Don Allen said: "As far as I'm concerned a bunch of weak studies is just that; a bunch of weak studies."
Don- "Be still my heart!!" :) Perhaps one could rephrase that to make your point even more obvious. A whole bunch of weak or small effects from studies means that it is very likely there is a very weak or small effect!!! Suddenly that seems less newsworthy. Tim _______________________________ Timothy O. Shearon, PhD Professor and Chair Department of Psychology The College of Idaho Caldwell, ID 83605 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] teaching: intro to neuropsychology; psychopharmacology; general; history and systems "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." Dorothy Parker -----Original Message----- From: Don Allen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thu 3/27/2008 3:11 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Computer games to get cigarette-style health warnings - Times Online Hi Mark- I just re-read the Carnagey and Anderson paper and I'm still not impressed. In the Method section re Exp. 2 they say, " The participant also rated the video game on various dimensions (difficult,absorbing,action-packed, arousing, boring, enjoyable, entertaining, exciting, frustrating, fun, involving, stimulating, violent, and addicting)." However in the Results section they merely say, "Note that the effect of violence was obtained even though the violent and nonviolent games were equally arousing and all games were competitive." without providing any data whatever. A strange omission don't you think? Then in Exp. 3 they say, "Also,several video-game ratings (absorbing, boring, enjoyable, entertaining, exciting, fun, involving, stimulating, addicting) predicted aggressive behavior, Fs(1, 134) = 4.75, ps <.05". Doesn't that just make my case? Even if this one study did stand up it has not (to my knowledge) been replicated by an independent lab. The studies on the Mozart Effect looked good on their own, but replication proved to be a problem. As far as the Anderson and Bushman study; it's just the old "bundle of sticks" argument. Each study may be too weak on its own to prove the case, but if we take them all together then they must constitute a proof. As far as I'm concerned a bunch of weak studies is just that; a bunch of weak studies. More importantly, even if all of Anderson's assertions were true he is still only accounting for less than 10% of the variance. If you are really concerned about violence then focus on important issues like economic disparity and prevelence of handguns. I still remain in the skeptics corner. -Don. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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