Research Finds Negative Effects in Violent Videogames

[UltraXan]

I've been playing violent games since I was 4, starting with Unreal Tournament. Now it's things like... *looks at steam game list* TF2, L4D(2), Saints row the third, UT3, Dawn of War, Vindictus, Skyrim... Am I aggressive? No, quite the opposite, actually. If someone acts aggressively towards me, I'm not gonna "get all up in his face." I'm gonna talk to him, like an intelligent person. Granted, I have a care-bear of a mother, so maybe that could've offset things, but regardless. The brain tends to hold on to things it just experienced for a bit. So if you ask someone who just played something "violent" to come up with a scenario to a story, then it wouldn't surprise me at all if what they come up with is also violent.

I'll be honest, I don't have much of an imagination! When I think up imaginary scenarios, it's mostly just constructed from bits of games I've played in the past. Maybe not the scenarios themselves, but things like locations and characters will look VERY similar to certain games, ijs. You want me to come up with something from scratch? Give me a blank page and a metric fuckton of time.

 

[chiefohara]

I've played violent video games for 20 years.

Haven't killed anyone yet.

 

[Chadling]

Well, let's take a look at that supposedly peer-reviewed scientific journal that they published their results in: the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology....

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-experimental-social-psychology/

Wow. Look at that Impact Factor: 2.3 for this year.

Terrible, half-assed research gets published in a terrible, half-assed journal. That's how things are and how they should be in science.... but sadly, I just know it's going to be added to be personal arsenal of any prejudiced trial lawyer looking to become infamous a videogame-related case.

 

[crazy_coug99]

I did a paper on this and I keep going back to a quote that I frequently use, "IF VIDEO GAMES MADE PEOPLE VIOLENT, THEN JAPAN WOULD BE IN CHAOS." Besides this isn't even long term. Get me the research team that spend years on this and have them give their results.

 

[faefrost]

This one doesn't even seem to pass the smell test. I mean honestly most soft science "behavioral science" studies don't. All they do is regurgitate the "scientists" intended outcomes. But this one seems even a tad more blatant than most.

 

[Rule Britannia]

They were probably aggressive because they were made to play bad games

 

[zelatoth]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. "Video Games can cause aggression, aggression can mean violence."

The same way football players are more likely to use steroids than a lazy teenager, a person who drives everyday is more likely to get in a car accident, and a surfer is more likely to be eaten by a shark. Theres bad in everything, but i dont see them banning bulk tubs of "Scooperman" because to much "Frozen Dairy Desert" can lead to heart failure.

In the end, studies like this get us nowhere, and never will. Just because people are more angry after a few thousand rounds of CoD, doesnt mean they will go out and 360 noscope the neighbors cat.

That's pretty much how i feel about this, well said.

 

[jklinders]

Let me count the problems here.

Sample size=70 students-microscopic.
Sample group= all from same school, very little diversity
duration of test=3 days

The lack of diversity, short duration and small sample size of this "study" says nothing about the population at large. you cannot possibly even begin to rule out any of the really important variables with these systemic flaws in the study.

Might be good enough for a high school project but I would expect much higher standards than this from a university. Is this what people are paying 10s of thousands of dollars on education to learn to do these days?

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Did my school diploma thesis on that subject.

Again another study which reveals "short term aggresion". This is nothing new. When you play a violent game and get questioned directly after the gaming session, you're more aggressive.

A bunch of studies also revealed that it's not really a violence-aggression correlation, it's more an exctiment-aggresion correlation.
Because even test subjects which played exciting but non-violent games showed these effects. Games used to test this were racing games and similar stuff.

So far the long time effects are not proven to my knowledge. There's also yet no direct correlation between gaming induced short term aggression and real life effects (e.g. gamers bein' more violent to others), since all data which i saw is showing that humans usually are very good to differentiate between fiction and reality.

Basically only people who're nuts to begin with and can't abstract that stuff could become potentially more dangerous to the rest of us.

