British Journal of Social Psychology (2000), 39, 147±149 Printed in Great Britain # 2000 The British Psychological Society 147 Video game violence and aggression: Comments on `Video game playing and its relations with aggressive and prosocial behaviour’ by O. Wiegman and E. G. M. van Schie Mark D. Gri¬ths* Psychology Division, Nottingham Trent University, UK The recent paper by Wiegman and van Schie (1998) examining aggressive and prosocial behaviour in video game players is a welcome addition to a fairly sparse (but growing) literature. However, there are many speculations and assertions made throughout the paper which have possible alternative explanations. In addition to this, there are other factors that the authors should have perhaps made reference to in relation to their study. Wiegman and van Schie assert that `television research so clearly demonstrates a relationship between¼intense engagement and subsequent aggression when the programme content is violent’ (p. 362). However, the evidence is far from conclusive in this area (see Gunter, 1997, for a recent overview). Further to this, many authors claim that most video games are violent in nature and feature death and destruction (e.g. Dominick, 1984), and that video games encourage sexism and racism by conditioning children to view the world in a way that they see on the computer screen (Provenzo, 1991). Wiegman and van Schie should have perhaps made clearer that such writings are typically based on very selective samples and}or small numbers of the total available games on the market. By looking at any of the `Top 10 Games’ charts in the mass of monthly video game magazines, it can be seen that many of the most popular games are de®nitely not `violent’. In fact, only 40% of the favourite video games mentioned by adolescents in Wiegman and van Schie’s study were described as aggressive. Wiegman and van Schie start from the position that, theoretically, video games might have the capacity to promote aggressive tendencies as predicted by social learning theory (e.g. Bandura, 1986). However, in direct contradiction to this, catharsis theory (e.g. Feshbach & Singer, 1971) could also provide an alternative theoretical position. Here it would be hypothesized that playing aggressive video games would have a relaxing eåect by channelling latent aggression and therefore have a positive eåect on a child’s behaviour. Wiegman and van Schie make reference to 12 studies examining the in¯uence of aggressive video games, yet there are at least 11 others covering many diåerent types of methodology (self-report, observational studies, experimental studies, case studies, projective test studies) that reference could have been made to. These include recent studies by Anderson and Morrow (1995), Irwin and Gross (1995), and Ballard and West (1996). The one consistent ®nding is that the majority of the studies on very young childrenÐas opposed to those in their teens upwardsÐtend to show that children do become more aggressive after either playing or watching a violent video game. However, all of these studies were based on the observation of a child’s free play so it could be a feature of the methodology used. In addition to the concerns outlined above, there are also other possible explanations of some of * Requests for reprints should be addressed to Mark D. Gri¬ths, Psychology Division, Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham NG1 4BU, UK.