“You Never Murdered Anyone? BIG DEAL,” Says Dr. Brad Bushman.


Most parents aren’t worried about violent video games turning their children into killers, said Frank Bushman, a 2014 Hinckley presenter. They’re worried about how violent video games affect their relationships with others. They ask: “How do these games affect how they treat me? How do they affect how they treat their siblings, their peers, and others? How do they affect how they see the world? How do they affect how they see women? But there are other effects of violent media beside whether you’re going to kill somebody.

If a person has played violent video games and have never killed anyone, they’re just like the majority of Americans. According the U.S. Census, the population was 308,745,538 in 2010. That same year, the FBI estimated that 14,748 people were murdered. That’s only .0048% of the population. With such a small percentage of murders, nearly everyone can boast that they’ve never killed anyone. And yet people use the phrase “I’ve never killed anyone!” to justify their violent games.

Bushman focuses his research on the positive and negative effects of different media content. He received his Bachelor’s in Psychology from Weber State in 1984 and holds an M.Ed in Secondary Education from Utah State University (1985), and Masters in Psychology and Statistics from the University of Missouri (1987 and 1990 respectively), and a Doctorate in Social Psychology from the same school in 1989. He has the Rinehart Chair of Mass Communication at Ohio State University and teaches both psychology and communication classes. The professor has been featured in media such as BBC, NPR, and the New York Times.

While acknowledging adults’ rights to choose what media they consume, he is an advocate for making these effects on children known. Realizing that some of his findings are unpopular with mainstream channels, Bushman challenges popular conceptions by taking painstaking efforts to design his studies in accordance with the scientific method. His studies have been published in prestigious scientific journals. He has testified in the U.S. Congress on topics related to youth violence and aggression, and has served as a member of President Obama’s committee on gun violence.

The Marjorie Pay Hinckley Chair was created to strengthen, understand, and research families as well as create strategies to bolster families through challenges such as learning disabilities, “social development,” and single parenting.


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