Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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Okay riddle me this Queen's land; Why do I love giving out hugs to various people when Im a hardcore fps fan?
The comments on this particular thread are profound. Rather than potentially asking ourselves what if the study is true, how do we as gamer respond to it, how does society in general respond to it, we are just pronouncing this study as dead on arrival...on what grounds? That it is done in Australia and by an Australian? Isn't that bigoted? And some even questioned the legitimacy of the study itself...I guess we are a forum of academics and scholars with years of scholarly work behind us.
Is it more that we as gamer are outright afraid to admit it because we fear the repercussions? Do we fear censorship? Do we fear that those games may be banned due to extreme violence? We have every right to fear this, because in reality this has happened before, in many different parts of the world.
But is the answer to outright deny and bury any academic study that tries to explore this further?
What if one day they do conclude that this is a correlation between violent games and violent behaviors? How do we as a community respond to it? Under overwhelming amount of evidence against us, how are we going to proceed? In our inability to address these issues, we are going to let political commentators, talking heads, bloggers, and eventually governments, trying to exercise some sort of censorship.
I hope there is no correlation between violent video games and violent behavior. I sincerely do. However, I am objective enough to recognize that based on playing many different games online in many different communities...There is some merit worth looking into this subject further.
Is it more that we as gamer are outright afraid to admit it because we fear the repercussions? Do we fear censorship? Do we fear that those games may be banned due to extreme violence? We have every right to fear this, because in reality this has happened before, in many different parts of the world.
But is the answer to outright deny and bury any academic study that tries to explore this further?
What if one day they do conclude that this is a correlation between violent games and violent behaviors? How do we as a community respond to it? Under overwhelming amount of evidence against us, how are we going to proceed? In our inability to address these issues, we are going to let political commentators, talking heads, bloggers, and eventually governments, trying to exercise some sort of censorship.
I hope there is no correlation between violent video games and violent behavior. I sincerely do. However, I am objective enough to recognize that based on playing many different games online in many different communities...There is some merit worth looking into this subject further.
Ah then you obviously misunderstand me ^^Abandon4093 said:
I am not making any claims as to whether this research has actual merit , indeed how could I?
But it potentially has, and until I've read it will give it benefit of doubt and at the very least, refrain from making untrue statements such as casting doubts on its methodology.
What I am saying is that this research paper has followed scientific procedure and DESERVES to be treated the same way any other scientific paper would, that is to say we need to with hold judgement on the value or validity of the research until it's being read.
Until then we can't make ANY claims about its validity, whether positive or negative.
You understand what I'm trying to say?
Indeed plenty of journals get demolished by peer reviews. What's your point? Research being debated and refuted is the scientific process in action and doesn't diminish the value of the research done unless the findings really are complete junk.
"Until we've read it, this may as well have been told to us by a homeless man speaking in klingon"
Ok maybe you're being a bit snarky here. You can apply that line of thinking to just about anything you read or hear that you can't check for yourself so why are you being particularly anal here? If I said your biases were tainting your views, would that be a false statement you think?
It is safe to assume that (again, one more time!) an article published in the Journal of, fuck it il just abbreviate it JEP from now on, an article published in the JEP would have passed the minimum standards and requirements to be scientifically processed and deserves a fair treatment just like any other piece of research, so why so determined to ruin the credibility of this one?
Here you have room to argue with me as you said an article published in a scientific publication doesn't mean anything and I STRONGLY disagree with you on this.
On my side, i'm reacting normally towards this piece of research in that I'm waiting to read it before I can ***** about how wrong it is or w/e. Until then, I'll trust the editors of JEP to have done their job competently and not let a botched research paper through, this is me placing my trust in them and is main reason I'm taking this research seriously rather then ignoring it like I would normally do with this recurring topic.
What bothers me and is the stimulus for my tl dr is the negative bias a significant portion of those posted so far have expressed, and their attempts to reduce the scientific credibility of this research when there is no reason to do so yet.
Citing this post as an example of potentially valid criticism ^^ Indeed, even before reading the paper, one has to wonder how the "human" rating works or what it entails amongst other things (i'm more curious as to whether they will account for influences of competitive online gaming, it's not just a violent game they are playing, it's a violent competitive online game.)Use_Imagination_here said:
Will refrain judgement until reading it, but these statements are more constructive then simply bashing the papers credibility.
Any argument that includes terminology such as "What if" or "Think about the children" carries no merit whatsoever. It's like including the word "but". Anything that came before the word is rendered absolutely meaningless by its inclusion. What if one day scientists find that humans have evolved from boars rather than apes? Will flying pigs then literally fly out of my ass? Maybe, but I doubt it.
