Exposure to Bullying, Childhood Trauma, and Violence in Video Games Among Perpetrators of Mass Homicides: A Brief Report

Abstract

Perpetrators of mass homicides have often been believed to have experienced certain events in their childhoods that may have led to their crimes. Among the issues that were considered in this study were childhood trauma, which included abuse history, and history of childhood bullying. Another issue that was examined was whether they played violent video games as a child. Exposure to these variables were compared between a sample of 169 male mass shooters and preexisting research samples of the same age and gender who had not committed mass murders. Analyses were preregistered. Hypotheses that were tested included whether mass shooters had experienced more childhood abuse, more childhood bullying or played more violent video games compared to matched samples. Results suggest that mass homicide perpetrators had experienced more abuse than other individuals, but not bullying. By contrast, mass homicide perpetrators had played fewer violent video games than had matched samples. These results seem to match previous data on mass homicide perpetrators.