Research Finds Negative Effects in Violent Videogames
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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After just three days of 20 minutes each? It's hard to relate that to actual consumption levels. Researcher was clearly and badly biased (for example believing that gamers are young rather than the average adult in 20's,30's) which is a shame but still. I wonder if any of those 70 were gamers, because after years of shooters can 3 days of 20 minutes still have an affect on your behaviour
The blasting game is different though. That's not about physical violence, that's about mistrust and defensiveness (say how I react when someone accuses my hobby of having negative affects =D) and thats much less serious but much more fundamental to our society and everything in it. It's the same type of decision that business leaders make every day and this study is suggesting that a business leader whose just got off a three day CoD binge is more likely to slap on an incredibly tight awkward binding contract. A producer is more likely to decide to milk a genre into the dust because they're worried their opponents will do the same first.
I mean I'm sure you've heard of the prisoners problem/dilemma which basically means in a lot of scenarios nothing actually functions without a lot of irrational trust. And what this study is saying, is that violent videogames actually make that trust harder to form.
Obviously we can't just ban videogames, but we need to know what they do to us, so we can learn not to be like that, this is a fairly serious personality, I've played that game in a studies before and I know exactly what sort of person you have to be to keep increasing the intensity and frankly, as someone who didn't want to be punishing to the other guy, it's a little worrying knowing that if I'd played some CoD I would have been more likely to blast him. And this isn't something that will harm the person playing the games, heck, business and the prisoners dilemma show that this sort of behaviour will make you rich and successful, but it negatively affects how you behave to other people.
It's not doom, but it's also something not to be dismissed either. It#s worth thought (the bit about the story is probably worth less thought though, because it's fiction, it seems to me that watching anything with a violent theme will put you in the mood for expecting violent stories. That doesn't guide behaviour)
I've tended to share this opinion with you and there were quite a few things I'd like to nitpick about the study but in this study particularly there was something which I thought is worth a lot more thought. The increased blast game is very different, we tend to think of violence and the consequences of violence in fairly standard humdrum terms, noscoping a cat, violent crime, muggings, fights and things like that, and yeah they're awful events but they're rare events that take a lot of violence and are tightly controlled by stuff like the police.kouriichi said:
The blasting game is different though. That's not about physical violence, that's about mistrust and defensiveness (say how I react when someone accuses my hobby of having negative affects =D) and thats much less serious but much more fundamental to our society and everything in it. It's the same type of decision that business leaders make every day and this study is suggesting that a business leader whose just got off a three day CoD binge is more likely to slap on an incredibly tight awkward binding contract. A producer is more likely to decide to milk a genre into the dust because they're worried their opponents will do the same first.
I mean I'm sure you've heard of the prisoners problem/dilemma which basically means in a lot of scenarios nothing actually functions without a lot of irrational trust. And what this study is saying, is that violent videogames actually make that trust harder to form.
Obviously we can't just ban videogames, but we need to know what they do to us, so we can learn not to be like that, this is a fairly serious personality, I've played that game in a studies before and I know exactly what sort of person you have to be to keep increasing the intensity and frankly, as someone who didn't want to be punishing to the other guy, it's a little worrying knowing that if I'd played some CoD I would have been more likely to blast him. And this isn't something that will harm the person playing the games, heck, business and the prisoners dilemma show that this sort of behaviour will make you rich and successful, but it negatively affects how you behave to other people.
It's not doom, but it's also something not to be dismissed either. It#s worth thought (the bit about the story is probably worth less thought though, because it's fiction, it seems to me that watching anything with a violent theme will put you in the mood for expecting violent stories. That doesn't guide behaviour)
I agree with you on this one, but I'm actually a little disturbed by the second study. As I've said above, I've done that one before and the mindset its testing is exactly right. Not I'm going to hit you violence, but I can't trust you so I'm going to draw up a really nasty contractRiobux said:
I think the important part of this study is that it is only 70 people from one small area which even a high school statistics student will tell you that this is by no means a valid study on the human race, its barely a valid study on french university students.
I do feel that I get angryer thease days at inantimate objects...mostly though just in th form of screaming obscenities and dropping C-bombs at charachters on screen
no Idea of its related but thankfully its not like agressian is an issue for
no Idea of its related but thankfully its not like agressian is an issue for
Huh, it's not like there's this thing called competitiveness or anything. Wouldn't want to confuse people becoming increasingly verbal due to a growing desire to perform well in a game with aggression now would we?
Overall I feel like I can't get a good read off of the first portion of research without knowing the "neutral" story that was told to the participants, especially since it's hard to gauge the validity of their reactions based on it.
And all of those non-violent games are highly non-competitive as well. Sure, you can compete against other racers in games like Pure, but it's a different environment,and doesn't cause mounting stress so much as games like Call of Duty.
