Craig A. Anderson is an American professor and director at the Department of Psychology, Iowa State University in Ames, with a PHD from Stanford University in 1980.
He has carried out controversial research regarding the effects of violent video games on children, and reports for parents related to this.
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He wrote a book (2007) on Violent Video Games with co-authors Doug Gentile and Katherine Buckley. He has been a faculty member at Rice University (1980–1988), Ohio State University (visiting,1984–1985), and the University of Missouri (1988–1999). He joined Iowa State University in 1999 as Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology. He has received teaching awards at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, and has been awarded "Fellow" status by the American Psychological Society and the American Psychological Association. He is now on the Executive Council of the International Society for Research on Aggression. His research on human aggression has been published in various journals. A quote from one of his studies is, "The 14-year-old boy arguing that he has played violent video games for years and has not ever killed anybody is absolutely correct in rejecting the extreme “necessary and sufficient” position, as is the 45-year-old two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker who notes that he still does not have lung cancer. But both are wrong in inferring that their exposure to their respective risk factors (violent media, cigarettes) has not causally increased the likelihood that they and people around them will one day suffer the consequences of that risky behavior."
Dr. Anderson's research has been criticized at times for overstating his results and failing to adequately acknowledge alternate views or limitations of the data on media violence. Other scholars have expressed the concern that his statements of causal certainty regarding video game violence effects are not well supported by the existing data.[1][2] Dr. Anderson also had ties to the former National Institute on Media and the Family, which is likened to a lobbying group,[3] and some of his studies have been funded by NIMF.[4] In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the U.S. Supreme Court criticized Anderson's studies, noting that they "have been rejected by every court to consider them", "do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively", and "suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology".[5]