Afterwards the students 'punished' their opponents with a noise blast of varying intensity. The two scientists then got 210 students to play either Wolfenstein 3D, a violent game, or Myst, a non-violent one. 'We found that students who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school engaged in more aggressive behaviour,' Dr Anderson said. They also asked the students about their video game playing habits. In one study they questioned 227 college students about their aggressive attitudes, and asked them to report on their own aggressive behaviour - deliquency, vandalism and so on - in the past. The judge said: 'Tragedies such as this simply defy rational explanation, and courts should not pretend otherwise.'Д«ut Craig Anderson, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Karen Dill, of Lenoir-Rhyne College in Iowa, report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology today that video games might indeed have damaging effects. There is disputed evidence suggesting that cinema and television violence encourages aggressive behaviour.ДЄ US judge recently threw out a case brought against 25 video game companies after a boy of 14 with a gun killed three students in a prayer group at a Kentucky high school. One researcher described Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, as 'playing out their game in God mode'. They did it again, in the school, with real guns less than a year later. In a classroom project the pair made a videotape of their own version, in which they dressed in trenchcoats, carried guns and killed school athletes. They were known to enjoy Doom, a video game licensed by the US military to train soldiers to kill. On April 20 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before shooting themselves at the Columbine high school in Littleton, Colorado. 'The other study reveals that even brief exposure to violent video games can temporarily increase aggressive behaviour in all types of participants.' 'One study reveals that young men who are habitually aggressive may be especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games,' they said. Their research, published a year after the Columbine high school massacre, is certain to provoke controversy - and concern about the long-term effects of graphic slaughter at fingertip control. Violent video games step up aggressive behaviour in young males, according to both laboratory and real life studies, two US psychologists claim today.

2000s school computer games