Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
I participated in this study as part of my 1st year psychology course while I was at UQ... It seemed like a very flimsy basis to stand on for confirming that it makes people violent.
Edit: And the game was Street Fighter, not Mortal Kombat... cant even get the name of the game right =S
Edit: And the game was Street Fighter, not Mortal Kombat... cant even get the name of the game right =S
Yeah, but you guys are a bit too comfortable with it. Every Australian girl I've met has done some crazy crap sexually at very young ages. Heck, one girl I was with was organizing three-somes with herself and a 24 year old while she was 14, saying her parents were fine with it as long as it was out of the house and she was tested regularly. She's not the only girl from there that's admitted stuff like that freely and proudly. That's just too gross to be "ok" with it.Alphonse_Lamperouge said:
As for the article: Competitive nature, regardless of what triggers it, will always lead to aggression and a chance of violence. Trying to point it all on video games solves nothing in violence nor does it help game makers.
A brief excerpt from the personal page of this "scholar":
"I am happy to supervise students in any of the follow areas:
1) Dehumanization: This work focuses on the different ways that people can be dehumanized within everyday contexts, taking the perspective of both the targets of dehumanization, and also the perpetrators. This includes research which investigates the dehumanizing effects of social ostracism and computer mediated interactions such as video games.
2) Meat-eating: Focusing on the 'meat-paradox' this work asks the question of how people can both love animals and love meat! Specifically the work demonstrates that people deny moral rights and mental qualities to animals they eat and this results from processes of dissonance, categorization, framing and is increased when people enjoy eating meat.
3) Pain as punishment: This research highlights a new model of understanding pain: pain as penalty. Specifically this work shows that pain can reduce guilt because people experience pain as a penalty that restores justice.
4) Social expectancies for emotional experience: In this research we investigate the effects of perceived expectations that people shouldn't feel sad. Daily we are reminded that feeling sad and depressed is an undesirable state, is potentially an illness, and is in many ways representative of failure. We show that these messages prime people to feel bad when they feel sad, ironcially leading to increased negative emotions such as depression and anxiety.
5) Essentialist beliefs: This work focuses on the role of essentialist beliefs in maintaining segregation between groups in the absense of prejudice. Specifically we highlight the role of essentialist beliefs in seeing differences (implicit categorization) and the independence of this relationship from more evaluative forms of prejudice.
6) Moral vitalism: This research investigates the importance of how people think about good and evil for their moral reasoning and concern over ideological differences. Specifically when people think about good and evil as real forces that exist in the world (as opposed to a personal judgement of right and wrong) this increases their concerns over moral purity and moral contagion and leads to increased moral outrage and a greater emphasis placed on belief based differences between people."
This, people. This is why anti-intellectualism exists. It's due to faux-intellectuals like this ass-clown. When morons like this person open their mouths and spew forth their nonsense, holding their diplomas up like shields, it reflects poorly on the entire educated community.
"I am happy to supervise students in any of the follow areas:
1) Dehumanization: This work focuses on the different ways that people can be dehumanized within everyday contexts, taking the perspective of both the targets of dehumanization, and also the perpetrators. This includes research which investigates the dehumanizing effects of social ostracism and computer mediated interactions such as video games.
2) Meat-eating: Focusing on the 'meat-paradox' this work asks the question of how people can both love animals and love meat! Specifically the work demonstrates that people deny moral rights and mental qualities to animals they eat and this results from processes of dissonance, categorization, framing and is increased when people enjoy eating meat.
3) Pain as punishment: This research highlights a new model of understanding pain: pain as penalty. Specifically this work shows that pain can reduce guilt because people experience pain as a penalty that restores justice.
4) Social expectancies for emotional experience: In this research we investigate the effects of perceived expectations that people shouldn't feel sad. Daily we are reminded that feeling sad and depressed is an undesirable state, is potentially an illness, and is in many ways representative of failure. We show that these messages prime people to feel bad when they feel sad, ironcially leading to increased negative emotions such as depression and anxiety.