*shrug* Call me, when they find something new.

 

[Tohron]

Bear in mind, you can get those effects for some people just by telling them a violent story. So while the results may be noticeable, they don't really uniquely implicate videogames.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

i wonder if they considered how "frustrating" some games are.

obviously, someone who plays LoL or COD multiplayer is going to me much more frustrated than someone who plays a lite game (not saying superbike or dirt is)

but what i'm getting at is if they figured that into their game choice..there are plenty of violent games i play that i don't get frustrated with at all, while some old mario games i've gotten vehemently pissed off at when there is little to no violence at all.

still, interesting choices to do the study with.

 

[Johkmil]

Before everyone goes into research-bashing mode, let us look at what the study actually claims; people who play violent games will have a slightly more aggressive mindset afterwards. No "videogames cause violence," no "violent videogames kill," merely that we humans are an impressionable lot. Other things that increase aggressive behavior is having a bad day, being low in blood sugar or drinking alcohol, things that everyone goes through without murder every week. The study was limited in both scope and scale, and should be seen neither as a threat to violent games or as proof of their seduction of the innocent. We now know that playing Modern Warfare might make you more likely to choose violent paths in a choose-your-own-adventure story, or annoy people with noises; no more, perhaps less.

Ignoring studies and going for knee-jerk responses as "I HAVE MURDERED A GAZILLION DIGITAL NAZIS AND AM STILL SANE!!1!" really does not help our cause. It only makes us as ignorant as the murder-videogames crowd. This study will, as all others, be misrepresented and misused by the censorship-worshipers, but that does not give us license to stoop to their level. Taking the high ground is always the way to go in the long run.

 

[Scow2]

Books and movies are not interactive. That's a HUGE difference. Compare your thoughts about the protagonists actions in a movie such as Commando, and then compare them to the thoughts on the actions of your character in any game where you get to kill large numbers of enemies.

Personally, I don't see much of a difference. Clearly I'm massively unusual in that I can tell the difference between a game and reality, because I don't really care about shooting stuff on a screen any more than I'd care about demolishing an inconveniently placed apartment block, but I abhor violence and abuse of power in real life.

In addition, just because the medium is interactive shouldn't lead to the demonisation it receives. 80 years ago, people were horrified by burlesque (officially, anyway). Today it's fine. People were horrified by radio (for completely different reasons! ). Today it's fine. People were horrified when TV came out. Today it's a substitute nanny.

Gaming should be no different. Those who refuse to learn from history are too gorram' retarded to be permitted to influence policy decisions and societal perceptions. Unfortunately, to my eternal disgust, the population as a group are too retarded to keep the loonies in check.

Sometimes, I'm just ashamed to be human (and all that other unnecessarily over the top deprecation! ).

The effects of gaming aren't as extreme as people make them out to be, but the interactivity DOES add an element that I feel should be researched, though most research goes about it completely the wrong way. And I DON'T feel that the effects the medium has on people is negative.

 

[Mothhive]

The students were assigned to play either violent games - Call of Duty 4, Condemned 2 and The Club - or non-violent ones - S3K Superbike, Dirt 2 and Pure - once per day, for 20 minutes at a time. At the end of each session, they were given the beginning of a story and asked to list 20 things the lead character would say or do in it. The students who played violent games were more likely to think that the character would behave aggressively or violently, a belief that grew stronger with each passing day; those in the non-violent pool did not show any increased expectations of hostility.

So exposing someone to certain content results in that content being on their mind shortly afterwards? No shit!

If I showed you pictures of food for 20 minutes, I'd bet you'd be thinking about it afterwards, and maybe even get a little hungry, but you're not going to suddenly run off and become a chef because of it.

This research could be done with absolutely any form of media and you'd get the same results. Books, TV, Films, Music, whatever. To make the research solely on video games with a focus on aggression in this way just shows that the person conducting the experiment had an agenda. Whether that agenda is to villify violent games, or simply to gain more attention due to the provocative subject matter, this test was clearly biased.

