Psychology Study Blames Games for Aggressive Behavior

[Aprilgold]

Well, the good thing is that games are the art of making you feel something. And usually games make you mad, but only because that was planned. or something.... look, I played a hell ton of violent games from the arcade days to this day in age, and any danger I've seen scared the shit out of me.

 

[JDKJ]

there always seem to be pop-pyschologists who want to play the aggression card and pass that off as encouraging violence...............Bartholow's study will be published in the "Journal of Experimental Social Psychology."

You do realise these are peer-reviewed scientific journals and therefore unlikely to contain any crap from 'pop-psychologists', right?

There is no point trying to argue against the notion that games cause aggressive behaviour. The studies are overwhelmingly in favour of the argument that they do; but it seems to be mostly short-term effects. It's the same with any other media, and that's the point we should be pressing; yes, violent videogames cause violent behaviour, but so do violent films, and there is no controversy with them, so why treat games differently?

There are no studies of which I am aware that establish a causal link between video games and violent behavior. This study doesn't purport to do so, either. Aggressive behavior is not the same thing as violent behavior.

As usual, I read and type too quickly. Yes, you're right, that should be aggressive behaviour, not violent behaviour.

Interestingly, I did a quick dig and whilst violent games leading to aggressive behaviour is fairly well established, according to a recent study: "Neither video game violence exposure, nor television violence exposure, were prospective predictors of serious acts of youth aggression or violence."

So yeah, definitely not violent then.

EDIT: Just found this as well, taken from a book attacking violent videogame hysteria:

One such study is a ?noise blast? test, which is supposedly designed to measure aggression through the volume and duration of a noise blast one test subject administers to another. Yet, as the authors point out, it is hard to draw any conclusions about real-life activities from a test without any context or real world implications.

Maybe this study isn't so good after all.

The issue was pushed front and center by Leland Yee's violent video game-labeling law that currently pends an opinion by the Supreme Court. A requirement of any such law is that the proponent offer proof of a causal connection between violent video games and real-world violence. The "studies" that California offered to the Court were ripped to shreds by the opponents of the law. Those "studies" didn't even come close to proving the required causal connection.

 

[exampleAccount]

Video games desensitize you to fictional violence, not actual violence. I'm pretty sadistic when it comes to games and movies, but I find real violence pretty appalling and I tend to view people that resort to it as the lowest form of scum imaginable. Fictional Violence is just the images we see, it doesn't have the actual meaning or effect of real violence.

As for actual violent behavior, I think its more to do with the frustration or challenge created by games that causes it. The same way some people get pissed off and break shit if their computer crashes or they can't do their math homework. When I was younger I only raged out at difficult or unfair games like Mario Kart with its FUCKING BLUE SHELL that made me want to KILL A BABY WITH MY TEETH every time my siblings used it to knock me out of first place.

 

[WabbitTwacks]

funny how once every couple months there is an article which either says that video games make people more violent or that they do not.

Also i'm going to agree with the people who said that being desensitized to violence doesn't mean that you are more violent your self.

 

[feycreature]

Maybe I misread, but it looked like the study only showed an increase in, as the Penny Arcade guys put it, "Being kinda mean". Blasting loud noise in someone's ear is not exactly horror movie material. The desensitization to violence makes sense. So I guess what I'm saying is the study works as far as it goes, it just doesn't indicate much.

 

[Biodeamon]

There's always an exscuse...

 

[Mauso88]

There hasn't been a shocking game out for quite some time and these killjoys are just clutching at straws, desperate to cling to any fading notion of videogames being bad for society whilst the same people want to promote the war in the middle east. Hypocrisy much?

 

[DarkRyter]

Why is it a bad thing to be desensitized to violence?

You see a guy get shot, it's better to just man up, stay calm, and call the cops, instead of flipping the fuck out like a blubbering goddamn pansy.

 

[Jumplion]

Why is it a bad thing to be desensitized to violence?

You see a guy get shot, it's better to just man up, stay calm, and call the cops, instead of flipping the fuck out like a blubbering goddamn pansy.

Who says you'd call the cops? Desensitization to violence doesn't just mean not being as grossed out by blood/guts/whatever, it also means how well you react to it. Be desensitized enough and you probably wouldn't bat an eye to the shot man. Not saying video games, or any other medium, makes people do that, but that's the main point of these studies. Various forms of media do cause some aggressive behavior depending on the situation, we just need to know the short-/long-term effects of it. It's nothing to scoff at, really.

 

[Reincarnatedwolfgod]

you know what i am going to murder him now since vidoe game De-sensitized to real life violence. when i am done with this guy he will have cork screw though his eye! while i beat the shit out of of him with a 2×4!

not really i don't like fighting in real life nore do i like blood so this guy is wrong

***** please. De-sensitized to virtual violence is not the same thing as being de-sensitized to real life violence. Just ask Penn and Teller.

know that you mention penn and tell her a link to the first part of that episode on video games

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWr4htYp9dM

 

[Acidwell]

One Question;

What caused violence before now?

 

[Jumplion]

One Question;

What caused violence before now?

