Police shootings, violent crime, race and socio-economic factors in municipalities in the United States of America.

Background: Both police shootings and violent crime remain high in the United States of America compared to other developed nations but debates continue about whether race, mental health or other social factors are related to them.

Aims: Our aim was to test relationships between community factors indicative of socio-economic status, racial demographics, police shootings, and violent crime.

Methods: Data on police shootings, violent crime and community sociodemographic factors were drawn from two publicly accessible datasets: health and police records of 100 US municipalities and relationships between them explored using regression analyses.

Social, health and ethnicity correlates of complaints of excessive police force.

Background: Following several high-profile police shootings of Black Americans, renewed debate has focused on race as a predictor of police violence. Past research has been inconsistent on this score. Some scholars argue that socioeconomic issues are better predictors of police-related violence than are race and ethnicity.

Pathological gaming: a longitudinal study from the perspectives of mental health problems and social stress model.

Debates about pathological gaming continues in the wake of the World Health Organization's (WHO) decision to establish a gaming disorder diagnosis. Questions persist whether gaming disorder is best conceived as a stand-alone psychiatric disorder, or whether it heralds or accompanies other, more established conditions, such as depression or ADHD. We tested these hypotheses in a sample of 3,034 youth from Singapore.

Prosocial Video Game Content, Empathy and Cognitive Ability in a Large Sample of Youth.

Whether playing video games with prosocial content has an influence on empathy among players remains contentious in the research literature. Some evidence suggests playing cooperatively with other gamers enhances empathy, but data have not conclusively linked prosocial content with empathy. Further, mechanisms of this potential relationship are unclear, and little work has been conducted on how cognitive skills, such as fluid reasoning, may mediate this relationship.

Video games, frustration, violence, and virtual reality: Two studies.

The degree to which the content of video games influences aggression continues to be debated in the scholarly literature. The current article includes two studies, one of which replicates one study from Przybylski et al. (2014, J.

Effects of self-isolation and quarantine on loot box spending and excessive gaming-results of a natural experiment.

COVID-19 has prompted widespread self-isolation and citywide/countrywide lockdowns. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has encouraged increased digital social activities such as video game play to counteract social isolation during the pandemic. However, there is active debate about the potential for video game overuse, and some video games contain randomised purchases (loot boxes) that may psychologically approximate gambling.

Aggressive Video Games Are Not a Risk Factor for Mental Health Problems in Youth: A Longitudinal Study.

Recent preregistered studies and analyses have suggested that links between aggressive video games (AVGs) and aggression-related outcomes may have been exaggerated in previous literature. However, concerns about AVGs remain. Although the impact of aggressive games on aggressive behaviors has been the subject of approximately a dozen preregistered studies, the potential impact of aggressive games on the player's mental health symptoms has not been the subject of similar preregistered analyses.

Do longitudinal studies support long-term relationships between aggressive game play and youth aggressive behaviour? A meta-analytic examination.

Whether video games with aggressive content contribute to aggressive behaviour in youth has been a matter of contention for decades. Recent re-evaluation of experimental evidence suggests that the literature suffers from publication bias, and that experimental studies are unable to demonstrate compelling short-term effects of aggressive game content on aggression. Long-term effects may still be plausible, if less-systematic short-term effects accumulate into systematic effects over time.

Reexamining the Findings of the American Psychological Association's 2015 Task Force on Violent Media: A Meta-Analysis.

In 2015, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a task-force technical report on video-game violence with a concurrent resolution statement linking violent games to aggression but not violent crime. The task-force report has proven to be controversial; many scholars have criticized language implying conclusive evidence linking violent games to aggression as well as technical concerns regarding the meta-analysis that formed the basis of the technical report and resolution statement. In the current article, we attempt a reevaluation of the 2015 technical report meta-analysis.

Child Abuse, Spanking and Adult Dating Violence: A Replication Study of Temple et al., 2018.

