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Dubai video games turn people 
into violent people. 40 years of

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research, dozens of meta 
analysis, a Supreme Court case, 

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and we still can't agree. 
So today we crack that show. 

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Welcome to Cracking the show on 
psychological science. 

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I'm Joey. 
I'm Mike and let's get into it. 

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Tracking that shell now. 
Happy. 

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Ben, Mike, Joey. 
Let's go. 

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Cracking the shell on the mic. 
Psychological sciences sight. 

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Abby bringing that fire sparks 
when she speaks. 

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Ignition on sight. 
Been with the breakdown. 

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Mind state takedown. 
Never miss the details. 

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Mic hitting concepts heavy like 
great trains on steel rails. 

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Joey steady mapping. 
Brain waves decoding how we 

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feel. 
They turn that abstract real. 

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Yeah, the knowledge is real. 
They peel it back slowly after 

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layer. 
Mine's so deep. 

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Yeah. 
We ride that elevator. 

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So Joey, they were going to 
tackle the controversial finding

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that violent video games lead to
violent behavior. 

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This has been a hotly debated 
topic, but why does this debate 

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even exist? 
Give me the 32nd history. 

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Sure. 
So, you know, we've probably 

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recall Mortal Kombat, the video 
game, you know, how popular it 

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was, still actually very popular
today, but very popular 20 years

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ago. 
And, you know, children were 

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playing it. 
Parents were nervous, freaking 

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out that their kids were playing
it, right. 

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So you have games like Mortal 
Kombat. 

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You have games like Doom. 
You have Senate hearings. 

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You know, you have politicians 
that are freaking out over 

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digitized blood. 
And all of this panic was real 

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enough to create what we know as
the ESRB rating system that we 

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still use today. 
This is the M or the T or the E 

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letters that you see on video 
games today. 

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Right. 
And these these letters are 

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there to denote, you know, 
what's the appropriate audience 

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for these these video games, 
right? 

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And I guess, right. 
So as is oftentimes the case in 

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this country, we tend to develop
policies before the science is 

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there. 
So now the science has caught up

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a little bit, right? 
Right. 

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And so psychologists by the name
of Craig Anderson and Brad 

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Bushman, this kind of early 
2000s, they built what's called 

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the general aggression model. 
It's the idea that violent media

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activates aggressive thoughts, 
hostile feelings and 

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physiological arousal. 
So thinking is that if you 

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rehearse it enough, if you play 
enough video games, it shapes 

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how you think and how you 
behave. 

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And so this initial study here, 
or at least this big meta 

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analysis, they did, I guess 
supported to some degree, right?

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The, the, the claims that there 
was this relationship. 

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So this is like maybe what kind 
of started some of the, the 

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Senate hearings, hearings and so
forth, right? 

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So, but they put serious data 
behind it. 

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So they're 2010 meta analysis 
and psychological Bulletin 

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included about 136 papers and 
130,000 participants across the 

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Eastern and Western countries. 
That particular meta analysis 

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finds significant effects across
6 outcomes, aggressive behavior,

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aggressive thoughts, aggressive 
feelings, physiological arousal,

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reduced empathy, and reduced pro
social behavior. 

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Right. 
And so then the American 

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Psychological Association, they,
they run with this, you know, 

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with this research, right, they 
create, they have policy 

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statements, they have task 
forces and the public message 

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starts to be pretty consistent, 
right? 

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It starts to be something along 
the lines of yes, violent video 

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games increase aggression, cause
violence, etcetera. 

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Right. 
And that's basically been the 

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headline ever since. 
So what went wrong with it, 

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Joey? 
Yeah, well, enter the 

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psychologist by the name of 
Christopher Ferguson at Stetson 

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University. 
He spent 15 years basically 

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saying that the methodology, the
methods of these studies do not 

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hold up. 
And he levels three big 

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criticisms. 
First, how is aggression 

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actually being measured? 
Right. 

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So these lab studies, they don't
actually measure what we would 

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know as real aggression. 
They measure things like how 

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much hot sauce a participant 
decides to give someone who 

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doesn't like spicy food after 
playing a violent video game? 

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Yes, the classic hot sauce 
study. 

