Psychologist sticks up for games in Arizona killer case

Check out this blurb from Scientific American, containing quotes from psychologist Christopher Ferguson…

“There is still some debate about whether it is a risk factor, and I would argue that it’s not,” Ferguson says of video games, noting that violent crimes among juveniles have been on the decline even as games have increased in both prevalence and graphicness. Similarly, studies by Ferguson and by other researchers, such as economist Todd Kendall, have found a decrease in rates of rape that coincides with increased availability of pornography. “Once again you see this sort of inverse relationship across not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well between pornography consumption and the actual rates of sexual violence,” Ferguson says. That does not mean that video games prevent violence, or that pornography curbs sexual crime, but it does highlight the difficulty in establishing a casual relationship between any one medium and a group’s behavior, let alone the actions of an individual.

Nice to have some sanity during this mess. If only more people could bring this level of sanity and reason to all of our issues.

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