Plenty of things caused violence before hand. What's your point? All forms of media have some sort of an effect on the human psyche, regardless of whether violence has happened before, no matter how minor it may potentially be. Depending on studies, video games, and many other mediums, may cause aggressive. What we don't know is what the extensive long-/short-term effects are, and why it may affect some people more than others. The brain is a complicated thing, that's why "common sense" is said to be an oxymoron

 

[bluewolf]

One Question;

What caused violence before now?

Not video games if that's what you are asking.

 

[bluewolf]

Pull a gun on the kids and see how they react. Then tell me that they're "desensitized to violence" you worthless hack.

NICE!

 

[Nightvalien]

ya but mind you he is giving a group a violent media and the other a peaceful one, it's like those kids science fair projects if a plant lives after listening to certain happy musics and die after listening to let's say linkin park, now if anything is subjected to one thing for it's entire life it will be the only thing they know, check out abuse victims, gaming exposes long time gamers to every kind of human emotion, if they want to do this test right they should expose the subjects to both kind of games during an extended period of time and see what kind of reaction they get.

 

[bluewolf]

I wonder why fox news hates video games so much... probably because the majority of people are that watch fox news are ignorant dumbasses.

 

[Sennz0r]

One Question;

What caused violence before now?

Plenty of things caused violence before hand. What's your point? All forms of media have some sort of an effect on the human psyche, regardless of whether violence has happened before, no matter how minor it may potentially be. Depending on studies, video games, and many other mediums, may cause aggressive. What we don't know is what the extensive long-/short-term effects are, and why it may affect some people more than others. The brain is a complicated thing, that's why "common sense" is said to be an oxymoron

Jumplion, you are a gentleman and a scholar. Agree with all the things you say, including your criticism on Mr. Tito. I basically said the same thing about aggressive games causing people to become aggressive (I may have used the term violent, my mistake), but it's usually for a short while after playing. Also the desensitisation is context-sensitive, so just because you can dismember people easily in a game doesn't mean you'll be so chipper doing it in real life.

Also people in here who are saying everyone likes to pick on games these days: Get over it. It's been the same thing when film came out, then television. Psychology studies human behaviour and since human behaviour is affected by recent developments, psychology studies those too. The most recent and relevant to human behaviour currently being video games and the internet. And don't you believe for one second they're not looking at what time spent online does to a person.

Just saying, no one is picking on video games because they think they're bad. They're just a big behavioural influence, and worthy of being tested.

 

[Kakashi on crack]

Video games increase aggressive behaivour, this is no surprise

Violent video games create a desensitivation to violence, this is no surprise

The whole thing they want to prove is that it has long-term ill effects, and it doesn't. I play violent games, I'm slightly aggressive afterwards, I sleep, I loose that aggressiveness I gained, and over time I become re-sensitized to violence. It's common sense to say "ohh, this person was beaten and raped, this is bad" and most people will have this response even IF desensitized >.>

 

[Drake_Dercon]

Psychology Study Blames Games for Aggressive Behavior

[The experiment Bartholow conducted exposed some young adults to violent games like Call of Duty and Killzone (not sure which versions) while others played non-violent games. Bartholow then showed subjects violent images and neutral images - the examples given were a dude with a gun in his mouth and a man on a bike - and measured their brainwaves to gauge their reaction. The group of subjects who played the violent games had a demonstrably lower reaction to the violent image, which Bartholow said proves they were "desensitized" to violence.

Whereas I propose that a desensitization to violence is actually a good thing, be its correlation with violent games true or not.

As we know from experience, the single greatest causes of violence are anger and fear. A desensitization to violence removes the fear of violence, taking out a good chunk of the problem.

Here's my logic: Take 9/11 (sorry if this is a bit of a sore spot fore some people, but that's part of my point), for example. Would the response (both internal and external) have provoked so many acts of violence if people did not care?

If you can teach kids to be relatively moral (in a not-kill-people general sense), then there is no harm, even a benefit in desensitization.

(I'll admit that a good number of people believe that there should have been some form of response to the acts of 9/11 (I'm one of them, I also believe that something should have been done far sooner, such as building schools and repairing homes after the soviets were driven out of afghanistan). My main issue was the acts of violence and racism committed against the muslim communities back home that continue to this day.)

 

[Jumplion]

Video games increase aggressive behaivour, this is no surprise

Violent video games create a desensitivation to violence, this is no surprise

The whole thing they want to prove is that it has long-term ill effects, and it doesn't. I play violent games, I'm slightly aggressive afterwards, I sleep, I loose that aggressiveness I gained, and over time I become re-sensitized to violence. It's common sense to say "ohh, this person was beaten and raped, this is bad" and most people will have this response even IF desensitized >.>

Personal anecdotes =/= scientific discovery.

Small, short-term effects may go away after some time for some people, but the eventual build of of said short-term effects could potentially lead to more long-term effects due to the frequency and intensity of the effects. While I hate using this analogy, the first time you use a drug it has a short-term effect of a high and eventually those effects become more permanent to both your mental and physical state.

Saying that "it's common sense" is a complete disservice to scientific discoveries as a whole, especially in psychology. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and the human mind is an incredibly complex mechanism that adapts to so many things at once and can be developed completely differently if surrounded in a different environment. You'd think it's "common sense" to call the cops after witnessing a murder, and yet this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese] is not [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect] the case [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility].