Video Games Violence and Aggression, Part 2

¶ … violent video games do not promote violent and aggressive behavior among children, teenagers, or young adults. This hypothesis has been derived from the research that is available that disputes the claims of increased aggressiveness and violent tendencies from those who play violent video games. Previous hypotheses have suggested a link between school shootings and whether the shooter played these types of games (Ferguson, 2008, p. 25). There has been no proven correlation to support these hypotheses. In the case of the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, it was found that he "had little to no exposure to violent video games" (p. 26), therefore, there were pre-existing violent tendencies that were not influenced by video games.

Additional studies, such as the one performed by Chory and Goodboy (2011, p. 192), attempted to identify the personality types that were more inclined toward playing violent video games according to the Five-Factor personality model. Out of the five-factors, those who possessed higher levels of the traits of extroversion, neuroticism, and openness and lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness were more apt to play violent video games (p. 192-4). The results drawn from this study infer that these psychological traits dictate the preference toward these types of games and do not cause the player to become more violent or aggressive. Yet again, this research did not uncover a causal effect between violent tendencies and playing violent video games. As research has failed to prove otherwise, violent video games do not promote violent or aggressive behavior.