Psychologist Says 80% of School Shooters Don’t Have Any Interest in Videogames
Still pretty human
With the recent meeting US President Donald Trump had with key game industry executives such as Take-Two and Zenimax CEOs, the media spotlight is sadly once again focusing on school shooters and their purported indoctrination to violence by videogames.
What’s perhaps even more troublesome is that these conversations seldom, if ever, include researchers and scientists. For instance, psychologist Patrick Markey, Professor at the Villanova University, has been looking into this specific issue for years now and not just for videogames (here’s a 2014 paper on violent movies and severe acts of violence), either.
In another 2014 paper (Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data) centered on videogames and violence, psychologist Patrick Markey reported that not only was there a lack of evidence of games contributing to these acts of violence, but major releases of violent videogames actually coincided with a decrease in such crimes.
Contrary to the claims that violent video games are linked to aggressive assaults and homicides, no evidence was found to suggest that this medium was a major (or minor) contributing cause of violence in the United States.
Annual trends in video game sales for the past 33 years were unrelated to violent crime both concurrently and up to 4 years later. Unexpectedly, monthly sales of video games were related to concurrent decreases in aggravated assaults and were unrelated to homicides. Searches for violent video game walkthroughs and guides were also related to decreases in aggravated
assaults and homicides 2 months later. Finally, homicides tended to decrease in the months following the release of popular M-rated violent video games.
This paper was likely the foundation for Dr. Markey’s more recent book Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong, published about a year ago and available for purchase on Amazon.
The book, co-authored with fellow psychologist Chris Ferguson, includes several key findings that go in the exact opposite direction of the narrative that violent videogames have anything to do with these tragedies. Earlier today, while arguing against several anti-videogames articles appeared this week on the topic, Dr. Markey posted a few relevant pages from his own book on Twitter (the post is linked on the top).
Admittedly, this specific study is from 2002. However, the numbers haven’t changed even with the latest tragedies according to psychologist Patrick Markey and only 13-20% of the school shooters had interest in games as opposed to circa 70% of the high school population.
Will Donald Trump enact any measure to restrict violent games and media? At this point, we can only hope he won’t. Clearly the issues with school shooters and mass shooters in general lie elsewhere.