Also, why the heck did they use Condemned 2? That game is indeed pretty f***ed up.
Overall I feel like I can't get a good read off of the first portion of research without knowing the "neutral" story that was told to the participants, especially since it's hard to gauge the validity of their reactions based on it.
And all of those non-violent games are highly non-competitive as well. Sure, you can compete against other racers in games like Pure, but it's a different environment,and doesn't cause mounting stress so much as games like Call of Duty.
Also, why the heck did they use Condemned 2? That game is indeed pretty f***ed up.
Alright, that's all the proof I need. I'm petitioning for a ban on all violent video games, because surely that is the most sensible thing to do.
Or, y'know, we could rely on the majority of people to be able to resist acting upon the aggressive and/or violent impulses that arise, much like any civilized human being in modern socie..
Yeah, screw it, that's not likely to happen this day and age.
On a more serious note: of course a character with violent tendencies is going to be predicted to act violently. It's psychology at a kindergarten level. Man with gun who shoots many things likely will shoot many more things with gun. It's not rocket surgery. A five-year old "expert psychoanalyst" could've told you that.
EDIT: 'Purrently someone else made a similar argument to mine and that argument was refuted. Still, the studies are kinda silly. Now, let's all bask in the warm feelings that come with resolving these misunderstandings with reason and polite correction....
Or, y'know, we could rely on the majority of people to be able to resist acting upon the aggressive and/or violent impulses that arise, much like any civilized human being in modern socie..
Yeah, screw it, that's not likely to happen this day and age.
On a more serious note: of course a character with violent tendencies is going to be predicted to act violently. It's psychology at a kindergarten level. Man with gun who shoots many things likely will shoot many more things with gun. It's not rocket surgery. A five-year old "expert psychoanalyst" could've told you that.
EDIT: 'Purrently someone else made a similar argument to mine and that argument was refuted. Still, the studies are kinda silly. Now, let's all bask in the warm feelings that come with resolving these misunderstandings with reason and polite correction....
There are some pretty sketchy hypotheses and conclusions drawn from studies like this by people who do know how to read them (and the people who actually perform the studies).Xanadu84 said:
As for your other points, here's the abstract from the paper itself:
No surprises there, it's not like this is Bushman's first 'games are bad' study/paper.
no this is not valid research because they make a fallacious irrational leap in their findings.jollybarracuda said:
i a person witnessing numerous violent acts
ii person will then imprint aggressive thought processes onto a fictional character and by proxy
iii will presume that another person will exhibit violent tendencies
iv because the other person will be perceived to exhibit violent tendencies then the initial person will be more likely to act in a violent manor.
this line of logic completely loses all rational backing when going from postulate ii to iii (because there is this thing called the fight or flight response which is an either or not an absolute), and then there is supposed to be an un-given postulate v (where the initial person will then be likely to act in a aggressive, or violent manor) which was considered to be such a fallacious leap that they omitted it themselves.
an interesting thought that doesn't seem to be mentioned this study. How did the violent games study compare with OTHER violent media on the same/similar sample group? If 1 group watches a marathon of Rambo, terminator, die hard, etc and another group watches a bunch of comedies or something would you get the same or similar effect on people? i would think you would?
My point is this shouldn't be a binary thing. ANY exposure to violent shit will probably make you think about more violent shit. The real question is whether games are significantly better or worse then other media people consume. Because if its the same there really isn't much of an issue here now is there.
My point is this shouldn't be a binary thing. ANY exposure to violent shit will probably make you think about more violent shit. The real question is whether games are significantly better or worse then other media people consume. Because if its the same there really isn't much of an issue here now is there.
Hrm. 20 minutes/day of violent games results in more and more aggression each day? And you expect it to get worse? Based on years of minimum 20 minutes/day of game play per day (Well, most days at least if I had to guess) I should be an incoherent barbarian incapable of anything but babbled insults as I bash in the heads of all you come near me with a sharpened XBox controller.
Or, bare minimum, I should be showing some sort of overt sign of aggressiveness. Certainly if 10+ years of constant exposure doesn't cause overtly harmful behavior or thinking, then any research which concludes a noticeable increase after a combined hour of play should be carefully eyeballed.
I'm not disputing that the results are accurate of course. What I am disputing is the interpretation. It's a known fact that human beings are more or less incapable of totally spontaneous generation of ideas. All this study really shows is that when asked for multiple solutions to a creative problem, they reached for solutions generated by their most recent experience first.
There are potentially troubling implications to that conclusion, but this study is not sufficient to make them any more than overreaching extrapolations.
I'm sure the victory noise thing is significant, but ultimately I don't think it symbolizes actual violence. There's a world of difference between irritation and physical violence.
