Video games cause violence?

[CardTrick]

In general I only see two points of view on this: people citing research saying that games DO cause violence, and people outright refuting it.

But why are we even discussing this? If video games genuinely caused violence, we would see this in overwhelming quantities. And if they really DO cause violence, then they clearly cause only very tiny amounts in very small numbers of people. Which you could say about nearly anything else on Earth. Why are games so singled out for this?

I just got back from a probability exam, so forgive this, but I wanted to check something:

Let's take a violent game: (Modern Warfare 3) and assume that every murderer in the UK plays it.

There are roughly 600 murders a year in the UK.
MW3 sold roughly 1000000 units in the UK.
There are roughly 62000000 people in the UK

P(murderer|MW3) = the probability of being a murderer given that you play MW3
P(murderer|MW3) = P(MW3|murderer)P(murderer) / [P(MW3|murderer)P(murderer) + P(MW3|¬murderer)P(¬murderer)]

P(MW3|murderer)P(murderer) = (1/1) * (600/62000000) = ~0.000009677
P(MW3|¬murderer)P(¬murderer) = (999400/61999400) * (61999400/62000000) = ~0.016119

so:
P(murderer|MW3) = (~0.000009677) / (~0.000009677 + ~0.016119)

WolframAlpha tells me this works out to be: 0.0006.

0.06% in other words. Meaning if you take my ridiculous assumption that all murderers play CoD, there is a 0.06% chance that any CoD player taken at random will be a murderer. That is so close to nothing it's not even funny.

tl;dr

It doesn't matter what studies show if there isn't actually an observed consistent effect that violent games have on people driving them to be violent. There isn't. The ratio of murdering gamers to non-murdering gamers is so unbelievably tiny, why are we even still talking about this?

 

[dessertmonkeyjk]

At least you showed your work. From what I've seen, all we get is claims but rather odd reasoning.

Also, here's your complimentary "Welcome to The Escapist."

 

[ResonanceSD]

Usually we get statements of fact either way.

VIDEOGAMES CAUSE VIOLENCE!

or

NO THEY DON'T!

(Basically)



Well done for showing your working, however, I can completely guarantee you that none of this will be taken into account the next time a murder occurs.

What you really need to do is work out the index values. How much more likely is someone who plays videogames to be a murderer than the rest of the population?

oh, and welcome btw.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

That's a pretty cool bit of probability you've done there. Nice

 

[Lugbzurg]

It's as other people have mentioned. If videogames caused violence, there would even be news documenting each and every time someone thought there was a connection to any given random act of violence.

 

[Pebkio]

I'd be interested to see the probability outcome for the US. I couldn't be bothered to go get them myself but I bet the percentage of difference just might be the same percentage difference between the number of murders in the US versus the number of murders in the UK.

Whatever that may be, because I couldn't be bothered to look that up as well. Also, can we get the probability numbers for the existence of unicorns?

Wait a minute, why does P(MW3|¬Murderer)=(1000000-600)/(62000000-600)? That equation sets up the assumption that a random sampling of 1000000 people would have a greater percentage of probable murderers than the actual sampling of all 62000000. With your equation, let's take a random sampling of 1000 people who collect stamps (for this example, let's pretend that there are only 1000 people in your country who are stampies):

P(stampies|murderer)P(murderer) = (1/1) * (600/62000000) = ~0.000009677
P(stampies|¬murderer)P(¬murderer) = (400/61999400) * (61999400/62000000) = ~.000006452

So ~.000009677/(.000009677+.000006452)=~.6

That's 60% probability. Your equation seems to explain that the less of a sampling size you take, the more chance you have of finding an actual murderer.

Sorry, mate, I'm glad you're new and all, but I think you're wrong.

Edit: And really, this means that if you take a sampling of 600 people, then the probability of those 600 people being murderers would be 100%:
(0/61999400)*(61999400/62000000)=0
.000009677/(.000009677+0)=1

Besides, you can see the flaw right here: X= Samplesize - 600 (murderer)

P(Whatever|¬murderer)P(¬murderer) is

X*61999400
62000000*61999400

The 61999400s cancel out and you're just left with X/62000000.

 

[Guffe]

Welcome to the Escapist and hope you stick around

As for the Topic:

I don't think games themselves cause violence, I've read a few articles a few weeks back which state that this would be the thing but we're talking psychology. This means that the two things that define us as persons/create our personality are genes and the enviroment we grow up in.

The rest we do, videogames, TV, reading, music etc, all may have a small correllation to us become violent but aren't THE reason behind it.