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This kind of has some 
similarities to some of the 

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other studies that we've, you 
know, seen pop up in the 

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psychological literature that 
kind of use weird dependent 

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variables that I think might 
open them up to P hacking and 

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other detrimental research 
practices. 

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Yeah, I mean, there's some logic
to it, right? 

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Because in the laboratory 
setting, you can't actually let 

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people hurt each other. 
But does dumping Tabasco in 

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someone's drink, does that 
translate to real world 

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violence? 
Right, That's a serious 

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question. 
That thing is about how we 

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measure aggression, right? 
That's the first. 

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Criticism is about how do we 
measure it? 

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Are these valid measures of real
world aggression? 

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What's the second? 
Criticism. 

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Yeah. 
So it's this idea called 

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publication bias. 
And, you know, put simply, 

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basically this just means that 
studies that find an effect are 

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more likely to get published. 
And you know, we know that the 

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file drawer, you know, the file 
drawer's full of null results 

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that nobody will ever see, 
right? 

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So these meta analysis, they're 
pulling from a bias sample of 

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the literature, the ones that 
are only published, right? 

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Right. 
And just to be clear, this 

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publication bias phenomena is 
not specific to any particular 

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area of psychology or for that 
matter any particular area of 

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science. 
There's just a general 

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proclivity for people to publish
things that have positive 

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results. 
And you can imagine this might 

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be amplified to some degree in 
domains in which there might be 

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some congruency between our 
intuitions and the effect that 

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we're looking for, right? 
And I think in this case, the 

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intuition that violence that you
watch on TV or experience in the

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video game leads to violent 
behavior just seems so palpable 

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and strong. 
So what about the third 

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criticism? 
Yeah, the third is just the 

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reality of confounding 
variables, right? 

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So we're talking about, you 
know, family environment or 

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poverty, pre-existing 
aggression, mental health. 

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And when you control for these 
factors, the effect often either

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shrinks dramatically or it even 
disappears. 

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Well, yeah, that's a problem. 
And the fact that we can't 

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randomly, really randomly 
assigned people to whether 

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they're going to be playing 
violent video games or not, 

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right. 
So from an experimental 

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perspective, we can observe, we 
can do correlational studies, at

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least as it relates to real 
world violence, but it's really 

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hard to do studies in which 
you're manipulating these 

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variables that the issue of 
establishing causality is very 

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challenging. 
And OK, so these are all really,

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really important issues that 
kind of undermine the 

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credibility of those results. 
So now we have 2 camps, right? 

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We have this group of people who
claim there is an effect and we 

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have another group that is 
saying not so fast that the 

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methodology doesn't hold up. 
Where do we go from there? 

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Yeah, here's where it gets 
interesting. 

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There's a 2019 paper that was 
published in Psychological 

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Science by Mather and 
Vanderweel. 

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They tried to reconcile these 
kind of competing meta analysis,

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right? 
And their finding is surprising.

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When you look at the full 
distribution of effect sizes 

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across all the major meta 
analysis, they're actually quite

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consistent. 
However, the effects are small, 

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right? 
So typically you know effect 

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sizes between R equals point O 8
and .2 and they almost always 

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point in the detrimental 
direction. 

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OK, so let's put this into 
context, Joy. 

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There's this thing called the 
common language effect size. 

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In a common language effect 
size, essentially what we're 

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doing is we're estimating the 
probability that a randomly 

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selected person from the group 
of participants who play violent

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video games will be more 
aggressive than a randomly 

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selected person from the group 
that doesn't play violent video 

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games. 
In this case, if we translate 

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that effect of violent video 
games into a common language 

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effect size that that R equal 
.08 to .20, we basically get a 

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probability that somewhere 
between .53 and .56. 

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To benchmark this, if the effect
were exactly 0, this probability

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would be identical to a coin 
flip or .5. 

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In this case, we're scarcely 
above a coin flip. 

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So it would seem that the camps 
aren't really disagreeing about 

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the data, they are disagreeing 
about whether those small effect

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sizes matter. 
Right. 

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And so, you know, it's not 
necessarily, you know, video 

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games cause violence versus it's
totally fine. 

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It's, you know, there's a small 
but consistent signal. 

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And what does that actually 
mean? 

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The most recent salvo in this 
debate is a 2025 paper in 

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Aggressive Behavior by Miles 
Novello and Anderson. 