5) Essentialist beliefs: This work focuses on the role of essentialist beliefs in maintaining segregation between groups in the absense of prejudice. Specifically we highlight the role of essentialist beliefs in seeing differences (implicit categorization) and the independence of this relationship from more evaluative forms of prejudice.
6) Moral vitalism: This research investigates the importance of how people think about good and evil for their moral reasoning and concern over ideological differences. Specifically when people think about good and evil as real forces that exist in the world (as opposed to a personal judgement of right and wrong) this increases their concerns over moral purity and moral contagion and leads to increased moral outrage and a greater emphasis placed on belief based differences between people."
This, people. This is why anti-intellectualism exists. It's due to faux-intellectuals like this ass-clown. When morons like this person open their mouths and spew forth their nonsense, holding their diplomas up like shields, it reflects poorly on the entire educated community.
It sounds pretty spot on. What I don't get is how violent video games are bad? Since your fighting a non-physical entity it is more safe then playing sports and whatnot. Still though, instead of playing the blame game, how about we just blame the guy that commited the heidous acts and then walk all day.Andy Chalk said:
so having met an Australian girl you feel like you know enough to make a generalization about 20 million people? well let me make one. Ive seen an American, on TV i think, and he was a stupid, arrogant bigot. And he was a President, apparently an important position in your country. now on scale of legally brain dead to down syndrome dropout, how stupid is a nation that allows this?Devil said:
I could have told you that. The person you are playing against is the enemy, no matter what the game is this will happen. Arseholes on xbox-live are still people, I don't think negative qualities make somebody less human like that.
But I guess I should do what everybody should do when it's a matter of science and study. Find the source.
http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/~uqbbast1/Bastian%20et%20al%20JESP%20in%20press.pdf
"Our first study aimed to demonstrate that playing a violent video game against another
player would lead to dehumanized perceptions of both the self and the other."
Ideally you should be looking to see if this is true, not trying to show that it is, but whatever.
"I felt like I was mechanical and cold, like a robot"
"I felt like I was rational and logical, like I was intelligent"
And so on seems to be how they judged humanity.
I don't get why people would rate themselves low, others I understand because they get these questions right after playing and they were your opponent, of course you will be distanced from them. But why see yourself as "less human"? I don't think people did, when watching a movie I doubt you would come out and say "I felt like I was refined and cultured", but you wouldn't consider yourself any less human. A game takes up attention, and these games are about quick response, much less so tenis. I think this says more about twitch gameplay than it does anything else.
Yeah people may not be feeling great about killing things that look like people, I don't see that as confirming any danger.
Honestly, I didn't even bother to read the article. Want to know why? I looked at the three key terms in the title: "Confirms", "Violent", and "Videogames". That's all I needed to know it's another one-sided study done by panicked parents watching too much Fox News.
Why are these reports still hitting the front page of the Escapist? It's the equivalent of informing us that someone just saved money on their car insurance by switching to Geico. It isn't news.
Why are these reports still hitting the front page of the Escapist? It's the equivalent of informing us that someone just saved money on their car insurance by switching to Geico. It isn't news.
See? This is what happens when you take corporal punishment out of the classroom. People grow up and feel free to say stupid shit like this. Now if you got your ass whacked for being a complete idiot, when you grow up you might think twice about expressing whatever stupid thoughts come to mind. Just sayin'
I notice you are missing a Masquerade point.... Which anti-gaming science study caught you in the middle of a violent act? Also what video game paraphernalia did you have that marked you as one of us?Raiyan 1.0 said:
Usual stuff, yawn-o-rama, can't we have some new studies that look into new areas? Violent video games make kids 67.9% more likely to like bondage or some such stuff?
Actually, no. I live here in Australia and in fact go to the University of Queensland and I can assure you, people here love all restricted media. It's the government types and academic officials who don't and they dislike it all in equal share. Seriously though, they're only doing what they think is best for everyone, that is, what they think is best for the children and assumes that we adults either have child-sized brains or are smart enough to know why they're doing it.Orks da best said:
Think I'll go see Dr. Bastian and ask him how he measured people's perception of humanity, how that fully justifies that violent games are entirely terrible and how he can publish something like this without peer review. Seriously, I'd think the School of Psychology would be more concerned with peer review than my own, and they mark us down if we don't have at least 10 multi-peer reviewed references.
