"It goes against common sense, but the violent video game content itself doesn't seem to have any significant impact on the hostile attribution bias; it's actually just playing any kind of video game that does," explains Roxanne Toniutti. “Furthermore, according to the study, this is also true for groups that are at risk for social maladjustment. However, for this target group, the violent video game content could have a negative impact if it is associated with other risk factors (such as a disadvantaged socio-economic-cultural context); however it's only a trend within the study. If the study had included a larger sample of young people, this interaction would likely have been more visible.” According to Cécile Mathys, some results are really on the borderline of a significant threshold: with more subjects per group - though for a graduate dissertation with this kind of research protocol, there was already a large sample size - other elements would probably have emerged and more conclusive results would probably have accentuated some trends that could already be detected, or could have confirmed some results that were just below the surface.

A critical look

In addition to the limited number of participants (and lack of diversity and identical playing conditions in each school), the author puts her study in perspective: "We noticed that a majority of our participants didn't usually respect the age ratings for these kinds of games. In fact, 67 % of the young people explained that they usually played games with much more violent content - with decapitated heads, blood spurts, and guns and knives. In that case, maybe the game we used was not violent enough to generate a significant increase in hostility?" Cécile Mathys mentions that none of them expected that so many children would be used to playing games with levels of violence that are much higher than those recommended for their age group. "Parents probably need to be made aware of this," she says.

Roxanne Tonuitti also raises another issue: it's possible that there weren’t enough noticeable differences between the two games used in the study. After all, football tackles are not very mild-mannered or civilised… "Games that we may perceive as 'neutral' may not actually be that neutral," says Cécile Mathys. "We should probably look more deeply into the issue and talk about what a violent game is, what is 'tolerated' violence, and think about the image of violence in the game, before we even try to determine whether violent games lead to violent behaviour."

Lastly, Roxanne Toniutti explains that young people may view the test questions on hostile attribution bias as relatively transparent. "You're studying how mean we are," some students told her... the risk being that they will then give answers that make them seem like "nice boys"...

The dangers of frustration

Despite the author’s reservations, what can we deduce from her results? The first significant conclusion: "It's not the content of the game itself that counts, but the game as a particular medium," she analyses. “The type of medium is more important than the content. In itself, the video game has an impact." This is most likely due to the fact that the game exacerbates feelings of frustration and competition, as other authors have shown. In this case, the frustration can stem from several causes: the children didn't choose the game they were assigned, they had to stop playing whether the game was finished or not, and in many cases, some of them were losing or had lost. And it has been demonstrated that frustration increases the likelihood of aggressive behaviour. Similarly, an increase in hostile attribution bias can occur in children who compete with a form of artificial intelligence, whether they are trying to win a game or beat a record