Prescott, Sargent, and Hull. 2017. Metaanalysis of the relationship between violent video game play and physical aggression over time

Prescott, Sargent, and Hull use meta analysis to determine the links between video game violence, aggression, and ethnicity. The following is my annotation of their paper.



This study seeks to determine the reliability and effects of the claim that exposure to video game violence causes aggression. It also seeks to find the effect, if any, that ethnicity has on exposure to video game violence and aggression. Aggression in the study is categorized as “overt physical aggression” in order to avoid false inflations of results for minor increases in aggression. As a result, a weak link was found between video game violence and aggression. In addition, this result varied by ethnicity. The strongest correlation was for white participants, and the weakest correlation was for Hispanic participants.

In order to gain studies for meta analysis, this study sorted through a collection of databases with combinations of relevant keywords such as video games and aggressive behavior. All studies were included for sorting regardless of publication or language. In order to be eligible, studies must have had at least a 3 week period between initial and secondary aggression measuring. The studies must have assessed either violent and mature video games, or other media such as violent movies. In addition, the studies must have measured overt aggression, as verbal and hypothetical aggression would not be considered strong enough. The studies were also restricted to longitudinal designs. This yielded 24 studies of over 17,000 participants.

This study primarily focused on the causality of video game violence as it relates to overt aggression. However, it contains detailed information about the effect of ethnicity in this causal relationship, like what was found in “Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review.” by Anderson

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