Two years ago, Dr. Paul Levinson, chair of the communication and media studies department at Fordham, appeared on CNBC to discuss the effects of video game violence. Recently, the clip from the show has received a lot of attention on the Internet and has renewed discussion on the topic on the wesite digg.com.
On this show, Levinson was asked to debate against Jack Thompson, a former attorney and anti-video game crusader. Thompson testified and helped write legislation in Louisiana in an attempt to pass state and federal regulations to ban minors from purchasing video games with mature content.
Many video gamers feel "wrongly accused by Thompson, who goes around claiming that video games cause violence," Levinson said. "I went on the show to try to explain to the audience and Jack Thompson the difference between causation and correlation in this issue."
According to Levinson, a causal link is a situation where one event directly causes another. Video games and violence, however, are correlated, which means it is unclear which event caused the other. Therefore, it is possible that video games cause violent behavior and/or that people with violent natures are attracted to violent games.
During the debate on CNBC, Jack Thompson sought to prove his point by citing an August 2005 American Psychological Association study that shows a "direct causal link" between violence in video games and violent acts in real life.
Levinson asserts that this and other studies, which claim to be able to prove that violence in video games corresponds to violence in real life, are incorrect. He claims that there is no way to scientifically prove that violence is caused by games, that violence could be there already and the act may be a manifestation of many other circumstances. The studies do show, however, that there is a correlation between violent video games and real-life acts of violence. This correlation, however, could be caused by many different factors outside of violent games.
2008 Woodie Awards
Be the first to comment on this story