Slashdot Mirror
Violence in Video Games Debate Continues to Rage
ubermiester writes "The Washington Post is reporting on a newly released study by the American Psychological Association, claiming that 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' This partly contradicts another study released a week before by a University of Illinois Professor claiming that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'"
How about someone does a study on the parents of the kids who commit crimes that are supposedly caused by video games. I bet you would get some conclusive results from that one.
A further study, released some time ago, suggests that there are "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
...they refine the answer we've had for years, which is:
"It depends on the individual, which means the responsibility falls on the parents or guardians to ensure that their children aren't being exposed to something that is going to alter their behavior in a negative way."
Figure it out, people.
Yes everything you see and do influences you to some degree. Unless you're crazy to begin with, you won't act on them.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The media is notorious for reporting things like this completely incorrectly.
The thing I most want to know is whether or not there were controls in place to weed out the influence of children who are more likely to be violent anyway (e.g. kids from broken homes). If not, then there's no way to separate causation from correlation.
I also have to wonder about possible bias. The APA funded this study, and it wouldn't exactly be surprising if an association of psychologists (i.e. people who get paid to cure insanity) wanted to suggest that a fairly popular hobby like playing video games turns children into sociopaths.
Oh, and what video games did they play? The GTA series most certainly portrays consequences for violent behavior, for instance.
Rob
I read a study previously taht came to the same conclusion, that playign violent video games led to more aggressive thoughts and tendancies... while, and immediately after playing the games. thre was nothign to show tht these effects continued mroe than a few minutes after playing the game. which is pretty pointless. ofcourse people are going to have agressive thoughts while killing people in a virtual world. but that doesnt mean those thoughts will continue through the day.
My hand touched her hand. Her hand touched her boob. By the transitive property, I got some boob! Algebra is awesome!
Anyone who has taken even a beginners course on statistics knows that statistics can be distorted to tell any tale that you want. This follows the same line as the whole bit about how gun owners are more likely to commit a gun related crime. Well, shiver me timbers. Thats a novel concept. Whats the numbers on knife owners? All construed to tell us the tale they want to tell. And where are their parents?
A Linux flavor for every Month!
Got any research that support that statement ? I mean, real research as opposed to that crap webpage where some amateur without knowledge of statistics selects data to prove a point ?
Didn't think so.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
...and they're directed at the politicians who focus on the hot topic of the month instead of the important issues.
Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children -- Never gets old, especially when said in that whiny Mrs. Lovejoy voice
Back in the "old days" it was the Waltz, then there was the Tango, the Charleston and then...
1950s OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS OVER, Rock and Roll... our children are being corrupted
1960s OH MY GOD, ELVIS is such a good boy, but those BEATLES
1970s TV is KILLING my Children
1980s HORROR MOVIES are KILLING my Children
1990s NIVARNA are forcing Children to top themselves
And of course now its Video Games which are forcing Children into a life of violence.
This is just another great "Aunt Sally" for politicians and "academics" to debate and get money from. If it wasn't this they'd be battering on at Cartoons for glorifying violence (there is nothing in Doom III worse than the violence of Tom and Jerry or Roadrunner). The young are ALWAYS being corrupted in the minds of the elders, and what corrupted them in their youth is now seen as innocent.
And have you noticed... its always the over 40s who start wars... something must be making them do it.... I blame mugs of hot chocolate.
And lets not forget when Marge banned "Itchy and Scratchy"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...and in Europe their TV has lots of playful nudity, but they are very anti-violence, whereas here we have lots of violent stuff on basic cable, but no nudity...
Still you have Japan which has lots of both and even erotic adult cartoons, yet their crime rates are lower...and their suicide rates are higher
So what does it prove? Absolutely nothing. Come on people, think! Art reflects culture, our culture does not rise from art.
If violent games and porn are high selling items, it is because our culture wants it. Could pushing such media make people want it more? Maybe, but that doesn't change that is it because the culture brings it about.
