153: The Anatomy of Violence

[Robert B. Marks]

"My understanding is that anyone who goes off to war and comes back with PTSD has problems. This doesn't have anything to do with their training, and has existed for longer than Vietnam Vets. WW1/2 soldiers would come back with similar problems. There are other differences as well, but all of them have to do with the mission environment rather than the training."

AntiAntagonist: Actually, Grossman talks about that. He asks a very interesting question - why is that we get lots of victims of PTSD in WW1, WW2, but not in the U.S. Civil War? The answer he comes up with is that the 20th century saw the beginning of the 24-hour battlefield.

Basically, in the 19th century, battles were fought during the day, and at night everybody would be in the camp, talking about what had just happened. This allowed everybody to process and come to grips with the fighting. Once WW1 starts, however, this is no longer possible, and soldiers are no longer able to decompress at night. So, rather than being processed and come to terms with, the violent experiences just kept building up and building up, until the soldier gets overloaded.

Now, perhaps there's an entire literature about PTSD from the 19th century that I've never come across, but that argument makes sense to me - I'll accept it as convincing until I come across something that proves it otherwise.

Best regards,

Robert B. Marks

 

[AntiAntagonist]

"My understanding is that anyone who goes off to war and comes back with PTSD has problems. This doesn't have anything to do with their training, and has existed for longer than Vietnam Vets. WW1/2 soldiers would come back with similar problems. There are other differences as well, but all of them have to do with the mission environment rather than the training."

AntiAntagonist: Actually, Grossman talks about that. He asks a very interesting question - why is that we get lots of victims of PTSD in WW1, WW2, but not in the U.S. Civil War? The answer he comes up with is that the 20th century saw the beginning of the 24-hour battlefield.

Basically, in the 19th century, battles were fought during the day, and at night everybody would be in the camp, talking about what had just happened. This allowed everybody to process and come to grips with the fighting. Once WW1 starts, however, this is no longer possible, and soldiers are no longer able to decompress at night. So, rather than being processed and come to terms with, the violent experiences just kept building up and building up, until the soldier gets overloaded.

Now, perhaps there's an entire literature about PTSD from the 19th century that I've never come across, but that argument makes sense to me - I'll accept it as convincing until I come across something that proves it otherwise.

Best regards,

Robert B. Marks

That makes sense. That's a variable I hadn't thought of, but definitely makes sense for the mission environment.

 

[Doomspoon]

The social dynamic plays a large part. During WW I if you weren't fortunate enough to have a wealthy family and couldn't face being shot at by the enemy anymore it was conveniently arranged for your own side to shoot you instead. If you were from a wealthier background, thus an officer you were sometimes lucky enough to get treated in secluded retreat somewhere. Granted the treatments weren't that great an alternative. Prior to WW II the working classes were expendable and their welfare wasn't really of great concern to the majority of officers. Remember these are times when the rich families from home would be invited to watch battles from a safe enclosure.

My brother has a keen interest in mediaeval history and we've had similar conversations before, he does cite references to mediaeval soldiers suffering psychological trauma, I will try and get some info from him to further validate this.

AntiAntagonist:
"My understanding is that anyone who goes off to war and comes back with PTSD has problems. This doesn't have anything to do with their training, and has existed for longer than Vietnam Vets. WW1/2 soldiers would come back with similar problems. There are other differences as well, but all of them have to do with the mission environment rather than the training."

It's important to realise that PTSD isn't exclusive to military personnel although arguably they're the group that is affected the most. I have been diagnosed with PTSD and have never served in the forces, my friend with very similar behaviour to myself served with the Irish Guards and never saw combat but could feasibly be diagnosed as I have, I'm not a doctor though so it's not professional opinion.

 

[andyhavens]

If there is any causation between video games and violence, it needs to address the very simple fact that during the past 10 years (1995 to 2005, anyway) violence in the US has dropped from 46.1 to 21.0 incidents per 10,000 population(Bureau of Justice Statistics), and during the same time period, game sales in the US have gone from $3.2 billion to $7.0 billion. Aggravated assault, which you'd think would be the category most related to a desensitization of violence caused by videogames, is down from 9.5 to 4.3 during this period, and simple assault is down from 29.9 to 13.5 (all in cases per 10,000).

Video game use doubles. Violence is down by 50%. That's a 4-fold reduction in violence per unit of game sales. Somebody has to explain this to me.

