I Am Right,You Are Wrong: How Biased Assimilation Increases the Perceived Gap between Believers and Skeptics of Violent Video Game Effects

Background

Despite hundreds of studies, there is continuing debate about the extent to which violent video games increase aggression. Believers argue that playing violent video games increases aggression, but this stance is disputed by skeptics. The present study addressed believers'' and skeptics'' responses to summaries of scientific studies that do or do not present evidence for increased aggression after violent video game play.

Methods/Principal Findings

Participants (N = 662) indicated whether they believed that violent video games increase aggression. Afterwards, they evaluated two opposing summaries of fictitious studies on the effects of violent video play. They also reported whether their initial belief had changed after reading the two summaries and indicated again whether they believed that violent video games increase aggression. Results showed that believers evaluated the study showing an effect more favorably than a study showing no effect, whereas the opposite was observed for skeptics. Moreover, both believers and skeptics reported to become more convinced of their initial view. In contrast, for actual attitude change, a depolarization effect was found.

Conclusions/Significance

These results suggest that biased assimilation of new information leads believers and skeptics to become more rather than less certain of their views. Hence, even when confronted with mixed and inconclusive evidence, the perceived gap between both sides of the argument increases.     

"p53: Twenty Years On" in Trieste, Italy, May 20-22, 1999.

Study of the p53 tumor suppressor has blossomed into a field of its own. From analysis of its mutations in several different cancers to deciphering the function of the protein in human cells, publications describing research on p53 annually number in the thousands. In the interest of presenting the most up-to-date information on the progress of cancer research involving p53, the workshop "p53: Twenty Years On" was organized in Trieste, Italy over May 20-22, 1999. The meeting highlighted some of the most exciting basic and clinical scientific findings on p53 within the last year.     

How plants respond to stimuli. The Ninth Annual Symposium on Current Topics in Plant Biochemistry and Physiology sponsored by the University of Missouri Interdisciplinary Program in Plant Biochemistry and Physiology, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Science Foundation, Columbia, MO, USA, April 4-7, 1990

With the rapid progress in the identification of the molecular components of calcium and protein kinase regulatory systems, it is presently an exciting time for those studying plant signal transduction. A clear message that was conveyed at the meeting was the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the problems currently facing researchers in this area. Thus, while the powerful methods of plant molecular biology allow for rapid advances in the identification of new molecules, this approach needs to be combined with careful biochemical and physiological analyses. This was exemplified by the large number of protein kinases described at the meeting but the surprisingly few reports of physiological function of phosphorylation. Similarly, while calcium has emerged as a major regulatory molecule in plants, little is known regarding the exact molecular mechanisms of calcium and calcium-modulatory protein action. These are clearly areas for future study that should reveal the elusive pathways that lie between stimuli and responses in the plant cell.