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So what's the story there? 
Right. 

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So in 2019, a high profile study
by Zabilski and Weinstein, they 

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pre registered, you know, they 
they utilized open science, 

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right? 
They had a big sample and they 

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found no effect of violent video
games on aggression. 

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It got a lot of press because of
how rigorous it looked. 

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But Zabilski, did I say that 
name, right? 

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Yeah. 
OK. 

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They made the data publicly 
available, right? 

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Yeah, and exactly. 
And Miles Novello and Anderson, 

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right. 
They went back in, they 

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reanalyzed it, and they found 
that the original analysis was 

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controlling for trait aggression
when trying to predict state 

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aggression. 
And these two constructs, they 

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share so much variance that 
you're essentially kind of 

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partially out the dependent 
variable from itself. 

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It's like predicting someone's 
temperature by controlling for 

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their temperature. 
Yeah, that that might be a 

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little bit of an overstatement, 
but I get the point here, right,

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Right. 
But I think it's a legitimate 

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question, you know, how do we 
control for that pre-existing 

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trait level tendency to be 
aggressive, right. 

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And I think this also probably 
gets to the heart and soul of 

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this issue of we can't randomly 
assign people to play those 

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video games, right? 
They're people self selected to 

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play video games. 
So are people who are sort of 

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have a violent tendency to begin
with, a more aggressive 

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tendency? 
Are they the ones choosing to 

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play those violent video games? 
And that's why we see the 

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effects. 
So the point here though, I 

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guess is that when they reran 
the analysis without, you know, 

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controlling for trade 
aggression, the effect 

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reappeared, right? 
Right. 

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It did. 
And you know, it's a striking 

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finding, right? 
And so the broader lesson 

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they're making is, you know, 
open science and pre 

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registration, they're necessary 
but not sufficient either, 

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right? 
I mean you can pre register a 

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flawed strategy. 
Now this is absolutely true, but

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one of the benefits of open 
science and pre registration is 

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is that you're you're making 
that data available for people 

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to challenge the findings to. 
Scrutinize exactly. 

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And so whether or not you agree 
with, you know what my Altavilla

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and Anderson found, the fact 
that they're actually able to go

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in and re analyze the data like 
this is, is a win for science. 

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OK, so here's what I keep coming
back to though, Joey. 

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Video game sales have exploded 
over the last 20 years. 

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There are an estimated 2.7 
billion active gamers worldwide,

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roughly 1/4 of the planet. 
It's a lot of gamers. 

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It is, And over that same time, 
youth violence in the US has 

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actually gone down 
significantly. 

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Right. 
And you know, of course, this 

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doesn't disprove a small effect,
right? 

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There's lots of factors that 
drive crime rate, but it's hard 

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to square with such a strong 
causal narrative that often has 

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been exemplified right and 
purported. 

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And some recent analysis, Joey 
suggests that when you properly 

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account for prior aggression, 
video game exposure might 

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explain less than 1% of the 
variance in later aggressive 

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behavior. 
Wow. 

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Well, less than 1%. 
I mean, that's not nothing, but 

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maybe kind of close close to it.
I mean, you know, it's not 

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nothing. 
It's close to it. 

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But, you know, when we compare 
it to things like, you know, 

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family violence or poverty or 
peer delinquency, it's, you 

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know, it's just not where you'd 
expect to focus a public health 

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campaign. 
Right. 

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I think you're this is really 
good point, Joey. 

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I'm glad you made that because, 
you know, if we have to pick out

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something that we're going to 
invest in to reduce violence 

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that we're going to, you know, 
do to improve youth mental 

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health or, you know, address 
violent tendency in youth, this 

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might not be the most impactful 
investment of our of our money. 

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And yet every time there's a 
mass shooting, video games are 

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literally on the front page 
within 24 hours in the news 

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media. 
This is what we have to. 

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Address Yeah. 
And I think it's, you know, a 

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lot of times we want a 
scapegoat, right? 

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People want a legible scapegoat.
And you know the narrative that 

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you know someone who played 
violent video games or simply, 

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you know that the person 
suffered from untreated mental 

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illness, right? 
These are, you know, easy 

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explanations right for people to
understand. 