The issue of whether spanking does or does not contribute to later aggression remains controversial despite public policy statements by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups opposing spanking. Studies have remained inconsistent regarding whether spanking does or does not contribute to later aggression. One study, Temple et al.

The relationship between problem gambling, excessive gaming, psychological distress and spending on loot boxes in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the United States-A cross-national survey.

Loot boxes are digital containers of randomised rewards available in many video games. Due to similarities between some loot boxes and traditional forms of gambling, concerns regarding the relationship between spending on loot boxes in video games and symptoms of problematic gambling have been expressed by policy makers and the general public. We present the first investigation of these concerns in large cross-sectional cross-national samples from three countries (Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and the United States).

Aggressive video games research emerges from its replication crisis (Sort of).

The impact of aggressive video games (AVGs) on aggression and violent behavior among players, particularly youth, has been debated for decades. In recent years, evidence for publication bias, questionable researcher practices, citation bias and poor standardization of many measures and research designs has indicated that the false positive rate among studies of AVGs has been high. Several studies have undergone retraction.

Sexualised video games, sexist attitudes and empathy towards victims of rape: Correlational evidence for a relationship is minimal in an online study.

Background: There is continued debate about whether sexualisation in games can influence sexist attitudes and reduced empathy towards women in real life. There is research evidence both supporting and refuting the possibility.

Aims: Our aim was to examine the relationship between sexualised content in video games and players' sexist attitudes and empathy.

A Preregistered Longitudinal Analysis of Aggressive Video Games and Aggressive Behavior in Chinese Youth.

Whether aggressive video games (AVGs) promote aggression in youth remains a matter of debate despite decades of research. Longitudinal studies to date have provided mixed results, with effect sizes, overall, being quite low. However, few longitudinal studies have preregistered their analyses.

Pathological Gaming in Young Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study Focused on Academic Stress and Self-Control in South Korea.

With the increase in social concern regarding pathological gaming among adolescents, the WHO (World Health Organization) included "gaming disorder" in the International Classification of Disorders, 11th version (ICD-11). However, little longitudinal research has been conducted examining social influences on pathological gaming, particularly in Asian countries (e.g.

Aggressive Video Games are Not a Risk Factor for Future Aggression in Youth: A Longitudinal Study.

The issue of whether video games with aggressive or violent content (henceforth aggressive video games) contribute to aggressive behavior in youth remains an issue of significant debate. One issue that has been raised is that some studies may inadvertently inflate effect sizes by use of questionable researcher practices and unstandardized assessments of predictors and outcomes, or lack of proper theory-driven controls. In the current article, a large sample of 3034 youth (72.

The insufficiency of the evidence used to categorically oppose spanking and its implications for families and psychological science: Comment on Gershoff et al. (2018).

Gershoff et al. (2018) recently summarized the scientific evidence against disciplinary spanking, using epidemiological and psychological criteria for causal validity. Unfortunately, the evidence they cited would make most actions to correct serious problems to be harmful, whether implemented by parents (e.

PG-13 Rated Movie Violence and Societal Violence: is there a Link?

Recent scholarship has suggested that the frequency of violence in PG-13 rated movies has increased in recent years. Although some scholars have expressed concern that such an increase may have public health implications, this has remained untested. In the current article, trends in PG-13 movie violence are tested against trends in violence in society, including both homicides and youth violence.

Improving Causal Inferences in Meta-analyses of Longitudinal Studies: Spanking as an Illustration.

To evaluate and improve the validity of causal inferences from meta-analyses of longitudinal studies, two adjustments for Time-1 outcome scores and a temporally backwards test are demonstrated. Causal inferences would be supported by robust results across both adjustment methods, distinct from results run backwards. A systematic strategy for evaluating potential confounds is also introduced.

The problem of false positives and false negatives in violent video game experiments.

The problem of false positives and negatives has received considerable attention in behavioral research in recent years. The current paper uses video game violence research as an example of how such issues may develop in a field. Despite decades of research, evidence on whether violent video games (VVGs) contribute to aggression in players has remained mixed.