, Iowa — It’s not just American kids who become more aggressive by playing violent video games. A new study — presented last month at the inaugural seminar sponsored by Iowa State University’s Center for the Study of Violence — showed effects of violent video games on aggression over a 3-6 month period in children from Japan as well as the United States…
Anderson began collaborating with Japanese researchers on the study several years ago when he visited Japan to give an invited address at the International Simulation and Gaming Association convention. He says Japan’s cultural differences with the U.S. made it attractive for the comparison studies.
“The culture is so different and their overall violence rate is so much lower than in the U.S.,” Anderson said. “The argument has been made — it’s not a very good argument, but it’s been made by the video game industry — that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate.
“By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, ‘Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?’ And of course, they aren’t,” he said. “They’re affected pretty much the same way American kids are.”
“It is important to realize that violent video games do not create schools shooters,” Gentile said. “They create opportunities to be vigilant for enemies, to practice aggressive ways of responding to conflict and to see aggression as acceptable. In practical terms, that means that when bumped in the hallway, children begin to see it as hostile and react more aggressively in response to it. Violent games are certainly not the only thing that can increase children’s aggression, but these studies show that they are one part of the puzzle in both America and Japan.”
