Video Games Not Linked to Violence (for once)

Image via ICGamers

I'm sure you've all heard of tons of studies and statistics about how video games are linked to violence and depression. However, most of these studies don't actually take everything into consideration. In my mind questions always arise about whether or not the correlation actually implied causation. Meaning, just because there is a correlation in the statistics, does that necessarily mean one caused the other? And even if it does, how do we know which came first, the chicken or the egg? (Or in this case the violent behavoirs or the video games?)



Comic via xkcd

Recently a study was done that actually evaluated both violent media, and personality features. The paper was titled "Personality and media influences on violence and depression in a cross-national sample of young adults: Data from Mexican Americans, English and Croatians" and was written by Christopher J. Ferguson.

Basically, the study showed that after a personality profile was taken into account there was no longer a correlation between video games and violent behaviors or depression. This was something previous studies failed to take into account.

An article about this study can be found at Kotaku, and it has some more information about it.