By Chua Hian Hou

A decade and dozens of studies on the impact of violent video games later, the bottom line is: Yes, playing violent video games causes people to think and act more aggressively.

But playing video games will not turn 'normal 12-year-olds into school shooters', said Iowa State University's Distinguished Professor Craig Anderson, one of the world's foremost scholars on media violence.

Prof Anderson, 56, is also the director of the Centre for the Study of Violence, which researches the causes of violence in the United States. He has co-authored several books and written dozens of research papers on the topic. He has also been consulted by governments around the world on issues like the impact of media depictions of violent behaviour on youth.

His conclusion comes in the wake of new research data released in the last two years, 'including the (results of the) first longitudinal study in 2007', said Prof Anderson.

Longitudinal studies are important because they study the effects over a period of time, in this case to see if people who played violent games are more aggressive over time. Prior to 2007, researchers could only say for sure that playing video games was linked to aggression.

Since then, the 'accumulation of evidence' from American, German and Japanese researchers consistently points to one conclusion: that playing violent games makes people think and act more aggressively, said Prof Anderson, who was in Singapore last week on a week-long visit to the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

The relationship between games and aggressive behaviour, he said, is similar to that between smoking and cancer.

'We know that smoking causes lung cancer, but there are smokers who do not develop lung cancer, and there are people with lung cancer who do not smoke.'

Similarly, many people who enjoy cutting down monsters in video games will display increased aggressiveness, although some will not, said Prof Anderson, who enjoys playing first-person shooter (FPS) games, in which the player views the action from the eyes of the protagonist. Popular FPS titles include games like CounterStrike and Doom.

When people play violent games repeatedly over a period of time, they begin to accept and even expect violence in their own lives.

Studies have also shown that some gamers develop 'hostile attribution bias', that is, attributing hostile intentions to even benign actions.

For instance, if bumped by someone in a crowded room, a person with this bias would believe it was intentional and respond accordingly, whereas someone else would simply brush it off as an accident.

That said, exposure to media violence - games as well as violent TV shows and movies - is just one of a dozen risk factors that also include gang membership, low IQ, the temperature and abusive parents.

Just how big a role games play is not conclusive, but some studies suggest video games have a bigger impact than abusive parents but less than being a gang member - and this is why very few gamers actually stab anyone.

Games share another link to smoking.

Right now, many gamers dismiss out of hand any research that says video games could have a negative impact, in much the same way smokers refused to believe initial reports that smoking could be harmful to them.

Some gamers, in fact, 'get downright angry with anybody that suggests it...They just don't want to understand', said Prof Anderson.

He knows from personal experience.

The typical 'hate mail' goes along these lines: 'You bastard, I've been playing violent video games and I'm not violent at all. Stop or I'm going to come and kick your a**.'

And they say all this 'without realising the irony', he said.

Several studies claiming games have no such impact have appeared, although most research demonstrates links between games and aggression.

And while there is increasing acceptance of this, it will be a while before it finally gains widespread currency, he said.

Gamers and game companies, though, should not see this as an indictment of their hobby or industry.

Video games, he said, are very powerful learning tools - as demonstrated by how people playing games that encourage them to be nice to others in the game, will also exhibit such 'pro-social' behaviour in real life.

One research gap he is concerned about is how massively multiplayer online role-playing games like World of Warcraft (WoW) affect players.

WoW, the world's most popular game, boasts more than 11 million players around the world, including more than 30,000 in Singapore.

While such games are violent, players are also encouraged to work with others, possibly promoting positive values like teamwork, loyalty and self-sacrifice.

This area, though, is 'much more complicated' to research than standalone single-player games, although he knows of several researchers who are 'trying to research' it.

A study carried out by National University of Singapore and NTU researchers on the impact of video games on Singapore youth is currently under way.

chuahh@sph.com.sg

This story was first published in The Straits Times.

For more The Straits Times stories, click here.