The Relationship Between Violent Video Games And Aggression

Ever since Mortal Kombat first came out in the mid-nineties, video game violence has become a lingering conversation; especially when a senseless act of violence occurs in the real world. There have been many studies out there to determine if there is a link between video game violence and if it is the cause of many real world tragedies. The American Psychological Association released a report in August of 2015, that stated there is a “link between playing violent video games and aggression” although it goes on to say that there is still not enough research to conclude whether it leads to criminal violence (“Technical Report”, 2015). Although they point out in the text that “aggression” does not necessarily mean “violence” (“Technical Report, 2015). This type of publication allows the media to make blanket statements about the connections and essentially place any blame upon the medium as opposed to the persons responsible for such heinous acts. Although, modern video games have made it even more difficult to discern with the …show more content…
The experiment design would have “participants make a moral choice in a video game and then measured their behavior on two subsequent tasks” (Ellithorpe et al., 2015). The first task would be either a “noise retaliation” or a “reward retaliation” exercise where they would either gauge their reaction times after a loud blast of noise or they were told that if they shoot faster than another person they would get money (Ellithorpe et al., 2015). The other task would be a random drawing for a gift card where they asked the participants if they would donate some of their winnings to charity (Ellithorpe et al.,