If we really want to stop violent crimes, hate, etc, we need to attack the real problems. Attacking video games, art, etc. is a way to push the focus away from the real problems because its much much easier to boycot a game then try to give low income families the support they need to put their kids through college and pay their medical bills.
Honestly, I do agree that violence (not sex) in games AND IN FILM does highten our appathy toward violence in life. And not just in kids, I think kids are really no more malliable than adults in this case, but it's the adults doing the study, and they want their violent TV, so whatever.
But I think the more pressing concern is the fact that American video game companies are profitting off the bigger issue, one we seem to refuse to look in the eye: that our society is completely infatuated with voilence, and to the point where children would rather spend their money on a game that's violent as apposed to one that's not. GTAIII was, if I remember correctly, the best selling game in the US, outsellng The Sims and Myst (the two next best selling games at the time). THAT'S something to be alarmed at, the fact that people are screaming for it, not that it's available.
We always blame the Media and Entertainment industries when all they're doing is giving us what we want. Our first mistake is in our thought-processes behind the blaming of enetertainment. We only get worried, and start making acqusations, after a person has crossed the threshhold and committed a violent act, and then we hide behind a curtin with claims like, but I can distinguish fantasy from reality”. THAT'S NOT THE POINT. These are NOT copy-cat crimes, these are not adults and children who are dillusional about reality. These are children who are being told by everyone in their lives: from the things they see on TV, from the other children they see beat up in school, from their parants fighting, even from the the rising tension due to polarized politics in our country (children aren't stupid), from ALL of these things, it's no wonder they get the impression that violence is just a way of life, because to a certain extent, in our country, IT IS.
Let's quit with all the studies being used to put the blame on everything but our own violent lifestyles, it just allows people to project their own problems on everything else. America has the highest crime rate of any fully industrialized nation, these games are marketted everywhere (and usually flop), as is hollywood, so it's time to wake up, and face the reality that it's our way of life that's causing the problems, and not our entertainment.
When Mommy get's a big SUV because it makes her “feel” more secure, and Daddy buys a pistol because he feels he needs to protect his family from the outside world, little Billy's gonna get the impression that fear is a healthy, normal part of life.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Correlation != Causation
Unemployment in the UK has been declining since 1995. Video games have been rising in popularity during those years too. So the rise in video games has caused a decline in unemployment.
Or not...
Who doesn't like free music?
Well, no. But by that argument, is violence necessary in movies? Even though excellent movies can be made without anything we'd perceive as objectionable violence(Citizen Kane, Donnie Darko), that doesn't mean that filmmakers should stop making violent movies entirely. We'd lose masterpieces like Pulp Fiction, to take a relatively uncontroversial example.
Generally, I think it's a bad idea to put absolute restrictions on art, or to employ self-censorship to such a degree that the restrictions are practically absolute. And even though most video-games are rather low-brow entertainment at the moment, they very obviously are a form of artistic expression. If I want to make a videogame out of some inherently violent scenario, shouldn't I be allowed to make and distribute that game(to an appropriate audience)?
To revisit the original question - whether or not violence is needed in games - even that isn't as easy to answer as it seems. Because it's a game, it has to be played - i.e. the player has to take part in some kind of conflict. If we assume that we don't want to abstract that conflict(which can be a legitimate artistic choice - abstraction generally kills off emotional responses rather effectively), we have to portray some kind of conflict that parallels an aspect of the real world. Sports, economics and military strategy(ironically) are real-world conflicts that generally produce games that are perceived to be non-violent(think Capitalism and Civilization). However, direct, physical conflict lends itself very well to a game which is based on similar direct conflicts(generally action games of various kinds), and so war, crime and other violent settings become appropriate to a large number of genres. How would you make a basically non-violent fighting game? Or a first-person shooter? Or would you have to "kill off" these genres entirely?
