The Ratings Riddle: A Conversation with Doug Gentile, Part Four

The final part of my interview with Doug Gentile, Assistant Professor of Psychology at ISU, concerning the results of his study on violent games and aggressive behavior. (The interview follows below.)

Part One | Part Two | Part Three

Game On: You referenced different types of personality characteristics related to the intersection of violence and cooperation in MMOs. How do you distinguish reliably between player types? Or can we?

Doug Gentile: We can. It requires longitudinal studies. And our study--study three--is the first longitudinal study that there's been, but it's a short term one, it's just six months. What we need to really answer that question is multi-year studies where we can track those changes across time. That said, there's been one study--not specifically video games--but that did track across two years with several measurements. And what they found, I think, is what we will also find when we do this type of study with video games: that certainly naturally aggressive kids seek out more media violence, but that, in turn, makes them more aggressive, which in turn makes them seek out more media violence, which in turn makes them more aggressive. It's a vicious circle. This makes it clear that when people ask whether it's aggressive kids who play these violent games, or the games that make the kids more aggressive, and the correct answer is "I don't care." Because it doesn't matter what starts the ball rolling, what matters is what gives that ball momentum and direction. So yes, aggressive kids do seek out more violent media, but the violent media don't make them less aggressive. It adds momentum and direction. And some kids who aren't already naturally aggressive start becoming more aggressive. So both can start it. What starts it isn't the interesting question. The interesting question really is, how do we change the direction and momentum so we have fewer kids being bullied.

GO: The goal being to mitigate unhealthy aggression?

DG: Right, and I think it is important to realize there are two sides to this goal. The one side is minimizing the harm, and certainly when we're looking at, say, the violent game effects research, that's what that's focused on, i.e. let's get this information out to parents and educators and policy makers so that people can do something about it. But the other side is maximizing the benefits, because video games are excellent teachers. They're kind of the perfect teacher in many respects. They give individualized instruction. They give immediate feedback. They give rewards. They adapt to the level of the learner. They give what's called in education circles a spiral curriculum, where you have to have learned one thing and mastered it before you can go on to the next. And you think about the way levels are structured and skills you need. They're just masterful teaching tools. And that's just if we wanted to concentrate on the things that are intended to be taught. And of course the makers of GTA don't intend to teach aggression. So many of the effects are unintended teaching, and certainly the violence is there. But other effects. Another study I was involved in showed that in laparoscopic surgery, where they work from outside your body with instruments on the ends of sticks and the surgeon is staring at a screen, what we found was laparoscopic surgeons who played more video games in the past were much better at advanced laparoscopic surgical skills. In fact it was a better predictor of their advanced surgical skill than how many years of training they had and how many surgeries they'd actually performed. It's an amazing result, and why would it be, because surgeons aren't playing surgical simulators. Well, there are a number of other things that are trained in playing games, like 2D-to-3D transfer, learning to get three-dimensional information off of the flat screen and make fine distinctions in fine movements. Learning to choreograph both hands together, and non-dominant hand dexterity. Targeting, tracking, you know, skills that are needed in the video games that also are needed in the surgical domain. And the games they were playing weren't designed to teach them those things. Nonetheless, whatever you practice you get better at.

GO: Setting the scientific merits of this particular study aside for a moment, how does good science engage public policy without being drowned by the media noise machine?

DG: I don't know that I have the answer. I think that public policy has been far too myopic in that the only thing that's seriously advanced by public policy types is access restriction. And I don't think that's the way we should be going, probably. At least not now. I would love to say let's stop trying to write laws that just limit access. There are others things we could do. One of the problems that parents have is we've got all these different rating systems. We've got video game systems which are different from arcade systems, TV and movie and music and internet systems, and they're all different. Do you understand all eleven symbols in the TV system?

GO: Eleven symbols for TV? Really? I know games and movies, otherwise I'm not even paying attention.

DG: You're exactly like the rest of the public. And so, one thing we could do that would really help parents is make one universal rating system. And of course every time I bring this up with Pat Vance or Jack Valenti, they all sit there and say "But movies aren't the same as video games or TV." Of course. But the things that parents care about are. The parents care about the violence and how much and how graphic is it. They care about sexual content and nudity and offensive language, and that's already what you're rating. Yes, we've got all these different ratings systems, but they're all basically rating the same stuff anyhow. Why not have one? And that would be a huge benefit to parents. Then there are other things we could do with public policy. We could mandate that the ratings actually have to achieve a certain amount of reliability and validity. I have studies and other people out of Harvard have studies showing that the ratings systems really aren't very good. That a lot of the time, even if the parents were using the system religiously, their kids would be exposed to stuff that they didn't think they were going to be. For example with, you know, TV seems to be the worst. With TV-14 rated shows, only I believe it's about 14% of TV-14 shows do parents think are actually okay for 14 and up. So we could put policies into place that say research has to be done to make sure that the ratings are reliable, that they always say what's in them, that they're actually valid, that they match up with what parents think. We could mandate that they're administered by an independent board rather than one that's related to each industry as they are now. We could perhaps mandate that even if we didn't do that, we have one independent board create the ratings system in collaboration with all the different media, and I'd love to also see in collaboration with pediatricians and researchers, etc. And they train all the media raters, and the media raters have to go in for regular training and get certified, so we know that everyone's using the rating system the same way. We could have public policy about public information campaigns. We could put PSAs out. We could mandate that boxes carry a label showing something like "research has shown violent video games over time increase the risk of unhealthy aggressive behavior" the same way cigarettes carry a label. There's all sorts of things we could do about education, there's all sorts of things we could about the ratings, and no one talks about that. And making improvements to the ratings system, in my opinion, would be far more effective than just trying to punish retailers.

Comments

It really is not this technical. Common Sense, as I have stated is non-existant. Why do we feel the need to have to go off of statisical numbers insted of going to do the right thing. This is all good and all, but the thing is all that needs to be done is as parents we all need to do our job period. I have worked in the gaming industry for many years and the thing that I was finding out was very disturbing. When GTA:Vice City came out, we had a line at EB Games at Hickory Hollow Mall in Nashville, TN, and there were a lot of young, very young people in the line with their parents. I would explain that this game is not really for your kids, and they would be like "It's OK! I just shook my head at it and went on. If this was about 10yrs ago I wouldn't care cause the parents back then was parents, but now it worries me. Agressive Behavior shees--If I was too aggressive I got popped. I'm sorry I just think this is too techinical. Be a Parent not a Friend!!!

Docusa

April 17, 2007

9:29 AM PT

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