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Right. 
And I'm just going to go a 

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little political on us here. 
I don't like to do this on a 

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show, but you know, I have to 
say when when the when the 

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politicians point to mental 
health as the preeminent 

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explanation for these mass 
shooting events and yet turn 

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around and do nothing to help 
address mental health in America

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and in fact undermine it 
actively by pulling funding from

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the important research that's 
done and the important 

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foundations and centers that 
support healthy communities and 

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mental Wellness. 
I mean, it just blows my mind 

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that on the one hand, oh, it's a
mental health problem, and on 

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the other hand, let's pull the 
money that supports mental 

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health, OK? 
Right. 

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It should be a bipartisan issue 
that everyone should be focused 

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on. 
It absolutely should. 

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OK, so the bottom line is, Joey,
I need to know what does the 

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science actually say here? 
Right. 

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So in plain language, here's my 
honest take away, Here's my 

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honest read. 
You know, 1, you know, there is 

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a small consistent effect in the
literature linking violent video

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games to higher aggression 
scores. 

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It shows up cross cultures and 
methods. 

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And so again, just to reiterate,
we see effect sizes, you know, 

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small effect sizes around point 
O8R equals point O, 8 and .2. 

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Again, these are real effect 
sizes, but they're small. 

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Right. 
And if I wanted to actually pick

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out someone who I thought maybe 
had it might be at risk for 

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having violent tendencies based 
on their video game history. 

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I mean, it's going to be really 
hard to do, right? 

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Just very hard on that, right? 
It's basically a coin flip, 

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basically, yeah. 
The second issue though is the 

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effect is contested for 
legitimate reasons, right? 

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Proxy measures, publication 
bias, the existence of 

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confounding variables that are 
not controlled for. 

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There are real methodological 
problems with this literature. 

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You know, the criticisms aren't 
just bad faith attacks on the 

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literature. 
These are real criticisms. 

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And three, you know, the real 
world evidence again, that we 

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observe just doesn't support a 
strong causal story, right? 

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Again, crime has fallen as 
gaming exploded and we said 

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earlier it's not necessarily 
evidence alone, but it doesn't 

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seem to support that strong 
narrative that there's a link. 

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Okay, and I guess where this is 
the number, this is the fourth 

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of our criticisms is individual 
differences matter, right. 

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So someone with a pre-existing 
aggressive temperament and a 

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rough home life may be more 
susceptible. 

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The average gamer is probably 
not meaningfully at risk for 

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developing these violent 
tendencies. 

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So I think the scientifically 
responsible take away is this, 

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that, you know, we can say video
games are probably violent. 

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Video games are probably a very 
minor risk factor for aggressive

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00:14:36,880 --> 00:14:39,280
thoughts, aggressive feelings in
the short term. 

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00:14:39,400 --> 00:14:43,680
But again, the narrative that 
they drive real world violence 

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is just not well supported by 
the literature. 

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00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:49,240
Of course dismissing the entire 
research areas junk science 

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00:14:49,240 --> 00:14:51,440
isn't right either. 
So there's there's a lot of 

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00:14:51,440 --> 00:14:53,480
nuance here. 
Yeah, well, you know, that we 

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00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:56,040
can, we can come back to the 
topic of junk science at some 

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00:14:56,040 --> 00:14:57,960
point again, because I think 
there's plenty of it out there 

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00:14:57,960 --> 00:15:01,000
and there's no lack of it in in 
science right now. 

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00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:03,600
But right. 
So I, yeah, we can't dismiss all

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00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:05,280
of it. 
On the other hand, you know, the

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00:15:05,280 --> 00:15:07,400
truth is that the effects are 
small, they're complicated, 

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00:15:07,400 --> 00:15:09,600
they're context dependent. 
We're not going to always get it

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00:15:09,600 --> 00:15:11,360
right. 
The goal is that we're going to 

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00:15:11,360 --> 00:15:13,560
iterate towards truth at some 
point. 

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00:15:13,640 --> 00:15:15,320
Absolutely. 
And that's right, why we why we 

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00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:17,840
do what we do. 
Thanks for listening to Cracking

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00:15:17,840 --> 00:15:19,880
the Show on Psychological 
Science. 

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00:15:20,160 --> 00:15:22,480
I'm Joey and I'm Mike and see 
you next time. 

