Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"

[Vault101]

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.

I was watching the 7pm project last night...god one of those hosts sounded like the biggest idiot in existance

about over fishing and wanting to fish a pristine arctic reagion

"but surely feeding the world is more important" he kept saying that over and over..gaaahh you dickhead there WONT BE any fish if we keep going liek this (its not just the environment things. its more what does this dickhead know about anything?)

 

[Astoria]

How's this for a study. Let the kids play violent video games for weeks on end. Then put a gun in their hand and tell them to shoot the person now standing in front of them. I guarantee you not one of them will pull the trigger. There have been so many studies done on video games and the results are split 50-50. Can they PLEASE just give it a rest and pour their time and money into something useful.

 

[Relnik]

hey guys April fools ain't for a couple of months

 

[Ninjat_126]

as soon as i saw Australia i knew it would be a bash agaisnt games, they hate violence down there, though funny enough are ok with sex (or so I been told.)

Nothing to see here, its just as mindless as the violence they (proclaim) is mindless.

Nope. They hate violence and sex in video games. Prime time family television is fine though.

I'd like to see a study show that watching Masterchef diminishes your humanity. Let's see the reaction then.

Oh, you silly university people. You are saying it's bad that players don't recognize their enemies in games as humans. They are not humans, they are just polygon models with human-ish looking texture stretched over them. From my point of view it would be wrong if players thought of them as humans and proceeded to kill them with that mindset - but they don't, they are fully aware of difference between the real world and the game world, they know that npcs are not humans, but mere polygon models with human-ish looking texture stretched over them. I wish those people who are so quick to attack games would also be able to distinguish real life from the imaginative one.

The specifics of the study weren't revealed

In other words it hasn't been subject to peer review and has bypassed due academic process. Nothing to see here. Just another alarmist with no credibility; though it's rather concerning that a university appears to be able to get away with such tactics just because it's video games they're bashing.

How do you even measure human warmth, anyway?

When you're doing science this shoddy, you probably just measure their aura with a dowsing rod.

Don't quote me on this but the last time I read a history book, I'm pretty sure there was violence back then too. Give a person a stick and I'm sure they'll find a reason to beat the ever loving shit out of the person next to them.

I'm waiting for the study that concludes that we are all stone cold nuts, with or without any incentives.

I think that one's being done by God, and we're all the test subjects. At least we get cake.

 

[GoldenFish]

I see anyone in any competitive activity as someone to be beaten. Perhaps I even see them as less human but that is with more than videogames. They're out there to beat me and I'm out there to beat them. If I set aside their feelings and intelligence in the pursuit to beat them as competition is designed then what's wrong? I would think most people would do it every day and it's not like we carry our emotional state from that competition after it's over.

 

[Treblaine]

His new study has found that people who play these games tend to see their opponents, and even themselves, as "lacking in core human qualities such as warmth, open-mindedness and intelligence."

Maybe that is because their opponents ARE lacking in such qualities! They are robots! Artificial beings!

What kind of person would find the Combine "warm, open minded and intelligent"?!?!?

Even in the game universe they are mindless clones (or something worse), and in practice they are a simple string of computer code, that never comes close to replicating the complexity of a small animal like a house fly let alone a full person! And what is true for Combine is true for most of the antagonists in video games, they mindlessly attack according to a relatively simple algorithms of fire and manoeuvre. They may attack with unyielding ferociousness or with animal cunning but no true intelligence, they can't imagine what you are thinking, they fundamentally lack a theory of mind. They cannot be reasoned with. They are autonomatons.

"and even themselves"

If you ask enough people of any group you could get "even a few" to admit they aren't really open minded, not really that nice and not really that smart. He keeps using the term "humanised" and "dehumanised" without clarification, context or meaning. They obviously are still human physically, they aren't mutating into cats or frogs. The term "Dehumanisation" is used in application to things like slavery, but applied to oneself it loses meaning. Considering the affection and love people feel for non human things like their pet dogs who they would never allow to come to harm, what significance does a term like "humanisation" mean?

Especially with gems like "Ratings of other people's humanity". How do you RATE "humanity"?!!?? I didn't know there was a scale. And precisely what are people rating, are they rating the "humanity" of themselves in everyday life, or are they rating their perception of the 2D spite in a 20 year old beam em up?!?!!!!

Why won't he go into detail and get beyond vague histrionics?

"The specifics of the study weren't revealed"

Ah. That's not how science works. That's how religion works.

 

[DanDeFool]

But Dr. Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland's School of Psychology says fears about the influence of violent games are well-founded, as his new study has found that people who play these games tend to see their opponents, and even themselves, as "lacking in core human qualities such as warmth, open-mindedness and intelligence."