 

[GregoriusH]

So if I play a lot of first person shooters, and am decent with a real life gun (I live on a cattle station, there's the occasional dingo or snake that needs shooting), I am likely to have both the mental and physical capability to kill a human being? There seems to me that there's a big moral block that would stand in the way of me doing so. I think why that rate can hit 90 per cent in the military is because I guess part of the training would be convincing soldiers that it is in fact okay to kill people under military situations.

I was watching some television show that interviewed Grossman, I think they showed that video game players had a steadier heart rate in a combat zone than people without combat training or video game experience. Food for thought.

 

[GregoriusH]

If there is any causation between video games and violence, it needs to address the very simple fact that during the past 10 years (1995 to 2005, anyway) violence in the US has dropped from 46.1 to 21.0 incidents per 10,000 population(Bureau of Justice Statistics), and during the same time period, game sales in the US have gone from $3.2 billion to $7.0 billion. Aggravated assault, which you'd think would be the category most related to a desensitization of violence caused by videogames, is down from 9.5 to 4.3 during this period, and simple assault is down from 29.9 to 13.5 (all in cases per 10,000).

Video game use doubles. Violence is down by 50%. That's a 4-fold reduction in violence per unit of game sales. Somebody has to explain this to me.

Correlation isn't causation. The violent crime rate could have dropped for other reasons. Without video games it might have dropped by more - not that I think that's the case. It's just important in this debate not to slip into the same logical fallacies some other people do.

 

[lgrayson]

An excellent article - well done!
Perhaps it might be better to describe Grossman's 'puppy brain' as 'lizard brain' instead, though. As far as I understand it, our limbic system has changed little it was being carried around by giant prehistoric reptiles and is far from being the cute, mewling bundle of fuzz that Grossman's term suggests.
As the 'fight/flight' (and something else beginning with 'f') centre of the brain, it does have the ability to take over during times of duress. But it's not just stress that does it - it's also worth noting that narcotics and alcohol shut down the higher brain functions leaving us more and more at the whim of this primitive lump of tissue. Hence the tendency to feel aggressive/hungry/horny after a few pints/shots/chasers.
Just as some people shut down their higher-order brain functions more readily while under the influence, doesn't it stand to reason that this re-programmed lizard brain will pop out more willingly in adolescents whose social programming hasn't really bedded down? Just a thought.
I speak as a fast-approaching-forty year old who still finds it hard to take the 'path of evil' in games, even the watered-down, not-really-all-that-evil options in Fable.
For example, I was pleased to see that GTA IV offers you the choice to spare your assailants' lives, and found myself doing just that. However, even in spite of this, I still found myself eyeing the Porsche 911 parked out front with a brief sense of speculation after a protracted session of GTA play.

I blame the parents. Mine especially

 

[Robert B. Marks]

I have spent all night tracking this material down - I take accuracy quite seriously (and even may have caused some difficulties with my editor at the Escapist as a result), but when it comes to S.L.A. Marshall, the figures are good. They're not precise, but good. I think this one has the final word on it:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/archives/1989/8901140587.asp

So, while perhaps it wasn't exactly 15% in WW2, it was down there, and in Korea it was considerably higher, and in Vietnam it was much, much higher.

Best regards to all,

Robert B. Marks, now pretty exhausted

 

[BoilingLeadBath]

Robert, it's important to remember that the doctrine of fire has changed over the course of those 3 wars.

It WW2, our soldiers where used and instructed in the doctrine of aimed fire: carefully aim and shoot at that person over yonder.
Well, largely.

As time has gone by, our infantry has changed to to a role involving a lot more "fire in their general direction" tactics. Oh, and to call in airstrikes, but that's beyond this discussion.

This switch in tactics is reflected in the primary infantry weapons: the 8-shot M1 shooting "full sized" .308 Winchester rounds has been exchanged for the 20-shot (mostly) M16 shooting the much smaller .223 Remington round. (ok, M1 is .308, not 30-06, right?)

Because the expected targets have changed, it's not entirely fair to attribute all change in the firing rate to the training.

****************

That said, the effect of gun availability, training in military skills, and desensitization combined must be dwarfed by other (societal) factors.

Because the Swiss have never had an issue with violent crime... and they require all men to be shipped off for a quality period of military training and then returned to their homes with a state-of-the-art small arm. (For a while that was the K31 bolt-action rifle, for the last few decades it's been some sort highly accurate select fire (fully automatic/semi automatic) rifle)

Indeed, the crime rate in Switzerland is one of the lowest in the world... and half of that is committed by tourists.

