Whats is the link between violent video games and aggression?

The link between violent video games and aggression it’s not a new topic in our life, since 1950 psychologists, psychiatrics and other professional want to answer that question. Fredric Wertham tried to link the excessive violence of comic books and becoming delinquent in his book “Seduction of the Innocent” (1950).  This link has been an important topic in this days because Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) and Call of duty has been release.

The common sense is inflexible and accepts the obvious connection between violent video games and aggression. But does really exists that link? There are many studies and papers about this topic, which never found a strong connection.

The main problem with these studies is the difficulty to compare all the results, because every investigation or paper measures a different aspect of the aggression or violent behavior. Some studies says “yes, there is a link”, but only in the short time and when exists a competitive task and the loser will be punish. Other studies say “no, there is not a link” when the participant has a positive goal in mind (like protect a friend) the tendency to have a violent behavior was reduced. However exists a third position, in a meta-analysis of Ferguson and Kilburn (2009) argued that many investigations “use poorly validated or unreliable aggression measures” and there is a tendency to publish studies that have a stronger link of violent video games and aggression.

As I told you before, doesn’t exist a stronger link between violent video games and aggression or still the researchers doesn’t know how measure and connect these two concept. So the question is not answer yet and exist many factors to keep in mind. 

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