Annotated Bibliography for Video Game Aggression, Psychopathology, Addiction, and Treatment

Aggression
Engelhardt, C. R., Bartholow, B. D., Kerr, G. T., & Bushman, B. J. (2011). This is your brain on violent video games: Neural desensitization to violence predicts increased aggression following violent video game exposure.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1033-1036. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.03.027
In this article, the authors were investigating the neuronal changes that occur when someone plays violent video games.
To do this, the researchers exposed 64 video game players to one of two conditions, a violent or non-violent video game, followed by exposure to various neutral and violent pictures.

During these conditions, participants had their brain activity recorded using EEG techniques with specific emphasis on P3 brain activity, which correlates with arousal in response to aggression; higher P3 activation indicates greater arousal or concern and lower P3 activation indicates lower arousal or concern.
Following those exposures, participants were set up to perform a competitive game with a fabricated opponent involving noise blasts of varying intensity and duration; the idea behind that component is to assess the amount of aggression with the assumption that increased intensity and duration indicates increased aggression.

Results focused the pattern of P3 activation present during the exposure to violent images and the noise blast performance.
Those exposed to violent video games demonstrated greater degrees of aggression during the noise blast component regardless of their prior history of playing violent video games.
However, an interaction was found such that those with high exposure to violent video games in real life had lower P3 activation than those with lower violent video game exposure in real life; thus, chronic exposure to violent video games decreased sensitivity to violence at the neurological level.
Thus, this article demonstrates that chronic exposure to violent video games causes neuronal changes, which can decrease sensitivity to violence resulting in a subsequent increase in violence or aggressive tendencies.

Ferguson, C. J., Garza, A., Jerabeck, J., Ramos, R., & Galindo, M. (2013). Not worth the fuss after all? Cross-sectional and prospective data on violent video game influences on aggression, visuospatial cognition, and mathematics abilities in a sample of youth.
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42, 109-122. doi: 10.1007/s10964-012-9803-6
In this article, the authors begin by providing a concise review of the context, history, and limitations of violent video game research, leading into the current study examining the relationship between life history of exposure to violent video game playing and various negative outcome measures such as depression, delinquency, aggression, bullying, and academic performance.

To do this the authors administered a plethora of relevant questionnaires and assessment instruments to 333 minors and their families (primarily Hispanic) at the first meeting and again at a one year follow up phone call (N=143). A massive amount of data was collected and a plethora of relevant findings reported.
The most significant, in the eyes of the researchers, was the relatively weak link between exposure to video game violence and aggression or other negative outcomes either acutely or over the long-term as reported by both children and their parents.

Instead, other factors, such as antisocial tendencies tended to be greater predictors of aggressive outcomes.
Antisocial tendencies interacted with other concerns, such that antisocial youth demonstrated greater cognitive performance as positively correlated with violent video game exposure, while no such relationship existed for youth low on antisocial tendencies.

Based on this and other research, the authors argue that the social cognitive learning theory most people use as the basis for stating that violent video games cause violent behavior, may be better replaced with a developmental and cognitive integrative theory, specifically the uses and gratifications perspective.
The key idea with that perspective is that violent video game use results from inclinations to those activities, such that those inclinations are mediating variables for future aggression or violence while the games themselves are merely moderating variables and should be seen as secondary rather than primary causative factors.

Based on this approach, the authors call for a major revamping of the current research approach and suggest that the association between violent video games and real-world violence may be less direct and less intense than previously suggested.

Fikkers, K. M., Piotrowski, J. T., Weeda, W. D., Vossen, H. G. M., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2013).
Double dose: High family conflict enhances the effect of media violence exposure on adolescents’ aggression. Societies, 3, 280-292. doi: 10.3390/soc3030280
This study aimed to determine how exposure to violence in media, including violent video games, and family violence or conflict interact to contribute to aggression in adolescents.

To do this, the authors conducted multiple surveys four months apart assessing media, family problems, and aggression, in nearly 500 adolescents.
The research team found that family conflict and violent media exposure both increased aggression but that the effect was enhanced when both family and conflict and exposure to violent video games were increased, beyond the singular effects of either factor.

In other words, there is an interaction such that individuals living in families with high conflict may be at considerably higher risk of being aggressive or violent as a consequence of playing violent video games.
The other side of that coin is that low conflict families may serve as protective factors minimizing the negative impact of playing violent video games.
The best explanation for this finding is that violence becomes normative across multiple domains with violent video games and high family conflict, lowering the motivation to restrain from violence and increasing the proclivity to consider violence as a normal response.

Hasan, Y., Begue, L., & Bushman, B. J. (2012). Viewing the world through “blood-red tinted glasses”: The hostile expectation bias mediates the link between violent video game exposure and aggression.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 953-956. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.12.019
These researchers attempted to explore the link between exposure to violent video games and aggression by exploring how the tendency to have hostile expectations can connect those variables.
To do this, they exposed 136 participants to one of two conditions (violent or non-violent video game play) and then had them read an ambivalent story that could be interpreted to have hostility and then compete in a noise blast test to assess aggression, as is frequently

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