There are to many vague definitions, half assed explanations and bizarre assumptions for me to take it seriously.
I mean he had subjects rate how human they felt. Than he had them rated again after playing mortal kombat. And for no reason he didn't have them rate themsefls again a couple of hours later to obsserve long term effects.
It all reeks of manipulating data to support your hypothesis.
I mean he had subjects rate how human they felt. Than he had them rated again after playing mortal kombat. And for no reason he didn't have them rate themsefls again a couple of hours later to obsserve long term effects.
It all reeks of manipulating data to support your hypothesis.
Ah, I kinda glossed over that as I interpreted that more as "we are cheapskates and rather then make our research online to share with everyone we will limit it to the JEP and paid scholarly sites" so didn't see it as them with holding methodology on purpose. Ah so that's why you were insisting on methodology xD My bad good sir, completely misread you then.Abandon4093 said:
Quite a few unis do that so to me it isn't unusual, just really annoying for students hoping to use the research as sources for their own essays.
Agree about the use of terms such as "human rating" amongst other things, there are plenty of scales for measuring agression, violent tendencies, relationship with others or w/e so this scale seems a very weird choice.
Regarding bias in studies.... " results were less or more then expected" aren't unusual statements. Non qualitative research has hypothesis which reflects the researchers biases in that s/he will expect to find those results (ex: im doing a study on jersey shore and IQ scores of viewers, my hypothesis h1 will be I expect to find a negative correlation between viewing JS and IQ of the viewer. However I find the results to be much less significant then I expected, so will say "results were less then expected" in the appropriate results section.)
So yeh if they meant it in that sense, then it's perfectly fine, if they didn't then...Oh boy, well least they come out in the open with their hostility and will likely get torn to shreds for it.
Actually, a lot of people haven't just pronounced it dead on arrival, discussing potential problems with the study.CountChopula said:
Well, some did. On the other hand, there's a tendency of Australian studies to have a heavy air of confirmation bias. So it's not so much because "lol Australia."
That would be great, if that was needed to actually question the viability of the study. It's not, and you're left with a logical fallacy and nothing more.
Or perhaps "we" as gamers are tired of sensationalism.
Anyone should fear censorship.
I don't. The SCOTUS ruled they're art, shooting down such restrictions.
Like Australia.
No. Good thing that's not happening.
There IS a correlation between violent video games and violent behaviour. The problem is, correlation does not mean causation, an important distinction.
What if? Good question. That doesn't make this study more valid, though.
I, for one, will cross that bridge when we come to it.
Presumed based on what? An already slanted view of the response?
Ridiculous. They've done that already, WITHOUT the reactionary response you've gone after.
You're not even objective enough to address the people addressing the issue.
However, I will address that. You could "objectively" say that about EVERY medium for which these accusations have been made, from novels to metal. Would you honestly be a proponent to scrutiny of other media?
It's silly.
However, I'm not going to say we can't have more study. That's not what the condemnation is, either, so railing for it is similarly silly. The problem here is some pretty strong confirmation bias and questionable conclusions, and yes, we can question those without being a forum of scholars and academics.
Save your venom for when a real, peer-reviewed study is published in a reputable journal. there's a reason people bypass them for studies on global warming, video game violence, and creationist "science." They tend to be, you know, bullshit.
I mean, you are LEGITIMATELY interested in the truth, right?
While it's usually a necessarily part of scientific research to have a preconceived disposition, (a hypothesis,) measuring it by somehow testing the "humanity" of your lab rats seems a bit flawed. How did he actually do this? Before and after a game of two of Mortal Combat was there a questionnaire asking "on a scale of one to five how likely are you to start running around setting pedestrians on fire"?
Recently there was a tragic case in Australia where a teenager killed another teenager with no motive. In court he described the adrenaline rush of killing to a theme park ride. Now we all know how this could have gone if he had replaced "a theme park ride" with "Call of Duty" but surprisingly not one person was lobbying to close down Sea World due to the dangers it posed to impressionable kids. Strange that.
Recently there was a tragic case in Australia where a teenager killed another teenager with no motive. In court he described the adrenaline rush of killing to a theme park ride. Now we all know how this could have gone if he had replaced "a theme park ride" with "Call of Duty" but surprisingly not one person was lobbying to close down Sea World due to the dangers it posed to impressionable kids. Strange that.
