‘Exposure to violent video games causes aggressive behaviour.’
Word count: 2267
This paper will review literature that has explored the claim, ‘Exposure to violent
video games causes aggressive behaviour’, and then propose a new research study to test it.
Aggression is one of the central concepts which underpins this claim; it has many definitions
and interpretations that vary between societies and cultures. The version of aggression that
will be used as a baseline for this paper can be summarized as, “behaviour directed towards
another individual carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm”
(Anderson and Huesmann, 2003). Another popular definition of aggression is from social
psychologist Bandura, he defined it as, “behaviour that results in personal injury or
destruction of property” (Bandura, 1973, p.42). During the 1960s, Bandura’s new ideas
around behaviour had many people shift from the largely founded behavioural view to the
social learning theory (SLT). The main premise was that learning occurs through copying the
behaviour of others; children observe aggressive behaviour in others and how they respond is
dependent on what the consequences of aggression were. These ideas of behaviour
acquisition can be closely related to many societal issues, which will be discussed in the
following paper.
Many of the video games played by today’s society are largely dominated by violence
in the form of harming or killing (Hanninger & Thompson, 2004; Smith, Lachlan, &
Tamborini, 2003). Across the past few decades this has turned into a highly politized issue,
with scientists and the general public debating over the influences violent video games can
have on behaviour. On one hand, it is argued that violent video games can lead to an increase
in the player’s aggressiveness. Anderson and Bushman (2001) found that violent video games
not only increased aggressive behaviour of both children and adults, but also heightened
aggression-related thoughts and feelings. There are multiple studies that have suggested
similar results; that exposure to violence in media, particularly video games, can lead to short
and long-term increases in aggression (Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski & Eron, 2003;
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Word count: 2267
This paper will review literature that has explored the claim, ‘Exposure to violent
video games causes aggressive behaviour’, and then propose a new research study to test it.
Aggression is one of the central concepts which underpins this claim; it has many definitions
and interpretations that vary between societies and cultures. The version of aggression that
will be used as a baseline for this paper can be summarized as, “behaviour directed towards
another individual carried out with the proximate (immediate) intent to cause harm”
(Anderson and Huesmann, 2003). Another popular definition of aggression is from social
psychologist Bandura, he defined it as, “behaviour that results in personal injury or
destruction of property” (Bandura, 1973, p.42). During the 1960s, Bandura’s new ideas
around behaviour had many people shift from the largely founded behavioural view to the
social learning theory (SLT). The main premise was that learning occurs through copying the
behaviour of others; children observe aggressive behaviour in others and how they respond is
dependent on what the consequences of aggression were. These ideas of behaviour
acquisition can be closely related to many societal issues, which will be discussed in the
following paper.
Many of the video games played by today’s society are largely dominated by violence
in the form of harming or killing (Hanninger & Thompson, 2004; Smith, Lachlan, &
Tamborini, 2003). Across the past few decades this has turned into a highly politized issue,
with scientists and the general public debating over the influences violent video games can
have on behaviour. On one hand, it is argued that violent video games can lead to an increase
in the player’s aggressiveness. Anderson and Bushman (2001) found that violent video games
not only increased aggressive behaviour of both children and adults, but also heightened
aggression-related thoughts and feelings. There are multiple studies that have suggested
similar results; that exposure to violence in media, particularly video games, can lead to short
and long-term increases in aggression (Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski & Eron, 2003;
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