Negative Gamer Interview: Professor Doug Gentile

NG: How do you feel about the ratings?

Almost all rating systems, including the ESRB, have real problems with reliability and validity. If a rating says that show is appropriate for TV-14, parents should agree that it’s okay for teenagers. Unfortunately, they don’t. In fact I believe it’s only 15% of shows with a TV-14 do parents think are totally okay for teenagers. It’s only something like half of games with a T rating to parents think are actually okay for teens.

So there’s a real disconnect between what the industries think are okay for different ages and what parents think. I’ve done a couple studies on ratings. The ESRB ratings do seem to be better than the other systems. But, there still are a number of problems with them. There’s lots of research on what makes good ratings. So far none of the industries use that research. So far they just keep saying, ‘yeah but we do it this way.’

I think the single best thing we could do to help people maximize the benefits media have while minimizing harms would be to improve the rating systems.

NG: How do you feel about the Daniel Petric story?

I think it shows a basic misunderstanding about the research on violent games. The research on violent video games is pretty consistent. When we look at experimental, correlational, and longitudinal studies, we find both short-term and long-term effects on aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Of course, some studies show no effect, but some games probably have lesser effect than others and not every study is as well-designed as every other one.

But when you look across them all, yes there is a real effect. But that real effect is not playing violent games is going turn you into a killer. Unfortunately, that’s how the press often reports it. The press don’t understand how psychological research is really done, and often only discuss the research in reference to these extreme cases. It would be much more correct to think about media violence the way we think about risk factors.

If you smoke, your risk of having a heart attack goes up. Did smoking cause your heart attack? No. Okay what’s another risk factor for a heart attack? Poor diet. Does that cause it? No. High cholesterol? No. If you ask the question what is the cause of the heart attack, there is no answer. And that’s the same thing with violence. Violence is multi-causal. So what’s the cause of your heart attack? It’s high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, and smoking. It’s the accumulation of multiple risk factors. Every one increases the risk, such that I only need 4 or 5 risk factors and my doctor can say “I’m 100% sure you’re having a heart attack, I just can’t tell you what day.”

It’s the same with aggression. Aggression is multi-causal –there are hundreds of reasons of why you might be aggressive in any situation. Media violence is only one of those. But that in collaboration with several other risk factors and very few protective factors increases the risk and makes aggression predictable. In fact, if I know 7 risk factors about children I can predict with 90% accuracy what kids will get into a physical fight this next year. But that’s physical fights, that’s not shooting someone. To get such an extreme result you’d probably need even more risk factors.

So are violent games or violent media the cause of aggression? Actually, the problem is that this is the wrong question. The question is whether they are one of the causes. There is never a “the cause,” but we do know it’s one risk factor. If you took it away, risk would go down. [laughs] How much? We don’t know. The killers at Columbine had multiple risk factors. They had psychiatric illnesses, they had uninvolved parents, they had been bullied, they also consumed a lot of media violence, and they had very few protective factors. Basically, the way to get to extreme violence is with multiple risk factors ‘“ no one is sufficient.

We usually only talk about media violence when we talk about extreme events. But that’s not where we should be looking. We should be talking about low level aggression, which is where the effect is more observeable. You get cut off in the highway, and you make an obscene gesture. And at the point when you do that you think ‘I always would have done this.’ No you probably wouldn’t have. But years of playing violent games makes an aggressive response automatic and natural feeling.

When provoked, you’re more willing to retaliate or say something mean. That’s where the effects are really going to happen. But that’s not where we talk about them. And it’s not really where most studies look for the effect. If people want to understand this more nuanced approach to thinking about media violence effects, I have a short chapter that they can read (http://drdouglas.org/drdpdfs/106027_02.pdf).

People like to make the claim that as games have gotten more violentf the murder rate has dropped. This is not a correct scientific argument. It mixes different levels of analysis ‘“ the effect is at a personal psychological level, but then it’s being compared to a population level statistic. This isn’t where we would see the effect of media violence. Furthermore, it’s a correlation, and the drop in violent crime is likely due to longer prison terms, more police on the streets, etc.

NG: How do you feel about the connections made between school shootings and other events that become linked to video games? Like the recent Germany shooting?

Right now in Germany there has been a movement to restrict the sale of certain violent games. The situation was already there where they were worried about games, so they’re going to take this as more evidence. But, that’s not good science. In psychology, that’s called the ‘confirmation bias.’

After all the school shootings in the nineties the secret service did go through and try to find the profile of what a school shooter is. They said there is no one profile but there are some common themes, and one common theme is that there is a high interest in violent media among almost all the school shooters, and that’s continued to be true. Once again it’s an additional risk factor.

When you list the known risk factors for aggression in terms of size of the effect, media violence is not the biggest, but it’s also not the smallest. It’s right there in the middle of all the rest of them. So it’s one that should be taken as seriously as the others. What makes it different, however, is that it’s the one we can easily control. Poverty is also on the list, as is having been abused, but you can’t easily control those.

As a parent, however, I can say no you can’t play this game, play this one instead. That’s what makes media violence a different risk factor than the others, we actually could have really good control over it.

NG: What do you personally hope for in the future for gaming?

Well, one of my goals is that I’d like to have one universal rating system. We should have one rating system that can be used on all media. All the different industries say that TV isn’t same as video games, etc. – yes that’s true, but what parents want to know the media about is. And the different rating systems do rate basically the same things already: sex, violence, language and nudity.

Not only should there be one universal system, but it should be one based on research about what is likely to be harmful. Research demonstrates that all media violence is harmful. There’s actually nothing inherently wrong with seeing something violent if what you learn is that violence is bad. But that’s not what most games teach actually, they teach that the solution is that the good guy is better at violence. That’s a risky portrayal of violence, whereas movies like Saving Private Ryan, or Apocalypse Now show the horror that violence really is and how it damages everyone and how no one comes out undamaged. People will be less aggressive after seeing those violent films. So it’s not as simple as all violence is bad, some is risky some isn’t. We know some portrayals of sex is riskier for kids than others. Right now the raters aren’t scientists. They don’t actually know what the research says aboutwhat types of portrayals are better and which ones are worse. They generally just rate based on how much scenes violate their senses.

So violence ratings are largely based on how much blood is there. But in fact there isn’t good research suggesting blood matters much. What matters seems to more about intention to harm, and so the ratings in some respects are way off. So if I could change one thing it would be a universal rating system based on the science of what’s really likely to be harmful for kids.

No researcher in the US has ever talked about banning games. Craig Anderson doesn’t, I don’t. None of us have ever, nor would we. All of us kind of prize that first amendment. [laughs] None of us are saying you can’t make games like that and none of us are even saying adults can’t buy them. I think it’s far more important that we give parents the right information about what the science is.

That’s one side of the information, the other is how to use the ratings are and this is why you should use them. Connect those two aspects – I think that’s the important issue. Right now the gaming press just love to vilify the researchers, we don’t know anything, we’re all out to ban games and we don’t know anything about games. I have a Wii, I’m playing it everyday pretty much.

NG: How do you feel about video games as a medium?

Games are cool. There’s nothing about the medium that’s a problem. There are effects, and I’ve studied several of them. Some of them we like, some of those we generally don’t like. But let’s not pretend only the ones we like happen. They all happen and now that we know that we can all be more thoughtful about controlling those effects.

NG: Thank you for your time.

It’s my pleasure. If people want to really understand the research, my studies can be found on my public website www.drdouglas.org

Pages: 1 2 3