Broad interpretations have weakened research into possible link between TV, movies and video games and gun assaults.


Violent movies, television shows and video games are common targets after senseless shootings. So it should not be surprising that among President Obama's list of recommendations to deal with gun violence, he wants to lift a congressional ban against researching a relationship between "video games, media images and violence" by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adam Lanza, the school shooter in Newtown, Conn., reportedly played violent video games such as Call of Duty.
If the CDC is to proceed, it will have to take into account the single biggest weakness of previous research: the absence of an agreed upon definition of "media violence" and "behavioral aggression." There is no collective body of research that has shown a convincing, consistent connection between violent media and gun assaults. Indeed, research has shown that violent video games don't hold any greater risk for provoking behavioral aggression than any other media messages consumed by children who are mentally well.

Nonetheless, a University of Michigan team found in 2003 that "research suggests that every violent TV show (a child sees) increases a little bit the likelihood of a child growing up to behave more aggressively in some situation." However, in a 2005 article that reviewed decades of media violence research, the British medical journal The Lancet noted the link between media violence consumption and later aggressive behavior is problematic, and that there have been inconsistent and contradictory findings among researchers.

Why is there disagreement? Here are two reasons:
Beginning in the 1970s, researchers began defining media violence so broadly that it lost its meaning. Violence was defined as anything ranging from the content of children's cartoons to the realistic portrayals of violence in movies. The absurdity of this definition shows up in the often repeated claim that by the time a child finishes elementary school, that child has seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on TV.

Consider what this means. Dramatically or comically portrayed violence is elevated to the same order of magnitude as witnessing real violence on TV. Does that make sense? The difference between fictional violence and real violence gets at the very meaning of what "violence" is and what puts people on their guard vs. what entertains them.
Researchers have expanded the definition of aggressive behavior, as well. They have defined it as "any aggressive act against another person" — giving the middle finger to other people, accumulating a lot of traffic violations, verbal expressions of materialism, admissions of making mean faces at others, and criticizing the appearance of others. Based on those definitions, the American population is a seething mob of miscreants.

Here's another big problem. None of the nearly 2,000 media violence studies over the past 80 years has tried to diagnostically separate people who might be mentally unwell from those without a diagnosable ailment.
In a series of studies my colleagues and I conducted over 15 years, we performed medical diagnoses on children ages 12-18, separating those suffering a common cluster of ailments — disruptive behavior disorders — from kids with no diagnosis. DBDs refer to behaviors that include explosive, violent temper tantrums, which can be provoked by watching media violence. In fact, in one of our studies, one DBD-afflicted child tried to stab an orderly with a ballpoint pen after seeing a scene from Clint Eastwood's In The Line Of Fire. In the other group, children were bored by what they saw, were entertained, or were made anxious, but they were not psychologically harmed by it.

We've seen these problems of broad definitions in other areas of research, including when we try to measure U.S. crime, unemployment and hunger. One criticism of the 1994 assault-weapons ban was that the definition was too broad and easily gamed. A key component of the new gun control proposal by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is to tighten the definition of assault weapons.
Before we consider placing restrictions on violent movies, TV shows and video games, we should have reliable studies that convincingly make the link. But that will not happen until more precise definitions are agreed upon by researchers.

Tom Grimes is a professor of mass communication and an adjunct research professor, Department of Psychology, Texas State University.