Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"

[Asuka Soryu]

Oh, pasha. The Joker doesn't play video games and he's probably killed 1000's.

 

[Bassik]

Good thing the study was done in Australia, we all know how impartial they are on the issue.

Although I recently played Super Mario Bros 3 again, and today I ate a steak, so there's obviously some connection here that only Australian "scientists" can put into perspective, because most of the western world isn't that dishonest when it comes to science.

 

[Legit101]

................

 

[TheAceTheOne]

I have one comment. I'm sick of people going in and claiming people get violent with videogames. They've said the same shit about metal, about rock, about rap, about comic books and movies... For fuck's sake, they thought Jazz would turn you into a homicidal sociopath at one point! Let them ***** about it... If we stop paying attention to them, they'll turn away from the topic eventually. There's a massive fucking double standard, too. I haven't seen a study done by the people bashing videogames about movies causing violence... I'd be willing to bet the people performing these studies have seen Rambo and The Terminator and maybe even stuff like Saw. I'm incredibly tired of hearing stuff like this every few days.

I sense someone wants to know why I bother reading or commenting then?

Well, it's because I don't think I've said this before and I feel the need to say it. If we acknowledge these bullshit studies and fight back like pre-teens in a schoolyard scuffle, we'll just get more of the same. We need to find a new way to counter these studies besides posting them with snide remarks and anger.

(Yes, I am aware that I am a bit of a hypocrite for saying "Don't get angry" after my first paragraph. I'm only angry because of the unfairness that's being directed at gamers and videogames. Perhaps people who are angry can use their anger in a positive way, you know... To fix the injustices done.)

 

[DarkPanda XIII]

Huh, thought this was something that wouldn't be brought up for another five years or so. Silly people talking about such an old topic that really went nowhere the first time.

 

[LilithSlave]

Just sounds like further proof to me that most studies are sadly quite biased. It's just like all of those lame "Evo Psych" studies claiming that women like rich men. Funny how of course, the money that would be from such studies is often by, well, rich bourgeois men. Surprise surprise! "Hey women, be attracted to me! Have sex with me! It's normal, my money makes me sexy and that's your biology speaking. Come over here and give big daddy some sugar." Nevermind the fact of how long women haven't even been able to work. Inequality is in the genes/hormones! Somehow! He... no.

Just the same, moral alarmists like funding studies that verify their biases. So of course people would find things like "playing violent video games dehumanizes people". That was the result they were looking for to begin with.

I say this, by the way, as a person who is sick of violence in video games and developers relying on it, and gamers defending this decision, claiming that violence is needed for good games.

 

[Jachwe]

How about you read the fucking thing? It is publicly avaible: http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/%7Euqbbast1/Bastian%20et%20al%20JESP%20in%20press.pdf
Not quick enough of a breakdown of mehtod?

First off, that wasn't in the article, so where did you find it? Second, thank you I will read it and there was really no need to be a dick about it. You could have just said I've got the journal entry if you want to read it' because all I've had to go off is the article.

But finally, what you just quoted IS NOT a breakdown of the research methodology. It's a run down of their criteria for what makes one a 'human' which is a subjective assertion at it's best. So I'm really not expecting much from this. But I will read it and thanks for the link, despite how you presented it.

"That wasn´t in the article" is exactly the kind of attitude I expected. You probably think that entitles you to ignorance. Here is how you may find the work with 5 minutes of your time and no effort at all but to know how you find articles on the internet:
1. You read the article on the escapist
2. You click on the link to the source
3. You again click the link to the source
4. You get the name of the author and the name of the paper it was published in
5. You google: first hit is the webzone of Brock Bastian
6. You browse it until you hit a list of his published work. Luckily he uploaded it as a pdf.

Wasn´t that hard was it? Or you could go to the comment section and reveal to everyone how ignorant or lazy you are about researching scientific work. What I want you to take away from this is, never trust a sole source for facts or news. Espaciely not a website talking about a study which concludes things that are contrary to the website´s viewpoint. You have to double and triplecheck the validity of such reports because a publisher sorts the information to sway public opinion. Publishers do not even have to be dishonest or lieing to archieve this goal. As a intelligent reader you have to aquire information from your source and compare it with other sources to get a less biased overview.

Oh, and I quoted the methodology. Let me quote it again: "Our measure of humanness incorporated two dimensions identified in previous work (Haslam, 2006; Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005)." (Bastian 2011: 6)

Bastian, B., Jetten, J. & Radke, H., Cyber-Dehumanization:
Violent video game play diminishes our humanity, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2011), doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2011.10.009
This might be confusing to you but he states that the criteria and mehtod of the study is found in another work. Namely:
Haslam, N., Bain, P., Douge, L., Lee, M., & Bastian, B. (2005). More human than you:
Attributing humanness to self and others. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 89, 937-950. Which you can find as a pdf on the webzone of Dr Bastian here: http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/%7Euqbbast1/Haslam%20et%20al%20JPSP%202005.pdf On page 940 following the method is described which was used in the study
Furthermore there is also the work of Nick Haslam:
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 10, 252-264. You know the name of the work and you google it you get the complete work here: http://www2.uni-jena.de/svw/igc/Literature/TS%20KesslerMummendey/Nick%20Haslam%20on%20dehumanization.pdf

If you want to be smart at least be sure and check that you are right. It is not some magic trick I used. You people probably do not know how to do proper research. That is a skill aquired through knowledge and practise.

