Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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Australian Study "Confirms Dangers of Violent Videogames"


A new University of Queensland study says there's good reason to worry about the dangers of violent videogames.

The debate over the impact of violent videogames on impressionable minds has been raging for almost as long as videogames have been around. The concern is that their interactive nature makes them far more influential than other media, such as television or movies. Watching a guy get shot on the screen isn't nearly as impactful as pulling the trigger yourself, the thinking goes, even if "pulling the trigger" just means clicking a button on a mouse or controller.

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."

The specifics of the study weren't revealed, but players were pitted against one another in the classic fighting game Mortal Kombat [http://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Kombat-Playstation-3/dp/B003O6E1JS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320183258&sr=8-1]. Players were also put up against the computer to see if it "diminished one's humanity" to the same extent, and the results from both studies were compared to a similar one featuring a non-violent game. The results, according to Bastian, suggest potentially serious long-term effects on fans of violent videogames which could result in "chronic changes in self-perception."

But it seems, at least to my untrained eye, that the good doctor might have gone into this study with certain preconceptions that he wanted to confirm. "There are good reasons to be concerned: the negative effects of violent videogames have been well documented and appear to be more significant than those associated with other forms of violent media," he said in a University of Queensland News [http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=23987] report. The finding that playing violent videogames would lead players to see themselves as less human was "expected," he added.

"We also expected that, in line with previous work on real-life violence, players would view their opponents as less human when they were the targets of violence compared to when they were opponents in a non-violent videogame," he said. "In addition, we found that although players felt dehumanized when engaging in videogame violence, even when this is directed towards computer-generated avatars, it is only when another player is the target of this violence that they are also dehumanized."

I'm not sure how exactly one measures "humanity" in a scientific study, particularly when the methodology of said study is hidden behind a veil of academic alarmism. I'm also not entirely clear on how the "dehumanization" that takes place when you're trying to kick somebody's ass in the Netherrealm is all that terribly different from that of, say, the high school football field, particularly when the coach tells you he wants to see the opposing quarterback face down and twitching. Other than that, though, it all seems perfectly reasonable.

via: GamePolitics [http://gamepolitics.com/2011/10/31/research-sense-humanity-lost-when-playing-violent-games]


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RA92

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Cool. Just when I finished reading how Carmageddon shaped a man's perception of the world around him. Guess it's time to lock up Andrew Smee, eh? What if he starts running people over instead of video game journalism?
 

weirdee

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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!
 

Orks da best

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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.
 

weirdee

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

everybody, quit your jobs now
 

ResonanceGames

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"The findings of Study 2 also showed that simply playing a violent game with another person did not affect perceptions of their humanity. Ratings of other people's humanity were only lowered when the other was the target of cyber-violence, not when the other was a co-perpetrator of that violence," Dr Bastian said.
I wonder how playing a video game stacks up against playing any competitive sport in this regard.
 

The Rookie Gamer

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weirdguy said:
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!
And he put intelligence as a core human quality. Obviously hasn't seen Jersey Shore :p
 

Richardplex

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

everybody, quit your jobs now
At least I can continue running *remembers that he sees everyone in a car as a potential person to try and make him jump and mock him* Maybe their study is true...
 

FreakSheet

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We might want to do a study on those who do these studies, they seem to think the game is real life, and as such there are no distinctions to a fatality in Mortal Kombat and a real life killer...
 

orangeban

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He's so right! The other day I played GTA IV and I became a sociopath who couldn't fathom human emotion, and I instantly realised that all those around me weren't real humans, merely shells, there for my amusement. More importantly it struck me that I'm not really human, merely a shell designed to get amusement from the abuse of other shells.

Then I played Viva Pinata and learned to love again.
 

Erana

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Which is why I bawled my eyes out when I thought they killed a cute little mouse scurrying in the studio.
Yep, I'm a total monster with no regard to the value of life.

That being said, I'd like to see them take a look at cooperative gameplay. Am I still a terrible monster when I'm shooting a gun made of heal?
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Well until hundreds of thousands of gamers go nuts after the release of GTAV, then the issue is more down to the person playing the game, than the game itself.
 

Andy Chalk

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weirdguy said:
But really, you could attribute these same dehumanizing factors to professional sports
That's the point, isn't it? In just about any kind of competitive activity, it's natural to view your opponent not as a fellow human being, but as an ass to be kicked. I also question how much weight can be given to feelings of "humanity," whatever that may mean, when you're squaring off against an entirely non-human opponent. You're not shooting a human or setting him on fire or body-slamming him through a table or whatever, you're doing it to an enemy who doesn't actually exist. And you're not even doing it, you're just pushing buttons. It seems to me that if there's anything dehumanizing about it, it's that there's nothing at all "human" about it in the first place.

But hey, I'm not a scientist.
 

RA92

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Andy Chalk said:
I'm not sure how exactly one measures "humanity"...


With red dots, silly.

http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media/images/2439.jpg

It appears gamers are incapable of resisting the urges of the Beast.


 

Azuaron

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Orks da best said:
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.)
I actually see that as the proper way to be looking at things. Now, I'm not defending the study or Australia's practices against violent video games in general, but I want you to think about this for a minute.

Sex is a natural (and required, if we want to continue the species) part of the human of experience.

Violence is something we want normal citizens to avoid.

So, if sex is something that's good, and violence is something that's bad, shouldn't there be greater restrictions on violence than there are on sex?

I've always thought the USA was a little backward on that one.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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FreakSheet said:
We might want to do a study on those who do these studies, they seem to think the game is real life, and as such there are no distinctions to a fatality in Mortal Kombat and a real life killer...
I would like to see that study. :)