Violence and Video Games - A Literature Review

It seems that there is wide speculation on the effects of violence in video games and the media and whether this may in turn affect aggression levels in individuals.

Anderson & Dill (2000) Proposed The General Affective Aggression Model (GAAM) which suggests a direct link between violence in video games to aggression and antisocial behaviour in both long and short term scenarios. Anderson & Dill continued their research and conducted two studies that directly supported this proposed model. They concluded that playing games of a high violent content and also by being exposed to these games in laboratory scenarios caused some individuals (predominately predisposed aggressive personalities and males) to have increased levels of aggression. This model is also supported by Cope-Farrar, Kremar & Nowak (2004) who found that gamers that play video games with a high level of violent content seemed to have higher resentment and aggressive tendencies than gamers who played video games of a non-violent nature.

Recently Gordon Brown PM (2007) asked for an independent review of the effect of violence in the media including video games on children. Byron (2008) conducted this independent review and concluded that although a positive link was found between aggressive tendencies and violence in games, this does not prove that one is evident because of the other. It is not clear that the aggression is caused by the game or indeed that the game is chosen by that individual due to an increased level of aggression in that individual's character.

Another point of view is that of Prof. Christopher Ferguson who says that there is no proven link between violent video games and violence in society. He suggests that games with a high level of violence are targeted as a kind of 'scapegoat' with which to deny the actual possible causes of social violence that need to be dealt with, such as family situations, predisposed character, genetics and other outside contributing factors.