 

[TheJediMaster]

I've played FPS games which have you kill everyone in sight in fantastic ways as the sole option. I've played these games for years, and enjoyed them greatly.

Yet whenever I find myself in a game that gives you the alternative of non-lethal incapacitations, such as the Metal Gear Solid series or Crysis, I find myself compelled to advance through the game that way.

It's not that I find violence abhorrent, either. Sometimes I laugh at people being killed in movies, or try to kill people in the most goriest and creative ways in games as entertainment.

Yet when it comes to the act of killing a person, I find it more comforting to know that they're only incapacitated.

That all changes when I'm in a multiplayer game, however. Since the use of incapacitation in a hostile situation is far too lengthy, I then find myself to shoot anything mercilessly until dead.

 

[olicon]

I would consider myself lucky if all that is being used to desensitize us is shooting at a CG person or human-shaped target. From what I gather though, it is other things that lead us to have much less trouble shooting other people. It still has to do with dehumanizing the opposing side, but it's more like calling them Jews/Ni**er/Red Coats/Nazis/Islamic Terrorist/insert the bad guy for the war. There's a reason I put "Jews" in there--in WWII, they were considered sub-humans to the Nazis, and thus can be exterminated accordingly. Similarly, we are portraying more and more people as non-human, expendable trash--those whose death are not mourned.
People in the hood shoot other ni**er because they're not humans.
American soldiers shot Iraqi/Vietnamese commy because they're not humans.
They're merely enemies.

And I don't think that computer generated graphics can do this. You still realize that you're shooting another person. In fact, it is so enjoyable to a lot of people because they realize that they are playing against living humans.

If anything, video games would enable a person to be more violence in dire situation because they have thought about it. I myself know that is how I act. I play least fighting games out of all my friends, but when huge dogs run after us, I was the only one who stopped and starred it down. That is because rather than just playing and not giving it a second thought, video game causes me to reflect upon the result of running--you don't outrun a dog. You either fight it while you have the stamina, or you let it catch up to you from behind when you're winded. So to me, games are more like a big "what-if" scenario being thrown at me all the time. All it does is give me a chance to assess many worst case scenario before hand.

 

[SamuraiAndPig]

Robert, it's important to remember that the doctrine of fire has changed over the course of those 3 wars.

It WW2, our soldiers where used and instructed in the doctrine of aimed fire: carefully aim and shoot at that person over yonder.
Well, largely.

As time has gone by, our infantry has changed to to a role involving a lot more "fire in their general direction" tactics. Oh, and to call in airstrikes, but that's beyond this discussion.

This switch in tactics is reflected in the primary infantry weapons: the 8-shot M1 shooting "full sized" .308 Winchester rounds has been exchanged for the 20-shot (mostly) M16 shooting the much smaller .223 Remington round. (ok, M1 is .308, not 30-06, right?)

Because the expected targets have changed, it's not entirely fair to attribute all change in the firing rate to the training.

****************

That said, the effect of gun availability, training in military skills, and desensitization combined must be dwarfed by other (societal) factors.

Because the Swiss have never had an issue with violent crime... and they require all men to be shipped off for a quality period of military training and then returned to their homes with a state-of-the-art small arm. (For a while that was the K31 bolt-action rifle, for the last few decades it's been some sort highly accurate select fire (fully automatic/semi automatic) rifle)

Indeed, the crime rate in Switzerland is one of the lowest in the world... and half of that is committed by tourists.

Thats a good point. Plus, our military advertizes itself differently these days. Look at the average Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force commercial. They tell you they'll teach you skills and pay for college and you get to play with a bunch of cool stuff - no mention of killing people or getting shot or diseases or trauma or PTSD. And there is such extreme polarity in the way we (and by "WE" I mean United States, the backwards losers) tell our children that violence is bad and guns are bad, yet bombard them with Army ads and "Support the Troops" all day. I think this also helps explain why there is so much violence in the US of A as opposed to a place like Switzerland

And Robert: I am no military person but I've got some friends serving, and currently conditioning is a major part of training, particularly to the Marines. The main factor for this is that soldiers are younger than ever. It creeps me right the hell out when I turn on the news on a Sunday and 9 out of the 10 dead vets in Iraq are younger than me. And I'm only 25! Younger minds are easier to break, particularly when a lot of them are 18 and still not even done with puberty. They are therefore easier to convince that the indended targets are inhuman, subhuman, killable. I heard it put as the "break you down to build you up" method of training. Hope that helps answer your question.

