Nope, stress causes aggression. This can be brought about by many things. Games "tend" to de-stress you; though certain games *cough*blueshells*cough* are more likely to bring about aggression.
Thing is...most of the game aggression is used up on the game or its controllers. Rarely, if ever, have we seen someone play a game and then immediately take it out on someone, unless it's that person stressing them out while they are playing the game.
This would happen with any form of social interaction. Games will make you tenser than normal, if it's an action game, and possibly more likely to react badly to extraneous stress, but no more so than any other form of competitive activity.
Quick quiz:
Someone shoots you in a cheap way when you KNOW you had a bead on him first. What is your immediate reaction?
a) Swear
b) Ragequit
c) Go after him again
d) Pound the desk
e) Punch someone.
I'm almost sure that those options are in order of people choosing them. E - I'd be amazed if anyone did that; and would probably point to an underlying problem with aggression far more than what the game did to you.
Why do people believe this? Because games show violence and people wrongly assume that violence breeds violence.
Why do they believe that? Because they want to stop violence happening?
Why do they want to stop it? Because domestic violence is a bad thing.
Why games though? Games are an easy target. Pinpointing the actual target is far harder.
Best way to handle it? If all the scientific studies that prove it's not related can't help, then we have to pinpoint the target ourselves and let people know.
Surveys have shown that 1/6 of the world's population are gamers; if this was 1% true, then we'd have nearly 600 million cases of violence a day. As bad as the world can be, there's never been a single act of violence to match that - even with some of the most terrible disasters.
Even if we take all the uncorroborated reports of games causing violence (Columbine etc.) that's still maybe a billionth of those playing games that are affected. Road rage, alcohol, religion, law, and medicine would be overjoyed to have statistics that low.
Thing is...most of the game aggression is used up on the game or its controllers. Rarely, if ever, have we seen someone play a game and then immediately take it out on someone, unless it's that person stressing them out while they are playing the game.
This would happen with any form of social interaction. Games will make you tenser than normal, if it's an action game, and possibly more likely to react badly to extraneous stress, but no more so than any other form of competitive activity.
Quick quiz:
Someone shoots you in a cheap way when you KNOW you had a bead on him first. What is your immediate reaction?
a) Swear
b) Ragequit
c) Go after him again
d) Pound the desk
e) Punch someone.
I'm almost sure that those options are in order of people choosing them. E - I'd be amazed if anyone did that; and would probably point to an underlying problem with aggression far more than what the game did to you.
Why do people believe this? Because games show violence and people wrongly assume that violence breeds violence.
Why do they believe that? Because they want to stop violence happening?
Why do they want to stop it? Because domestic violence is a bad thing.
Why games though? Games are an easy target. Pinpointing the actual target is far harder.
Best way to handle it? If all the scientific studies that prove it's not related can't help, then we have to pinpoint the target ourselves and let people know.
Surveys have shown that 1/6 of the world's population are gamers; if this was 1% true, then we'd have nearly 600 million cases of violence a day. As bad as the world can be, there's never been a single act of violence to match that - even with some of the most terrible disasters.
Even if we take all the uncorroborated reports of games causing violence (Columbine etc.) that's still maybe a billionth of those playing games that are affected. Road rage, alcohol, religion, law, and medicine would be overjoyed to have statistics that low.