"Expected" findings are a violation of academic integrity. The findings of this research would be subject to extreme scrutiny due to the increased likelihood of methodological biases that naturally arise from pursuing the rejection of a null hypothesis rather than being neutral to the outcome. Results are generally reported as being consistent with previous research or not, and while you definitely draw your alternate hypotheses from extant literature, the null hypothesis is always no relationship, and your research design is always focused on examining the hypotheses, not rejecting the null.
While I know there are certain scales of humanity (there are entire psychology journals more or less devoted to defining scales of various traits), the definition of this scale, as well as the methods with which data is collected and analyzed, would be dubious as there is an obvious bias in the research design.
Is the study published? I find it hard to believe that such an obviously biased piece of work could pass any board of reviewers, but then I haven't read the research.
While I know there are certain scales of humanity (there are entire psychology journals more or less devoted to defining scales of various traits), the definition of this scale, as well as the methods with which data is collected and analyzed, would be dubious as there is an obvious bias in the research design.
Is the study published? I find it hard to believe that such an obviously biased piece of work could pass any board of reviewers, but then I haven't read the research.
Call me an eliminative materialist, but this is psychology... why are you talking about it as if it is a hard science? Psychology doesn't really even have causality, almost all psychological studies are based upon correlation. If it were neuroscience then you'd actually have easily quantifiable data and would be able to track down the exact causal system at work. Not that neuroscience is advanced enough to do any of that yet, but when it is it will probably outright replace most if not all psychology.Abandon4093 said:
Thanks for coming into that reasonably open mindedly. In all honesty I think the majority of studies are going away from us, less because of bias and more because, you know its true.
And are we surprised? What feels more violent, death in books or death in films? Films. And so violence is going to be more intense in games. Because is more immediate and has a lot of power. The power is great, would Heavy Rain have been as emotionally involving if it wasn't a game but just a film? Heck no. But their is a price to pay and the price is that the violence is going to be more involving, and unfortunately, do to competitive nature, there's probably more violent stuff too.
The minute we accept that games are more violent is the minute we can quantify those affects better and understand them. Maybe it's something we'll have to watch out for, an Extra Credits recently pointed out that games can give your mind impressions and it's important to be aware and look out for them, maybe the evidence will show that whilst games are more violent, the tangible affects are still as negligible as those of a morning traffic jam. We've got to shift the story from "are games more violent?" to "does that actually matter?" else the news will just be full of the answer to the first and more unbased restrictions will come in
And are we surprised? What feels more violent, death in books or death in films? Films. And so violence is going to be more intense in games. Because is more immediate and has a lot of power. The power is great, would Heavy Rain have been as emotionally involving if it wasn't a game but just a film? Heck no. But their is a price to pay and the price is that the violence is going to be more involving, and unfortunately, do to competitive nature, there's probably more violent stuff too.
The minute we accept that games are more violent is the minute we can quantify those affects better and understand them. Maybe it's something we'll have to watch out for, an Extra Credits recently pointed out that games can give your mind impressions and it's important to be aware and look out for them, maybe the evidence will show that whilst games are more violent, the tangible affects are still as negligible as those of a morning traffic jam. We've got to shift the story from "are games more violent?" to "does that actually matter?" else the news will just be full of the answer to the first and more unbased restrictions will come in
I know you put part of the title in quotations, but having the vast majority of your article contradict the claims in the title, as well as "The specifics of the study weren't revealed"...
But then I guess a title like "Another 'qualified', 'unbiased' 'study' proves link between videogames and violent behavior" wouldn't get as many hits.
But then I guess a title like "Another 'qualified', 'unbiased' 'study' proves link between videogames and violent behavior" wouldn't get as many hits.
I'll grant you that. From what I've heard most studies confirm that violent video games cause some form of aggression, but the aggression is always pretty mild. I'd almost guarantee that an extremely frustrating non-violent video game would cause even more aggression. In fact, these studies need to make sure that it is the violence content itself that causes the aggression and not the simple frustration of loosing.Abandon4093 said:
Whenever I play a first person shooter it is always abundantly clear that I'm playing a game against other people, and that when I "kill" their avatars I am just setting them back in the game. There's nothing dehumanizing in it because no one thinks that they are actually killing anyone. Maybe single player is different psychologically, but I just think of the hordes of faceless NPCs as AI, not people. Unless they are capable of distinguishing whether the increased aggression comes from violent content or from simple competitiveness their study won't have much merit. Remember that violent video games are also more openly confrontational and competitive than non-violent video games, so the control they use should be a video game with an equal amount of direct confrontation and competition.
