Literature Review

There are many different opinions concerning whether or not video game contribute to violent behaviour. Anderson 2003 states that “violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behaviour, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased in helping behaviour.” However, even with this theory being accepted my most of the research and even gaming community, it has still not stopped people from putting forward counter arguments. For example Kierkegaard 2008 has put forward evidence that states that video game violence is actually decreasing the amount of violent behaviour.

He states “Violent crime, particularly among the young, has decreased dramatically since the early 1990s while video games have steadily increased in popularity. For example, in 2005, there were 1,360,088 violent crimes reported in the USA compared with 1,423,677 the year before. With millions of sales of violent games, the world should be seeing an epidemic of violence, instead, violence has declined.” Both of these people have strong points and they have both done extensive research to support there claims. As such it has been decided that the best thing to do is to conduct research ourselves and compare the results with Anderson and Kierkegaard to see if the results support or go against there theories.