“We don’t need no education”: Video game preferences, video game motivations, and aggressiveness among adolescent boys of different educational ability levels

JOURNAL: Journal of Adolescence
AUTHORS: Marije Nije Bijvank, Elly A. Konijna and Brad J. Bushman
SUMMARY:  This research focuses on low educational ability as a risk factor for aggression and violent game play. We propose that boys of lower educational ability are more attracted to violent video games than other boys are, and that they are also higher in trait aggressiveness and sensation seeking.

CULTURAL REFERENCE:  "Another Brick in the Wall" is the title of three songs set to variations of the same basic theme, on Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera, The Wall. Pink starts to daydream during his class. He imagines several students marching in unison to the beat of the song, following a path until they enter a steamy tunnel section to re-emerge as putty-faced clones void of individual distinction and proceed to fall blindly into an oversized meat-grinder. Starting with Gilmour's guitar solo, the children destroy the school building using hammers (foreshadowing the subsequent neo-fascist Nazi-like animated sequence with its marching hammers) and crowbars, creating a bonfire, dragging their teacher out of the burning school kicking and screaming while chanting "We don't need no education."

Scientific paper

Song