Interview: Dr Guy Porter on violence and addiction in games

Atomic: With reference to the studies sighted by Jack Thompson, how is the methodology of such studies flawed?

Dr Porter: Jack Thompson’s case has been greatly supported by the work of Dr.Craig Anderson, a psychology professor from Iowa University. Anderson himself actually testified before a US congressional committee in 2000 stating that violent video games lead to increases in aggressive thoughts and emotions. Anderson has done some experimental work which we regarded as suffering from methodological problems (described in my paper – noise blast experiment).

Anderson also did a meta-analysis of the existing research and published his findings in 2004. A meta-analysis involves compiling all the data from different studies and looking at it as a whole. His conclusion was once again that video games lead to aggression. However his meta-analysis included many poor quality studies with small sample sizes. Furthermore, some of the studies were from the 1980s using 2D games which would not be considered ‘violent’ by today’s standards.

Interestingly, in 2007 a similar meta-analysis was published by a different researcher (Ferguson) contradicting Anderson’s findings. Furguson concluded that the current research literature does not support the notion that video games lead to increased aggression and that instead video game use was associated with improved visio-spatial cognition.

Atomic: How would a personality (such as Jack Thompson's) reconcile their views in light of them being based upon faulty research?

Dr Porter: Jack Thompson is also against children being exposed to the sexual content in certain video games and is an advocate for correct classification and parental supervision. So he is not all bad. However, I think that directly linking video games to school shootings is overlooking other more important factors – such as mental illness or psychopathy in those who commit the crimes as well as access to guns.

Atomic: What has to be done before we have conclusive proof of the effects of violent video games?

Dr Porter: 'Proof’ is a strong word. More conclusive evidence will need to come from long term studies similar to those carried out for TV / film. We concluded that based on the current evidence, people who have pre-existing aggressive tendencies would be best advised not to play particularly violent games.

Atomic: How would those studies be carried out, and over what time period?

Dr Porter: 15-20 years as for the TV / film studies.

Atomic: Have you found any positive influences from playing games?

Dr Porter: There are a number of research studies in the medical literature about the positive aspects of video game use. There is some evidence that video games improve hand-eye coordination and surgical skills. Video games have also been shown to be effective in pain-distraction in children with cancer. We use consoles (usually Nintendos) in hospital quite a lot for our younger patients. It takes the dullness out of being in hospital!