Or, bare minimum, I should be showing some sort of overt sign of aggressiveness. Certainly if 10+ years of constant exposure doesn't cause overtly harmful behavior or thinking, then any research which concludes a noticeable increase after a combined hour of play should be carefully eyeballed.
I'm not disputing that the results are accurate of course. What I am disputing is the interpretation. It's a known fact that human beings are more or less incapable of totally spontaneous generation of ideas. All this study really shows is that when asked for multiple solutions to a creative problem, they reached for solutions generated by their most recent experience first.
There are potentially troubling implications to that conclusion, but this study is not sufficient to make them any more than overreaching extrapolations.
I'm sure the victory noise thing is significant, but ultimately I don't think it symbolizes actual violence. There's a world of difference between irritation and physical violence.
Brilliant! So that's why violent crime has been on the rise for the last 20 years--Oh, er, wait. Sorry. Apparently violent crime has been on a massive decline since the early '90s. Huh. That one period of time where people have been playing craploads more video games than ever before.
Anyway, there definitely couldn't be an inverse relationship between people getting out their rage fake murdering people and the rate of frustrated people getting guns and regular murdering people. That would be silly.
Anyway, there definitely couldn't be an inverse relationship between people getting out their rage fake murdering people and the rate of frustrated people getting guns and regular murdering people. That would be silly.
You have a point but you're missing some data. Things that affect violent crime in youth typically take 20 years for it to be seen in statistics. The book Freakanomics has a good argument that shows the logic behind it. So if you use Mortal Kombat as the start of Violent video games then there should have been an uptick in violence in 2011. And since games only got more violent you'd expect the next 10 years to have a substantial increase in Violent Crime. However, we're still in a decrease in violent crime.Aureliano said:
Few problems here...RhombusHatesYou said:
1) External validity. What kind of aggression does he think he is measuring? Because, "hitting someone with a baseball bat" and "trash talk at the poker table" seem to both be measured as aggression. Blasting loud sounds is no Milgram study. Ive done worse things to my friends as a form of camaraderie, and I suspect that most people have. Sure, he may be measuring, "Aggression", and that's all well and good, but in this study, aggression may be nothing more then the context given to a friendly, engageing competition. Maybe he never said as such, but the message seems to be assuming that aggression that is being measured is undesirable. In fact, a rational and balanced passion to achieve is aggression. Lack of aggression could be calm, or it could be a predisposition to becoming withdrawn and depressed.
2) I really don't see how his story stem tests have anything to do with anything except basic pattern recognition. Basically, this study might as well be a bunch of people watching Friday the 13th movies, and researchers being shocked that after a few sequels, most of the audience figured out that Jason was going to hurt the slutty teenage girl.
3) Whats the baseline? increased aggression may seem all scary, but how does that aggression compare to, say, after watching a violent movie. Or after watching a football game (You can define that however you want, still works). or after a beer or 2. or after a spirited debate. Or after sex. Or after a whole world of human experiences. Aggression levels may be elevated, but it could be raised to a random and insignificant blip on the scale of human experiences.
4) Lets not even go into participant bias. You know just maybe, the participants who were in a lab and given a violent game to play figured out that maybe the researchers were looking for violent reactions. Oh, and who was the sampled population? You know most preliminary research that gets done should have tacked on to the title, "...among college aged Psych 101 students. Who needed extra credit."
Basically, the research itself may be useful as a start, but it is highly unlikely that it is actually saying anything that the average reader, or possibly even the researchers, think its saying. This paper may say a decent amount, but it doesn't say much about games having a negative effect on peoples behaviors here in the real world.
I can't be the only one who noiticed the insane amount of irony in this statement and the rest of the thread where people rant off about how this guy is bullshit.Andy Chalk said:
Every other comment I want to just smack my head in frustration. People saying things they think are contrary when in fact the scientists would agree, producing complete ad homeniem attacks against the researchers for no reason, acting defensively for absolutely no reason, restating things that the scientists themselves said and acting like they didn't in an effort to counter what the reasearchers never said in the first place, it's all incredibly idiotic.
Look, video games have an affect, both positive and negative. The sooner we, the video game community, realize this the sooner we can actually move forward and understand the psychology of all this and better understand human behavior. Acting like defensive, knee-jerking jackasses isn't going to help and only makes you look more like, well, a jackass. It's ridiculous.
Fair study, but not one that can lead to any long term conclusions (least from the description in the article). Hell the people may have written a more violent story simply because they just spent x hours playing a game about killing people, but does that have any long term effects? A nice control would've been to call these people back a few weeks later and test to see how violent the stories were now.
I wonder if they considered that aggressive people tend to pick aggressive games?
And the whole victory thing isn't a surprise. I don't see that a bigger celebration has to do anything with aggression. But maybe I'm just wrong.
And the whole victory thing isn't a surprise. I don't see that a bigger celebration has to do anything with aggression. But maybe I'm just wrong.
