Dear Drs. Gabbiadini, Riva, Andrighetto, Volpato, and Bushman,
Congratulations on writing an excellent article and the coverage it is receiving. I enjoyed reading it very much, and I have a couple of questions regarding the relationship between the conclusions drawn and the actual methods used in this study, as opposed to conclusions drawn from other studies.
You mention that other studies have established that players of violent games are “more aggressive” when the game is turned off, implying that someone had measured their level of aggression prior to playing the game. In your own study, you appear to take that conclusion and apply to empathy, designing a self-assessment system and concluding that people who play violent video games are quantifiably less empathetic towards female victims. But the paper does not disclose how you assessed this level of empathy was different from what the players had before the game started. How do you know their actual empathy changed after the game, and that they weren’t simply less empathetic than expected to begin with?


Also, being a study of the short-term effects of playing violent video games, you acknowledged that you were observing only immediate effects, but appeared to assume that longer term effects were proportionate to the amount of time spent playing the game (a person plays for 25 minutes and is less empathetic immediately thereafter, whereas a person who plays 8-13 hours a week might be less empathetic in general). Is there any data to support this assumption? Isn’t it more likely that playing an aggressive game boosts adrenaline and testosterone for a short time, and no matter how much time you spend doing it, that spike will dissipate within a certain period of time after the stimuli ends?
Thanks for your thoughts.