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00:15:22,520 --> 00:15:25,880
This program is brought to you 
by fear. 

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00:15:26,480 --> 00:15:28,720
Blame the game. 
Don't ask why. 

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00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:31,200
Turn the dial. 
Watch truth fly. 

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00:15:31,680 --> 00:15:34,080
Simple answers. 
We've got 3 yo. 

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00:15:34,240 --> 00:15:38,760
No statistics, just TV. 
Are you tired of complex 

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00:15:38,760 --> 00:15:42,960
explanations like social 
context, family environment, or 

330
00:15:43,440 --> 00:15:45,400
literally anything else that 
exists? 

331
00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:49,560
Well, good news, Science 
somewhere maybe has confirmed 

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00:15:49,560 --> 00:15:54,200
that everything you don't like 
is caused by video games. 

333
00:15:55,520 --> 00:16:00,120
Probably also snacks. 
And definitely Wi-Fi signals we 

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00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:03,040
don't understand yet. 
Yes, our cutting edge study 

335
00:16:03,040 --> 00:16:06,720
found that when participants 
pressed a button in a lab, they 

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00:16:06,720 --> 00:16:09,280
were mildly more annoyed 
afterward. 

337
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,160
Great brick Civilization status 
at risk. 

338
00:16:13,480 --> 00:16:17,600
Rest start, lose control. 
It eats your brain and maybe 

339
00:16:17,600 --> 00:16:20,560
your soul or relation. 
We don't need that. 

340
00:16:20,880 --> 00:16:23,200
Just point to games and never 
look back. 

341
00:16:23,560 --> 00:16:27,200
Wait, what about all those 
boring things like effect sizes 

342
00:16:27,200 --> 00:16:30,960
and replication? 
Silence that thought immediately

343
00:16:31,160 --> 00:16:35,840
because our experts agree if a 
teenager plays a fantasy game 

344
00:16:35,920 --> 00:16:41,760
and later spills cereal that is 
scientifically indistinguishable

345
00:16:41,760 --> 00:16:46,000
from impending societal 
collapse, we now go live to a 

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00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:48,280
panel of experts. 
Just be next. 

347
00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:50,840
Yes. 
Could Tetris cause architectural

348
00:16:50,840 --> 00:16:54,240
instability? 
We are monitoring the situation 

349
00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:56,120
closely. 
And Candy Crush. 

350
00:16:56,120 --> 00:16:57,800
Let's not panic. 
But yes. 

351
00:16:58,920 --> 00:17:02,160
But you can help. 
Simply blame the most visible 

352
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:05,319
technology available and ignore 
everything else. 

353
00:17:05,319 --> 00:17:09,319
It's easy, it's fun, and best of
all, it requires no additional 

354
00:17:09,319 --> 00:17:13,400
thinking. 
Meanwhile in reality the data is

355
00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:18,880
complicated. 
Like very boringly complicated 

356
00:17:19,319 --> 00:17:23,720
track the shell or don't try. 
Simpler stories always fly. 

357
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:27,359
Cracking the shell on 
psychological science. 

358
00:17:27,359 --> 00:17:39,320
Where nuance goes to die. 
Hey, this is Mike from Crack in 

359
00:17:39,320 --> 00:17:40,840
the Shell and Psychological 
Science. 

360
00:17:41,080 --> 00:17:43,040
Just a quick thank you to all of
our listeners. 

361
00:17:43,200 --> 00:17:46,080
Joey, Abby, Ben, and I genuinely
love putting these episodes 

362
00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:48,200
together for you. 
If you're enjoying the show, 

363
00:17:48,360 --> 00:17:50,800
we'd really appreciate it if you
hit the subscribe button. 

364
00:17:51,040 --> 00:17:53,320
It's free and it helps us more 
than you might think. 

365
00:17:53,440 --> 00:17:56,120
Got a topic you want us to dig 
into or just want to reach out? 

366
00:17:56,360 --> 00:17:59,640
Drop us a line at 
crackintheshellandpsychology@gmail.com.

367
00:17:59,920 --> 00:18:02,920
We'd love to hear from you. 
And for now, maybe take a break 

368
00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:05,640
from the screens, step outside, 
and spend a little bit more time

369
00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:07,160
connecting with the people 
around you.