 

[PhiMed]

Literally none of the things people are saying in here are true about sports. Stop watching sports movies and making assumptions about "jock culture" when you clearly know nothing about it.

Sports were a big part of my life for 14 years, and it was an incredibly common occurrence for players of both sides to pray together whenever someone got hurt.

 

[xdiesp]

Why does our youth waste their time playing videogames, while they be killing people in Afghanistan?

 

[Jachwe]

Yup, just all seems a little... off. But, when the full study is up for grabs I'll look it up on 'Summon' at my uni, might surprise me.

And when you quoted me I hadn't been into to uni to access it's network. So all I'm going to say is SUCK IT! Keep your assumptions about me to yourself. [...] 'Summon' is the most reliable source I have available to me for research and finding scientific journals. Why would I waste my time on google when I could just search a university approved database?

I am now assuming you are the smartest guy in this forum because you use swearing as an ultimate and unbeatable argument. I salute your genius... not.
Yes Summon is nice. But your arrogance is saddens me. If you only search for sources there you are narrowing your own resources. Oh and why you should "waste" your time with google is quite simple. Googles database is the larger one. You have seen how easy I could aquire the information you lacked without accessing the network of a university. Of course it is reliable as shit in regards to the validitiy but then again (I should assume) you are intelligent enough to evaluate the information you find through google search and are smart enough to doublecheck the validity of the information... Wait, you always have to to that. And yes, I am saying my search results I posted in this comment are valid as shit as long as I do not research their authenticity.

The methodology is how he collected his data, not the scales used to measure it. Also alluding to other peoples research instead of giving a decent breakdown of his own methodology is very poor.

Saying alluding to other peoples research is poor is poor. By the way, one if the works he alludes to is one of his own ones. The more you talk the less I believe you are actualy involved with scientific work. Have you seen the paper we are talking about? Including everything it is only 28 pages long. Only 17 pages are the written text. You want someone to give you a decent breackdown of methodology within like 20 pages and still get results and make a conclusion about the research he was doing? You wish.
A complete methodology is something you do within the range of a dissertation. You present the various theories you can apply to solve a problem at hand, evaluate their utility, choose one, and assume the results it will produce. This will take more than 20 pages. He has given us a breakdown of the important stuff at hand we need to know to not be left dumb while reading his paper and uses saved space for the actual research.

I haven't read the paper yet, I've been busy with the first draft of my diss, so when I've finished it I'll get round to the journal entry. It's book marked for later, I'll probably use a few extracts in my literature review for my abstract actually. I'm expecting it'll be a good example of the kind of bias in this field research.

Fine but watch out that you are not biased youreself.

You should probably have read our entire discussion before jumping in half cocked and trying to stroke your ego all over my face.

Well it worked. Can't argue with results. I exposed your biased view and arrogance regarding you not needing any kind of research before talking. Your first line to me says it all "First off, that wasn't in the article, so where did you find it? " You fail.

 

[Wintermoot]

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE DISCOVERED HUMAN COMPETITION!
seriously he would have had the same results with Mario cart.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

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.

Psychology studies work a bit like sociological studies (heck they even use the same statistical tool) in that yes, they look for a correlation but that correlation needs to achieve a minimum p value to be statiscally significant and be scientifically credible (for social sciences the value is 0.05 meaning its 99.95% probable that the correlation found wasn't due to chance).
This coupled with psychology studies following the scientific model(replicable method and results, etc) and following the same rigors other disciplines have in regards to confounding variables means psychology is taken seriously enough by the scientific community afaik.

Finally, the area of psychology is extremely interdisciplinary, overlapping with neuroscience amongst other things which is why I understand why you'd think neuroscience could replace psychology, but i'd disagree with you on this as neuroscience doesn't account for sociological elements, only what goes on in the brain (as fascinating as it is).
If anything, neuroscientists are more likely to replace ai programmers once they figure out how to build a virtual brain or a learning ai that works.

Btw I do not know what the minimum p value is in neuro science but AFAIK the only hard science where you might get a p value of almost 0 would be physics and even then it's extremely unlikely.

Well, of course there are different types of psychology. I agree, social psychology will not be outright reduced to an account of neuroscience, though one could plausibly argue that the phenomena studied in social psychology emerge out of the phenomena one studies in neuroscience. After all human behavior at the societal level is dependent upon individual human nature. If one wishes to label neuroscience as a subset of psychology that's fine, it's merely a typological distinction. My criticism of "psychology" is limited to the more traditional forms of psychology such as psychoanalysis or behaviorism. Though you're right, I'm probably arguing against a straw man because most of those psychological theories have fallen out of favor at the academic level. But in the particular case of this study I believe my criticism holds.

However, you misunderstood my point about causality vs. correlation. My point was that psychology can only link cause to effect through general induction: it hardly ever supplies an adequate account of the causal relationship itself. For instance, a biologist can give you an extremely complex account for how a virus causes the symptoms of an illness to manifest using physiology, immunology and cellular mechanics. The psychologist simply notes the terminal state of the effect and correlates it with its initial cause, but can hardly explain the intermediary steps. It's not merely a matter of statistics because all of our power over causal relationships is derived from our understanding of the process of the causal relationship itself and its intermediary steps. Correlating aggression with a violent stimulus tells us next to nothing: we need to know HOW the violent stimulus does this.