ABSTRACT
Academic study of aggression and violence has long struggled with the degree to which aggression can be understood as an evolutionary or learned behavior. Although the issues faced by the video game violence field likely parallel wider problems for psychological science, they also present an interesting case study in how evolutionary theory can help in understanding the development of a scientific field. Moral panic theory, then, provides both the promise for the solution to the current stand-off and also a warning. Fears of new media, being a feature mainly of older adults, tend to die out with those older adults. Thus, the video game moral panic is, arguably, already ebbing. It is unfortunate that professional guilds such as the APA staked so much of their reputation on beliefs that, like fears of Elvis Presley, Ozzy Osbourne and Harry Potter before, were rooted in moral combat rather than good science.