And BoilingLeadBath: M16s use 20 to 30 rounds depending on the model (A1, A2, etc.), and the shift to smaller ammunition is a product of the Cold War because smaller diameter = better armor piercing effect and higher capacity.

 

[felixader]

Very, very well done. It's a tightrope topic and you made it.

My only question is the issue of whether shooting with a controller (pressing X, etc) is the same thing as shooting a gun. Since we're now saying games condition us to pull the trigger in violent situations, doesn't a game controller still inhibit that literal connection?

May sound strange, but from my 9 months in the German army i have to say using a gun is much easier than using, as example, a knife or your fist.

And to match it with gaming, the trigger of an controller is not much less that that of a gun, it says nothing about if you at last hit someone, but it is just pushing a button despite to above mentioned weapons were you need much more of everything, rage (etc.) force and accuracy.

To the article i have to say that it shows something, and makes something clear to me wich i did not really realize this way, so i would say it is an very impressive article.

 

[Arbre]

Despite the heated rhetoric from both sides of the debate about violent games, it's a truth not generally recognized or discussed. To some degree, we can blame Jack Thompson and his ilk - the moment he starts talking about games as "murder simulators," the field polarizes, and any useful discussion is lost. Indeed, the mere suggestion itself is unbelievable, and who can blame the public or the average gamer for being suspicious when so much of the debate has been fear mongering?

We do know that shaping the future behaviour of an individual is most easy the earlier you start. Take sports. Tennis. Agassi. When did he start? He was three years old I think, his father didn't give him much choice from what I heard. Years later, he's a Tennis Terminator. Football, piano, religion, chess, the list goes on.

There is no doubt that your context shapes your person and brain into excelling in a given activity, to a degree which seems more than relevant.
That's precisely why reasonnable people do understand the importance of keeping young gamers away from violent games, until they're capable of making the difference, and the US Army official shooter was certainly a good way to deshumanize teenagers in an era of trigger happy warmongers.
I think that "The Last Starfighter + a fine touch of cynicism" comment never gets old.

It was thought up until the end of World War II that if you fielded an army of 100,000 riflemen, you would have 100,000 combatants. In practice, however, there were some discrepancies suggesting this wasn't quite the case. This led General S.L.A. Marshall to publish a book in 1947 titled Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, where he revealed that in combat only 15 percent of soldiers unsupervised by an officer had fired their weapons.

So that was not bad AI in Medal of Honor, but an historically accurate and documented simulation of behaviours as reported on the field.

It takes a high level of stress - whether out of anger, fear or any other source of adrenaline - for this transition to occur. If that stress does not exist, your higher, more rational brain remains in control of your actions. Even under the most stressful circumstances, there has to be the right context.

So the transition from the rational brain to the middle brain is caused by adrenaline. The middle brain usually prevents people from killing other people.
So basically, anytime people would get particularly highly enraged, distressed or else, the middle brain would kick in, thus they'd actually not kill someone, implying that most lethal crimes (to avoid using "murders" here) are the result of the rational brain?
I must be missing something there.

To demonstrate the importance of context, Grossman offers the case of a police officer who had his family and friends hold a fake gun so that he could practice disarming criminals. Each time his disarmed his subject, he would hand it back so that they could repeat the process. Later, when he found himself in a store as an armed robbery began, he struck out at the criminal and took away the handgun. Then, just as he had practiced hundreds of times, he handed it back. His middle brain did exactly what he had trained it to do, regardless of how irrational it was under the circumstances.

Basically, he trained his body and brain to repeat a procedure which would become ultimately inappropriate when time would come.
He shaped his middle brain.
This being what Grossmann thinks violent games do: breaking the subconscious barriers, so the percentage of kill will increase if one is put into a critical situation which can result in death of others.

 

[Muphin_Mann]

As someone else pointed out, video games need to be compared to other things. Watching football and so on.

And while the games might make us more likely to react violently if we where having people shoot at us, they dont reach us how to react violently. What i mean is that they wont make you any more efficieant with any weapons. A tmost they will give better reaction times.

I doubt anyone will ever find a strong cause relationship between video games and violent crime.

And this conditioning might not be a bad thing. If someone is trying to kill me i would rather have my brain descide that life is worth fighting for than have it let me curl up and die.

Also, keep in mind that when shooting at a human target you are pulling a trigger and feeling recoil and whatnot. Your actualy shooting. In a videogame the connection to reality is much weaker than on a range where everyhting but target it real.