But don't you see? They've already removed corporal punishment from schools so they can't blame it for having violent children anymore, so they've moved on to games. Once they get rid of violent games they'll start blaming caffeinated soft drinks as a revolutionary new study will show they raise a child's excitement and therefore are to blame for every child's violent behaviour. Soon we'll have nothing fun or delicious and we'll have nothing to blame but bad parenting and that couldn't possibly be the cause, right?Fearzone said:
I played the original MK when I was three, and I'm still human. Human and toasty.
I do have to question their humanity part, because if they are just saying that then there must be some form of bias and trolling here. Its sad to see these people go after videogames like this, it feels like a scape goat when obviously it shouldn't be.
Now if they weren't covering their ass, they would have a study where they would use a range of video games, from fun and for the lolz to violent. I wouldn't measure "humanity" I would rather go with stress levels because that would relate to aggravation. And I would keep the difficulty curve of the games on a similar keel. For instance: Non-Violent game would be Mario Brothers, semi-violent would be a light action adventure game like Legend of Zelda or maybe Jak and Daxter, something with intermittent fighting. Violent would be the Mortal Kombat or something with brutal fighting and a graphic nature. But I would keep the difficulty curve minimal, I would measure stress levels, and I would rather conduct this in a double blind format then just use one game, and measure a variable that isn't even defined in scientific theory.
Did violent videogames make me violent, only if they were frustrating...
I do have to question their humanity part, because if they are just saying that then there must be some form of bias and trolling here. Its sad to see these people go after videogames like this, it feels like a scape goat when obviously it shouldn't be.
Now if they weren't covering their ass, they would have a study where they would use a range of video games, from fun and for the lolz to violent. I wouldn't measure "humanity" I would rather go with stress levels because that would relate to aggravation. And I would keep the difficulty curve of the games on a similar keel. For instance: Non-Violent game would be Mario Brothers, semi-violent would be a light action adventure game like Legend of Zelda or maybe Jak and Daxter, something with intermittent fighting. Violent would be the Mortal Kombat or something with brutal fighting and a graphic nature. But I would keep the difficulty curve minimal, I would measure stress levels, and I would rather conduct this in a double blind format then just use one game, and measure a variable that isn't even defined in scientific theory.
Did violent videogames make me violent, only if they were frustrating...
The real problem here, is that mortal combat provides no non-violent resolution. I managed to retain my humanity whilst playing this game, but found their was no way to win! Game developers need to start including the ability to negotiate with out opponents and come to a peaceful resolution. Or maybe it's just a surreal commentary on the way people really see each other in todays world.
I'm Australian, but this is nonsense, what is their definition of dehumanise?
I'm Australian, but this is nonsense, what is their definition of dehumanise?
People are stupid. I think that's all that really needs to be said about this "study".
Some moronic scientist/doctor with an agenda came into the experiment with a preconceived idea of what violent games do to people, and looked for a way to confirm it. That's all this is.
The only people who are negatively affected by playing any type of video game are those who are already mentally unstable. To say that the game is the cause of their sudden psychotic break is pretty laughable. Their psychosis is what caused it, not the trigger itself. This is like someone who is allergic to peanuts eating a PB+J sandwich and then blaming the sandwich when they end up in the hospital.
Some moronic scientist/doctor with an agenda came into the experiment with a preconceived idea of what violent games do to people, and looked for a way to confirm it. That's all this is.
The only people who are negatively affected by playing any type of video game are those who are already mentally unstable. To say that the game is the cause of their sudden psychotic break is pretty laughable. Their psychosis is what caused it, not the trigger itself. This is like someone who is allergic to peanuts eating a PB+J sandwich and then blaming the sandwich when they end up in the hospital.
oh my god. Australians being stupid and making ridiculous claims, this has never happ- oh wait it's Australia. seriously i live here you should hear some of the stuff that the older generation believe. We have a lot of dumb educated people here. And it seems to me that the people with the best worldviews who really think about things are the ones who are less educated, anyway i digress.
