7/30/2019 Calm View Video Games

1/3NATURE | VOL 424 | 24 JULY 2003 | www.nature.com/nature 35 5

A calm view of video violenceStudies of violence in the media and its effects on people are clouded by overheated rhetoric and exaggerated claims.More clarity is needed, both in the science and in the way it is discussed.

24 July 2003 Volume 424 Issue no 6947

There are good reasons to be troubled by the violence thatpervades the m edia. Movies, television and video games arefull of gunplay and bloodshed, and on e might reasonably ask

whats wrong with a society that pr esents videos of dom estic vio-lence as entertainm ent. Of course, the same questions could havebeen raised about watching Macbeth, or Pun ch and Judy. Lets faceit, peop le have always enjoyed watching oth er peoples mayhem .

Most researchers agree that the causes of real-world violence arecomp lex. A 1993 study by the U S National Academy of Sciences listedbiological,individual,family,peer,school,and community factorsas all playing their par ts.And a 2001 report by th e US surgeon generalconcluded th at the prepon derance of evidence indicates that violentbehavior seldom results from a single cause; rather, m ultiple factorsconverging over tim e contribu te to such behavior.

Viewing abnor mally large amou nts of violent television an dvideo games may well contribute to violent behaviour in certainindividuals. The trou ble comes when researchers down play un cer-

tainties in th eir studies or overstate the case for causality. Scepticswere dism ayed several years ago when a grou p of societies includ ingthe American Medical Association, the American PsychologicalAssociation an d the American Academy of Pediatrics tried to endthe debate by issuing a joint statem ent: At this time, well over 1000studies point overwhelmingly to a causal connection betweenm edia violence and aggressive behavior in some children.

Freedom -of-speech advocates accused the societies ofp and ering

to politicians, and even disputed the num ber of studies (m ost werereview articles and essays, they said). When Jonathan Freedman , asocial psycho logist at the University of Toron to in Can ada, reviewedthe literature , he found only 200 or so studies of television-watchingand aggression. And when he weeded out the most do ubtful m ea-sures of aggression,o nly 28% suppor ted a connection.

The critical point here is causality. The alarm ists say they have

proved that violent media cause aggression. But the assum ptionsbehind th eir observations need to be examined. When labellinggames as violent or non -violent, should Pac-Man gobbling a ghostreally be count ed as a violent event? And when experim enters m ea-sure physiological arousal,or record th e time it takes gam e players toread aggressiveor no n- aggressiveword s from a list, can we be surewhat they are actually measuring? The intent of the new H arvardCenter on M edia and Child Health, to collect and stan dardize stud iesof media violence in order to compare their m ethodologies,assump-tions and conclusions,is an im portant step in the right direction.

Another appropriate step would be to tone down the crusadingrhetor ic un til we know m ore. Several researchers write, speak andtestify prolifically on t he th reat posed by violence in t he m edia. Thatis, of course, their privilege. But when doing so, they often comeout with statements that the m atter has now been settled, drawingcriticism from colleagues. In response, the alarmists accuse criticsand n ews reporters of being duped by the entertainment industry.

Such clashes help n either science no r society. s

It is more than a decade since the US Departm ent of Energy (DO E)last set out a program m e of m ajor new facilities for its network oflaboratories. The intention of Ray Orb ach, head of the DOE Office

of Science, to dr aw up such a list shou ld be welcom ed by researchers.The DOE is understandably tight-lipped about its plan (see

page 357).It h as little enough m oney to suppo rt current operations,and there is a very real risk that pu blishing the list will trigger con flict

between the winn ers and losers. But a list of priorities will soon beneeded. With m ost individual investigators based at un iversities,t hemain function of the departm ents laboratory network is to buildand hou se facilities that the u niversities themselves could no t afford.Such pro jects take upward s of a decade to plan and constru ct.

The choices to be mad e leave man y researchers understan dablynervou s.In t he context of frozen bu dgets a context that the Officeof Science has largely endu red since the cancellation of the Super-

condu cting Sup er Collider in 1993 facilities mu st be built at theshort -term expense of the very people who will use them .

But with n o m ajor facility planned since the Spallation N eutronSource,n ow un der construction at t he Oak Ridge National Labora-tory in Tennessee, a backlog of potential opportu nities is accruing.Orbach is right to bite the bu llet and prepare a new plan. It is under-standable that he wants to be cautious in discussing its contents,

in advance of their appro val by his boss, energy secretary SpencerAbraham, and by th e bean-counters at the White House Office ofManagement and Budget.

In their different ways, Europe and Japan are also finding itdifficult to bu ild large facilities, faced with p roblems in garnering

the necessary suppo rt. The fusion project ITER and a linear particlecollider (as well as upgrades at CERNs Large Hadron Collider) will

be global projects, but there is no con sistent fram ework for these tobe considered by the nations that might want to build them. TheOrganisation for Econ om ic Coop eration and D evelopm ents GlobalScience Foru m remain s the mo st credible bod y for such d iscussions,but its influence will need to grow if it is to fulfil this role.

In the meantime, Orbach can draw some encouragemen t fromCon gresss recent supp ort for his office (see page 361). Progressseems to have been mad e in convincing law-makers that t he DO Es

physics programm es,in part icular,are a valuable part of the n ationsscientific portfolio. Extra imp etus should also come from th egradual expansion of the National Institutes of Healths role inequipp ing large facilities, such as synchrotr on light sources, that arealso used by biologists. After a difficult spell, this process is thebest opportu nity that th e DOE has had for years to plan properlyfor its laborat oriesfutur es. s

The grand challenges facing physicsIt would be easy to delay the prioritization of major new projects at US physics laboratories, but it needs to be done.

2003 NaturePublishingGroup

7/30/2019 Calm View Video Games

2/3

7/30/2019 Calm View Video Games

3/3