Do violent video games make people aggressive? Study suggests they don’t

It’s often thought that playing violent video games leads to aggressive behaviour. So those YouTube videos of young men smashing up their game controllers, punching holes in the wall, or demolishing their monitors after a particularly intense gaming session are the result of participating in too much on-screen violence, right?

Well, although that seems like a common-sense conclusion, it may not be true. Research by Richard Ryan, a professor of psychology at Rochester University in the US, shows that such violence – known as ‘rage quitting’ or ‘game rage’ – is more correlated to feelings of frustration relating to how well the player played the game, than the content of the game.

Players have a need to master the game, and they experience a loss of self-esteem if they don’t play well. That can lead to aggression, Ryan says.

“The idea grew out of some earlier research, where we saw that the satisfaction players get from games comes from the feeling of competence that results from the play,” says Ryan, who carried out the research with Professor Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK.

“We thought that the frustration that results from not playing the game well might be a cause of aggression. The theory out there is that post-game aggression is caused by the content of the game. But our results showed that post-game frustration with competence was a lot more salient as a factor.”