 

[Doomspoon]

So the transition from the rational brain to the middle brain is caused by adrenaline. The middle brain usually prevents people from killing other people.
So basically, anytime people would get particularly highly enraged, distressed or else, the middle brain would kick in, thus they'd actually not kill someone, implying that most lethal crimes (to avoid using "murders" here) are the result of the rational brain?
I must be missing something there.

Just to clarify, are you separating "murder" by virtue of being premeditated? Many lethal crimes as you define them are reported to be committed by the perpetrator in a calm manner. There's been numerous interviews with convicted murderers that feel no remorse and on occasion openly admit to the pleasure they derived from the situation. In which case to themselves it was rational behaviour, this is a problem with the way their mind is working in comparison to the majority of society. Hence my belief that if anyone is going to go on a rampage there's plenty that should be questioned before asking whether they played certain video games. That's not to say this is true for every death through violent crime, naturally.

The 'natural born killer' debate has gone on for some time and will continue to do so. Many trained killers are burdened by the consequences of their actions and haunted by intrusive memories for doing a job they trained to do. There are some that distance themselves from it and those that even get a rush from it, these are often the percentage that make it into special forces or snipers. They're unlikely to talk openly about their experiences in most cases.

With regard to the current trend for deaths from stabbings or shootings in street crime, or past examples such as football hooliganism it is rarely a one-on-one situation. The perpetrator already justifies their actions for their colours/territory. By choosing to live outside of the law the rationale applied is no longer the rationale of the majority of society. These similar principals of indoctrination apply here.

 

[Girlysprite]

A few things:

The percentage of crime doesn't have to say anything. Let me proove it to you; The last 50 years health care and general health have improved a lot. People live longer, and are healthy longer. But last age we also face a giant obesity problem. But do the numbers mean that obesity has no impact on our health? Think again...


As for influence of games; people are sometimes quite quick to tell about the good sides of gaming, what it teaches us; better reflexes, better hand-eye coordination, social skills from multiplayer games, math and tactical thinking, etc. If we say that games bring us these virtues, isn't the thought that games influence us in other ways and teaches us other 'virtues' as well really that strange?

 

[SamuraiAndPig]

As for influence of games; people are sometimes quite quick to tell about the good sides of gaming, what it teaches us; better reflexes, better hand-eye coordination, social skills from multiplayer games, math and tactical thinking, etc. If we say that games bring us these virtues, isn't the thought that games influence us in other ways and teaches us other 'virtues' as well really that strange?

Not at all, and I think most people agree with you. My honest opinion is that not enough data has been gathered on the subject to draw any truly concrete answers, simply because the current studies have been so inconclusive. There have been some studies that show young kids display higher agression after playing violent games, but I don't know if that carries over into the teen years or adulthood.

As far as the link to crime: that is a load of crap. Crime has been studied for hundreds of years and it almost always links to poverty, persecution, personal grudges, and infamous "drug-related" crime. People have plenty of other reasons to kill each other and the notion that they do it because a video game told them to is insane. Most violent crime that isn't organized is in the lower economic classes anyway - the ones who can't even afford games.

May sound strange, but from my 9 months in the German army i have to say using a gun is much easier than using, as example, a knife or your fist.

I've heard that before and I don't think it's strange at all. Guns make combat very impersonal. You don't have you watch yourself harming another person, see your fist come across their face or your knife go through them. You don't have to watch them bleed or watch them die. And nowadays we have weapons that make enemies appear like little colored blobs on a screen instead of people. I think it all contributes to the fact that we, increasingly, don't see our fellow humans as humans. It's an interesting topic.

 

[Girlysprite]

Samurai, I wasn't saying video games have been a part of crime, but people are drawing conclusions too simply. They accuse others of drawing conclusions too fast, but do the same themselves.

The strange part of games vs modern warfare is that games become more realistic, and warfare becomes less realistic. They become, oh irony, almost like a videogame.

 

[AntiAntagonist]

Hahahahaha! I end up citing the lowered crime rate and calling attention to correlation, then say that the correlation isn't important in the same paragraph. Then people start spouting crime rate correlations.

Even worse is that unrelated correlation is called out in the article and people still pick it up in thread.

Thanks for the info, SamuraiAndPig. I knew Switzerland was low on violent crime, but wasn't aware of how low. Guess they just need to watch how much the tourists drink!

I've been considering a situation that maybe the other forumites can weigh in on:
If a person goes through proper military training then plays games (or games then training), what combination of factors do you believe lead to them killing?
Besides the obvious, or already taking into account, mental psychosis.