 

[WieldsOblivion]

Ahahaa, 3 days = long term!

My sides -_-

 

[Johkmil]

Books and movies are not interactive. That's a HUGE difference. Compare your thoughts about the protagonists actions in a movie such as Commando, and then compare them to the thoughts on the actions of your character in any game where you get to kill large numbers of enemies.

Personally, I don't see much of a difference. Clearly I'm massively unusual in that I can tell the difference between a game and reality, because I don't really care about shooting stuff on a screen any more than I'd care about demolishing an inconveniently placed apartment block, but I abhor violence and abuse of power in real life.

In addition, just because the medium is interactive shouldn't lead to the demonisation it receives. 80 years ago, people were horrified by burlesque (officially, anyway). Today it's fine. People were horrified by radio (for completely different reasons! ). Today it's fine. People were horrified when TV came out. Today it's a substitute nanny.

Gaming should be no different. Those who refuse to learn from history are too gorram' retarded to be permitted to influence policy decisions and societal perceptions. Unfortunately, to my eternal disgust, the population as a group are too retarded to keep the loonies in check.

Sometimes, I'm just ashamed to be human (and all that other unnecessarily over the top deprecation! ).

The effects of gaming aren't as extreme as people make them out to be, but the interactivity DOES add an element that I feel should be researched, though most research goes about it completely the wrong way. And I DON'T feel that the effects the medium has on people is negative.

True.
Better knowledge about how the interactivity of games affects people might even help creating better games and more immersive gaming. Or help the big money create more addictive casual games/MMOs, as the old Skinner box is being overused. As long as we stay calm and do not overreact when things appear differently than we expected, gaming is not in a threatened position.

 

[DataSnake]

And as already mentioned up-thread, there's no control group... How are we to know that it's 'violent' games having an 'aggressive' effect and not 'non-violent' games having a pacifying effect?

My first thought was, "technically the non-violent games are the control group". Then I read this post. You make a very good point, which I can't believe I didn't see right away. The reason we use placebos in drug tests is we already know a sugar pill won't kill germs, reduce pain, or what have you. The only justification for doing this study was the claim that the amount of aggression in games can effect the amount of aggression players show in real life, constructing a perfect Morton's fork; there are three possible assumptions the scientists could have made, all of which fail the "does this make sense" test:
1. Videogames affect aggression; violent games increase violence, and non-violent games decrease it. This fails because it means the "control group" is nothing of the sort.
2. Videogames have no effect on aggression. This is a good null hypothesis, but you don't design your experiment to ONLY WORK IF THE NULL HYPOTHESIS HOLDS. Experiment design 101: Always. Isolate. Your. Variables.
3. Videogames can have negative effects, but never positive ones. If you see no problem with starting from this assumption, you've probably never heard of confirmation bias.

 

[Agayek]

Not only does this study not prove that violent video games make people commit more violence, but it also does not prove that violent video games even make people more aggressive. Unless you consider writing violent stories correlates into you being an aggressive person, which I think is silly.

It's really not though. It's a pretty clear indication of the person's mental state at the time they're answering the question(s). It's not perfect by any means, but it's definitely sufficient for this kind of study.

OT: This is actually rather interesting. The only question I have about it now is when, relative to the periods of gameplay, the questions/metrics were taken. There's already been studies that indicated a short-term increase in aggression after playing violent games, through somewhat similar means. I'm curious as to how that impacted this particular study. The seemingly-cumulative effect seems to indicate that there may well be long-term effects, but that may just be the short-term effects being compounded. We'd need more data to say.

Edit: Also, I've gotta say, the vehement, visceral, and knee-jerk reaction of the vast majority of the people in this thread is simultaneously hilariously depressing and depressingly hilarious. I am forcibly reminded of this:

 

[Mariahsyn]

I've actually seen the whole "decompress from violent games" thing work.