Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

Last week, the guys at Penny Arcade did a comic about a recently published study that demonstrates a link between playing videogames and the use of illicit drugs. The results were hilarious.

The comic’s premise is based on the content of a Reuters article. For two guys whose background in science is limited primarily to the hunt for metroids, Tycho and Gabe (or Jerry and Mike, whichever reality you prefer) actually hit some pretty solid points, particularly in the comic’s accompanying podcast.

Thanks to Google Scholar, I’ve got a copy of the study. It is titled “Impact of Violence Exposure on Hostility, Physiological Arousal, and Health in Youth,” which is significantly less glamorous sounding than the Reuters spin: “Violent videogames linked to risky behaviors”. Actually, the article to which Reuters refers is titled, “Effects of Media Violence on Health-Related Outcomes Among Young Men”, but that article is a significantly edited version of Dr. Brady’s doctoral dissertation, which is what I’m reading.

It’s often tempting to disregard videogame research like this, particularly if you consider yourself a “gamer”, and pretend that it’s all part of a vast conspiracy by the American Coalition for the Protection of Traditional Family Values Action Committee (or whatever they call themselves this week). The fact of the matter is that this is not one of those studies. Dr. Brady’s paper is well researched and meticulously analyzed, and while it suffers from a number of shortcomings inherent in this kind of study, I am certainly NOT calling her a bad scientist. Any real fault lies with Reuters, or the media in general, for its inability to accurately report on scientific findings.

Over at Penny Arcade, Jerry and Mike make the point that asking questions of 100 male undergraduates between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one isn’t a great way to accurately represent the wide community of people who play games. They point out that if you started playing games on an Atari, you’re about thirty years old now and might even have a kid of your own. To assume that the “typical” gamer is college-aged, or that there is now a “typical” gamer any more than there is a “typical” moviegoer, is a huge fallacy. Penny Arcade also questions whether 100 people is enough to call the results valid, and frankly it is, at least from a statistical standpoint. Of course, there are often big differences between statistical reality and reality reality, particularly when examining slippery concepts like violent attitudes.

Let’s have a closer look at the sample. It’s 83% white, which seems overly homogenous to me. It’s also entirely male, and sure, videogames are predominantly male, but exclusively male? I don’t think so. Not that I want to dive off the deep end of statistics with you, but Dr. Brady’s sample shows an extremely erratic variability in several key areas, and while that certainly doesn’t invalidate her analysis, it indicates some potential weakness there. These problems are endemic to this type of research, where limited funding basically gives you a choice between undergraduates or rats, and undergraduates are cheaper. The demographic problem is a real one, but kind of a boring issue. Things get much more interesting once you look at the methods.

Participants viewed footage of the game for four minutes to learn the mechanics of it, and then played for ten minutes. Afterward, they answered questions about mood, attitudes, etc. I know a lot of people who would never play GTA, and I know a lot of people who play it for hours, but I don’t know anyone who plays it in ten minute bursts. Ten minutes in a lab cannot possibly represent a real gaming experience, and this has very real implications for the study. What if, after an hour of play, the player adjusts to the novelty of GTA, and begins to see the game underneath the blood and guns? After adjusting to the glitz factor, would the study show the same results? So keep in mind that all of these conclusions are essentially based off of ten minutes of gameplay.

Although Reuters makes a big deal out of the videogame angle, that’s really only half of the study. Brady is looking at lifetime exposure to actual violence and how it interacts with exposure to videogame violence. Reuters conveniently glosses over this central fact in the sixth paragraph of the story.

So what did Brady find? Well, the drug and alcohol thing that Reuters trumpets was really a question of having a “lower likelihood of thinking that marijuana is harmful to one’s health.” Moreover, Brady’s result on that question just barely hits the mark for statistical significance. In other words, if the study were repeated with a different group of people, there’s a decent chance that no link between videogame experience and marijuana attitudes would be found. Jerry and Mike make a great point when they say that finding permissive attitudes towards drugs and alcohol on a college campus isn’t really that shocking, anyway.

Here’s the really interesting thing, particularly because Reuters so conveniently ignores it. Brady found that association with “deviant peers,” presumably friends like Sam Switchblade and Barry Bong, is a much stronger predictor of one’s attitude toward drugs, alcohol, and risky behavior than the videogames. So you could say it’s the game, but really, according to this study, it’s more your friends. Curious that Reuters doesn’t mention it at all.

Brady also devised a clever way to gauge changes in the participant’s attitudes and information processing, checking for hostility and negative feelings after playing the game. The participants who played GTA III showed more competitiveness and negative feelings, and that’s interesting but hardly surprising. Studies on social learning (see Alfred Bandura) and priming are particularly relevant here. In fact, if what we’re seeing is a priming effect, it’s dubious to generalize the results of the study to larger lifestyle attitudes.

So that’s my take on the whole thing. It’s a well-done study with some interesting results, but the 100 undergraduate sample and the length of actual game time puts some pretty serious limitations on it. In particular, I’m dismayed that Reuters would sensationalize some of the weaker findings from the study and totally ignore stronger ones. Videogames are part of our culture, and most certainly do influence our thoughts and behaviors to a degree, but Brady’s study makes it clear that videogames are part of a larger constellation of factors that would be foolish to ignore. Careful what you read.