It's apparently a pretty controversial study among American psychologists as a lot of them are having issues with how the APA went about doing that study.

Basically it seems to have been created with the intention of creating this result and there's currently an open letter signed by 230 psychologists requesting that they rescind this study.

A TL;DR of what seems to have went down is that a bunch of anti-media anti-youth old people got together and looked for "evidence" to confirm their biases.

Psy's apparently going to take it apart tomorrow.

However if you actually read the source I gave you'd see that this study was done by people who had a vested interest in creating a certain result, had zero transparency with how the were conducting their study, and then proceeded to "peer review" their own work.

You don't have to be a psychologist to have a few red flags raise up in your mind when that's going on.

Hokai I'll go over the article style thing before I read the full one just to see what's what.

APA Review Confirms Link Between Playing Violent Video Games and Aggression

Finds insufficient research to link violent video game play to criminal violence

*Insert no shit sherlock award*

“The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression,” says the report of the APA Task Force on Violent Media. The task force’s review is the first in this field to examine the breadth of studies included and to undertake multiple approaches to reviewing the literature.

Alrighty, now going by what's been said in this thread (Meta-Analysis) that's a small red flag here. A meta analysis on it's own isn't necessarily going to be biased, assuming they do a proper one and incorporate all existing research data rather than cherry pick what they think suits their argument. So we'll go with the former there and assume it was comprehensive. That still brings up the other issue, where the studies incorporated are going to be dodgy.

Video Games and Violence as a research field is rife with special interest group funding who want to see the results (no matter how meaningless in reality) that it's violent video games that cause School Shootings/Promiscuity/Murder/Gang Warfare/Ebola/World War 2 rather than shitty parenting or mental issues (Take out the hyperbole examples for that)

Not to mention how the last 5 or so studies on exactly that used farcical measures of aggression and games designed specifically to piss the player off. I'll go look for it in a moment but it was in the BPS digest or BBC science section where the study involved making a player play a 5-10 minute segment of a game that had been modified to be frustrating beyond belief. So Dark Souls that you can't win basically. Then they had constructed a few ways to measure how pleasant/helpful the person was afterwards, such as holding the door open for the research assistant or something along those lines.

But hey, we'll go with the assumption that they only used top quality studies that measured more tangible aspects of human aggression rather than just making a nice demonstration of 'Kick the Cat'.

“No single risk factor consistently leads a person to act aggressively or violently,” the report states. “Rather, it is the accumulation of risk factors that tends to lead to aggressive or violent behavior. The research reviewed here demonstrates that violent video game use is one such risk factor.”

Which is a fair enough finding at face value, however the gravity of the risk factor isn't really clear here. It could be as relevant as the ambient temperature of the room or it could be something like having a massive family argument the night before an incident. Higher temperatures are a risk factor for aggression, but you'd be amazed if someone flat out dismembered another human because they touched the thermostat. Well actually maybe not but still <.<

And here is the first red flag.

In light of the task force’s conclusions, APA has called on the industry to design video games that include increased parental control over the amount of violence the games contain. APA’s Council of Representatives adopted a resolution at its meeting Aug. 7 in Toronto encouraging the Entertainment Software Rating Board to refine its video game rating system “to reflect the levels and characteristics of violence in games, in addition to the current global ratings.” In addition, the resolution urges developers to design games that are appropriate to users’ age and psychological development, and voices APA’s support for more research to address gaps in the knowledge about the effects of violent video game use.

Arguing for further restrictions on the product itself rather than making parents responsible for the shit their children are exposed to. Where have I seen this before I wonder?

If they want to refine the ERSB or PEGI ratings, sure. They mean literally nothing as it is so if they feel like wasting their lobbying power on that then good for them. If they want to start up the smear campaign again and cry out how Prototype is causing children to spin around with kitchen knives or call of duty is training people to shoot up airports then I don't need to say why that's fucking retarded.

The task force identified a number of limitations in the research that require further study. These include a general failure to look for any differences in outcomes between boys and girls who play violent video games; a dearth of studies that have examined the effects of violent video game play on children younger than 10; and a lack of research that has examined the games’ effects over the course of children’s development.

Uhuh, so leave out 50% of the population when you are making your conclusions. That sounds like some 10/10 research practice right there. But hey, girls never leave the kitchen so what does that matter?

Again, leave out the section of human development where if I am remembering my textbooks correctly, humans are most impressionable to things like that. Fine, fine. Who cares if a nine year old is playing GTA when a 15 year old might be.

And that's the nail being struck squarely on the head.
They've measured a snapshot of whatever scenario they built to see if video games causes aggression, not looked at the long term effects of playing violent games frequently. But seeing as how most of the humanoids in the west of the ages 21+ haven't degenerated into psychotic wrecks that maim others over Lag and Tbagging, I'm gonna say Gee Gee to that.

“We know that there are numerous risk factors for aggressive behavior,” Appelbaum said. “What researchers need to do now is conduct studies that look at the effects of video game play in people at risk for aggression or violence due to a combination of risk factors. For example, how do depression or delinquency interact with violent video game use?”

Seal of Shocking Truth time.

Rather than waste your time looking at the general population and going 'oh lawdy won't someone think of the children' over games, why not look at the ones who we know are predisposed or at greater risk (depending on how deterministic you want to get) towards violent actions because of existing mental issues.

The next bit is general methodology description but this bit caught my eye.

This resulted in 170 articles, 31 of which met all of the most stringent screening criteria.

And the other 139?

I'm going to do a followup post shortly after where I highlight the titles of the research papers included in this analysis. So far it's proving amusing reading.