What I do believe thou is that seeing violence in games may lower our feelings towards gotesque images and if playing a lot of videogames with horrible images it might go as far as not actually feeling too bad when seeing a dead body from a carcrash in real life?

Althou if one is mentally unstable and violent from the start I won't deny the fact that playing violent videogames migth give you a push to do something violent after a long session since you've seen loads of violence and might still have small amounts of adrenaline in your body from the session.

This is a very interesting topic and easy to prove one thing or the other depending on how you feel about it but we're long from a finished study to show us how it really is.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Proof that 0.06% of people who play a video game commit murder as a result of said video games would be overwhelming evidence that video games lead to violence

 

[hazabaza1]

I don't understand what just got typed and I'm not sure I want to.

 

[DioWallachia]

Of course they do. When was the last time that you complained formaly to the developers about their....work (Lets say that you played Bad Rats) and just didnt give 2 shits about you? or when a well stablished franchize becomes a mindless husk of its former self after being bought by EA?? Isnt that reasons to be ON RAAAAAAAAAAGE??


Videogames dont cause violence, EA causes violence. People THIS stupid makes anyone rage.

 

[Doom972]

The researches are just an excuse. Games are being used as a scapegoat so that other factors can be ignored. For exapmple, it's much easier to say video games made little jimmy into a murderer rather than negligent parenting.

There have been violent psychopaths long before video games.

 

[FalloutJack]

Putting aside the math, I have had an interesting discussion with a guy in that news report. I outright refuse to listen to it because I've been looking into it myself and find researchers to be completely backwards, and these reports don't help them at all. If you've proven something, why won't you give us all the data and not a simple blurb that proves nothing? Basically, they have yet to come up with anything at least in public, so what good is the report at all? Basically, say it all and be proven/disproven or shaddap.

 

[WoW Killer]

Not sure what you're trying to achieve with this, but I can simplify it for you. Looks like a very long winded way of doing something pretty simple.

Taking A = murderer and B = owned MW3 for brevity.

You've got something like P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/(P(B|A)P(A) + P(B|¬A)P(¬A))P(¬A) as your very first line. Strewth. Where on earth did you get that from? If you want to flip a conditional probability around, you use Bayes Theorem:

P(A|B) = P(B|A)P(A)/P(B) (Bayes Theorem)

That's all you need.

Now if you're taking P(B|A) = 1 as a hypothesis, then

P(A|B) = P(A)/P(B) = (600/62000000)/(1000000/62000000) = 600/1000000 = 0.06%.

Looks like you were fiddling around with the equations and got a really convoluted description of P(B). Keep it simple

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Here's the biggest thing one needs to consider when talking about video games and violence. Violent crime has been going down dramatically in the last ten years (at least in the US, haven't looked at other countries). Because of this, it's hard to get too concerned about the possibility of anything causing violence, because unless the rate of violent crime starts going up, we're still doing well.

 

[AntiChri5]

Every time someone says something (games, movies, music, whatever) "causes" violence i want to punch them in the face.

The human species has been violent for the entirety of it's existence. What makes humans violent is having evolved in an environment where violence can be beneficial. Violence existed before modern society, nothing within it "causes" violence. The lion hunting a deer never played modern warfare, i can guarantee you.

Whether or not certain things within society can increase the likelihood of an individual acting on already existing violent impulses is another matter entirely.

 

[SillyBear]

The murder rate of today generally floats around parody with the murder rates of the past. But the things we are forgetting is that we have better health care today. One out of three gunshot wounds to the head is non fatal in this era. With advances in response time and medical care - shouldn't we see a drastically lower murder rate?

Taking this into consideration, I do believe murder has increased and yes - I do believe that violent stimulus can condition individuals towards killing.

 

[Racecarlock]

Well hey, nice math there.

Here's my response to the "Games cause violence" crowd anyways, though. If we're going to start banning media that supposedly causes violence, then I'll be first in line to ban the bible. Since it seems to have caused quite a lot of holy wars and inquisitions.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I like what you did there but it follows logically that video games do not "cause" violence any more than a book, a song or a movie might. People are not hollows to be possessed by external objects guiding their actions for good or bad. It's just so medieval to think that a THING will automatically result in X. Every human being will react differently to any kind of experience, specially something as subjective/artistic as, say, a video game.

 

[Vegosiux]

Well, I will admit to trashing one keyboard.

But that's it. Violence isn't "caused" by videogames. It's caused by this dog-eat-dog world of ours where stress levels are nowhere near the healthy norms.