Much ado about nothing: the misestimation and overinterpretation of violent video game effects in eastern and western nations: comment on Anderson et al. (2010)

Abstract

The issue of violent video game influences on youth violence and aggression remains intensely debated in the scholarly literature and among the general public. Several recent meta-analyses, examining outcome measures most closely related to serious aggressive acts, found little evidence for a relationship between violent video games and aggression or violence. In a new meta-analysis, C. A. Anderson et al. (2010) questioned these findings. However, their analysis has several methodological issues that limit the interpretability of their results. In their analysis, C. A. Anderson et al. included many studies that do not relate well to serious aggression, an apparently biased sample of unpublished studies, and a "best practices" analysis that appears unreliable and does not consider the impact of unstandardized aggression measures on the inflation of effect size estimates. They also focused on bivariate correlations rather than better controlled estimates of effects. Despite a number of methodological flaws that all appear likely to inflate effect size estimates, the final estimate of r = .15 is still indicative of only weak effects. Contrasts between the claims of C. A. Anderson et al. (2010) and real-world data on youth violence are discussed.