Apparently he's never used the internet!

You, sir, have just made my day.

OT:...

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You know what, I'm sick of commenting on news posts like this. I'm at the point of wanting all these researchers to just throw up their hands and say, "You know what? We're done. We can't figure this shit out. Just make up your mind for yourself whether or not you think videogames turn people into sociopathic killers."

Honestly, I'm just... done.

 

[uhddh]

I don't know about you guys but playing Video Games all my life and Violent one since I was about 5 I've become desensitized to the violence and thus it doesn't affect me. Morale: Get 'em while they're young

 

[Treblaine]

Oh, you silly university people. You are saying it's bad that players don't recognize their enemies in games as humans. They are not humans, they are just polygon models with human-ish looking texture stretched over them. From my point of view it would be wrong if players thought of them as humans and proceeded to kill them with that mindset - but they don't, they are fully aware of difference between the real world and the game world, they know that npcs are not humans, but mere polygon models with human-ish looking texture stretched over them. I wish those people who are so quick to attack games would also be able to distinguish real life from the imaginative one.

You're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't.

This is one of those studies that regardless of the outcome they will spin this to the negative. This is a sure fire sign of Bad Science, that you could inverse the results and yet the logic still leads to the same conclusion, but I think the problem here is this Dr Bastian is not qualified to study video games as he doesn't know what the hell he is looking at. He doesn't know how people play games, the lines people put between reality and fiction of games, and seems to make assumptions as an ignorant observer.

 

[WalrusPowers]

Well, my recent idea to attend a psychology class at that school just got shot down.

 

[Taddy]

My Humanity on Vampire - The Masquerade - Bloodlines is full though...

 

[Knight Templar]

I was watching the 7pm project last night...god one of those hosts sounded like the biggest idiot in existence

Common theme with guests on that show. Still it's not that bad, or at least the times I have seen it were not.
I much prefer the Drum, they usually have people who disagree with each other and I've seen the hosts call people on what is straight up bullshit many times. But again, limited experience.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Want to reduce someone's humanity? Easy. Give them someone or something else to blame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

you sir, are a wit

Thank you.

 

[moh21]

Certain violent games put you in situations where being humane ends with you dying a violent bloody death. The point of games where you kill zombies and aliens is to take away the enemy's humanity, so you aren't supposed to feel guilty when you paint the walls with their brains. That is the appeal of a lot of violent games: THOSE ARE THE BAD GUYS, GO GET THEM. In the matter of killing human opponents in games: they are trying to murder you, why should you care if they were a warm loving person?

 

[Wintermoot]

violent games only have impact on the mentally ill and impressible people just like violent comics,movies,books,etc. with 99.99% of all gamers being mentally stable means that this research is completely useless.
PS enemy AI is programmed to be hostile towards you would you try to hug a guy that runs towards you with a gun?

 

[vxicepickxv]

But really, you could attribute these same dehumanizing factors to professional sports, so...

everybody, quit your jobs now

I could attribute it to the US political system as well.

 

[notimeforlulz]

God I wish I was a social scientist. So much money for so little work. If I was a real scientist I'd have to come up with questions, then do studies, and then I wouldn't be able to publish because my results didn't prove with a sigma 1 (95%) probability that my hypothesis was right or wrong.

But social science, do the same thing, bias those questions in the study like a muthafoka, get at least a 50% positive result, PUBLISH! Get MONEYS!

Seriously, why does anyone listen to social scientist? They shot their field in the foot when they abandoned the scientific principles of the modern age. #JustSayin'

 

[Lamnidae]

Ok fellow students. This is the Lifeline. The Lifeline is devided into 2 extremes. On the left side we have Love which comes from the intent to do good. On the right side we have Fear which is the cause to Evil. I'm going to give you situations and I want you to place it on the right position of the Lifeline!

Reminds me a bit of Donnie Darko... Anyone else?

Well... If we should get rid of the good games?
Shouldn't we get rid of the spoonfed holy books, their cultist buildings and their practisioners as well?
The holy books/wars made me the hated gay goat I am today.
So where's all this hate and violence really coming from?

And why is the outcome of a test practiced on only a few out of a billion immediately so definitively for global mental wellbeing?

 

[Treblaine]

Want to reduce someone's humanity? Easy. Give them someone or something else to blame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

You Fool! If they discover these well known psychological phenomena then the government will have no choice but to ban large crowds and also ban anyone being in a position of authority!![/sarc]

Milgram experiment showed how people WOULD (as far as they knew) torture a man to death with electric shocks simply because they were ordered to. And have such discoveries lead to widespread challenge of authority and checks and balances? No.