The Texas A&M group mentioned earlier in this section wrote a response to the Iowa State study entitled ‘Much ado about nothing: The mis-estimation and over interpretation of violent video game effects in Eastern and Western nations’ (Ferguson and Kilburn, 2010). You will find a link to it in the resources page associated with this part on the TU100 website.
- Read the abstract, the introduction and the first short section on the first page and take notes. Ferguson’s group has agreements and disagreements with Anderson’s study – what are they?
- Now attempt to summarise the section ‘Is Psychology Inventing a Phantom Youth Violence Crisis?’ on the third and fourth pages. You may find some of the language rather technical, but you should be able to determine its meaning.
- The apparent link between aggression and media violence is weak.
- Each group is in agreement that Anderson’s Study is biased.
- disagreement with techniques to compensate for bias.
- disagreement with regards to including material from unpublished studies.
Summary of ‘Is Psychology Inventing a Phantom Youth Violence Crisis?’
The opening point of this section emphasizes a well-documented decline in youth-violence as the popularity of video-game consoles rises. The key argument of Anderson’s writing suggests the opposite of this. There is greater support for mental-illnesses and domestic environment have a much more appreciable correlation with violence in children.
Whilst addressing the “dangers” of video-game violence is easier, perhaps it would be more beneficial if these efforts were focussed on care and diagnosis of mentally ill children, or for counselling for those from a violent domestic background.
