New Scientific Study Shows "No Evidence" of Video Games Causing Violence

Gaming has always been a hot topic with the media and lately there have been a few traumatizing stories revolving acts of violence. Many media outlets will paint it as video games are the problem, and this witch hunt is nothing new. For decades, gaming has been the scapegoat for violent behaviour and horrific events but now a new study is here to say that there is no definitive correlation between the two.

Senseless violence has been around since the beginning of recorded history. Video games, not so much. The University of York has just revealed their findings regarding the correlation of video games and violence with their evidence born from two significant experiments. With over 3,000 participants, this is one of the largest studies regarding the gaming market to date which bears a lot of weight in this field of study.

The overall gist of the study, which can be found here, concludes that there is no evidence to support that the video game medium inspires aggressive acts. Though we all get a little heated in online matches - there is no actual evidence to support that the in-game frustration sometimes felt translates into the real world, much less fatal acts of violence.

Regarding the nature of the testing, members of the study observed whether or not fighting realistic soldiers in a game translated to the desire to fight real persons in reality. On the flip side, they also tested the same behaviour in-game in a more cartoonish environment to settle the ever-popular "games are too realistic" argument when debating violent tendencies. Both studies concluded that there is no substantial evidence supporting the claim that games are the cause. Sometimes, people are just bad.

The game used during these studies had the sole purpose of players to kill as much as possible, so it wasn't an cushy game meant to muffle the results. Whether the gamers that participated were "hardcore" gamers or not, the majory stated that they play at least once per week, though the maximum participation was not revealed. With such a massive study, however, we're sure that many arguing that video games are at fault will want to follow up with more tests. Until then, at least those defending the gaming community can have a little more scientific backing in their tool belt.

To read the full study, participation, and conclusion, you can check out the behavioural impact findings here.