Now, you can of course "cartoonise" this violence if you want to(you won't necessarily degrade the quality of the game, but you'll limit yourself to certain settings), but that really isn't the point. Mario throwing a turtle shell at his enemies is - in principle - violent, in much the same way that, e.g., superhero cartoons meant for children are. Arguing that the theme should be kept cartoonish, simply because that is one possibility, is overly limiting to game creators, especially because the "adult" themes lend themselves so well to certain popular types of gaming.
Disclaimer: This post is backed by nothing more than my unqualified opinion.
In my experience there is no correlation in what you said about football. Football just happens to attract alpha males who have inferiority complexes and decide to take out their aggression on others to hide that complex. If you look outside of the majority of high school football players and a few binge drinking college players you will find a quite benevolent group of people. Just look at the number of college and pro football players who work through and support charities. Football itself is not a cause of violent behavior. It just happens to be a preferred medium of extra curricular activity for some who are already inconsiderate and pugnacious fools who feel they have to prove themselves on a stage and flex their supposed superiority on others who appear lesser than themselves.
Certainly *some* people in the US government are all in favor of *some* videogames increasing American youth's aggressive behavior, interest in violence, alignment with one side in conflicts and belief that the other side is evil and should be killed....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
True, but you are commiting even a worse scientific error, trying to use that to prove the negative.
The theory was that violent video games lead youth to be more violent. Ok, fine, now generally the first step when trying to support a theory is to find stastical evidence, generally a correlation. So we know that video games are getting more popular, and that there are more graphic ones available. This is a simple stastical matter. Thus, if there was a causal link between kids playing these violent video games and being more violent, we'd expect to see an increase in youth violent crime.
Well we don't, in fact we see the opposite trend. Well guess what? If you can't even find a weak correlation to support your theory, your theory is probably wrong. This isn't proof positive it's wrong, of course, but it's a serious blow. If the games cause children to be more violent, why don't we see the stastical effect of it?
Remember: Generally the first step is to show a correlation, then you go on to perform more robust tests to prove causation. If there's not a correlation, then you are probably not going to find what you are looking for. To say that X causes Y when there's not even an indication that X and Y are related is taking a long step on a thin limb.
I've heard your point many times... and it's still wrong - but I do understand it.
Violence only works if it's in response to violence, and even then it's just a temporary fix, not a solution. Remember, I was talking about 'solving' problems, not just making them go away for the night.
Using violence as the means to an end just generates more problems.
It can be beneficial in the short term, but in the long term, it always fails. The problems caused by the use of violence are usually worse than the problem fixed by violence, simply because it creates more violence.
You get upset with someone, you hit them. It may stop the argument, and you may feel you've won. But that 'victory' only lasts until they find a way to get back at you - and if history has taught us anything, they always will, and then you will too. Violence begets violence.
The problems in the middle east are caused by violence (at some point, one side started it, now it goes on forever - as someone said "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind") and people have been fighting for so long they don't really know what they're fighting for, all they know is, the other side is evil and must be stopped at all cost.
The only problem bigger than violence, is people who think of violence as a viable option to get things done. Violence should always be the very last resort and only in self defense, and not as the means to an end.
-- This sig for rent.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
THEY ARE FSCKING BULLSHIT.
Every one of thousands of sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and psychiatrists who have dedicated their careers to doing such studies have created utter crap. They write these things to get out of doing real work.
Most Child "Psychologists" never even meet real children. They write theories and apply for research grants from other dimwits who think these studies will change something. If your not willing to get your hands dirty actually solving the problems of one child then you should go get a job in a 7/11 and stop wasting everybody's time.
This is all part of the cycle of 'I don't care about you kid' in the school, programs, Mega Churches, FOX NEWS, CPS, and foster homes. Kids turn bad because they don't feel wanted. And everybody in the argument has as much to blame has a pimp or crack dealer using kids to make money. I see little difference, except the pimp or dealer is a bit more honest.
However, claims about the so called youth problem is way out of proportion. As the band Suicidal Tendencies advises (I am paraphrasing), Give the kid a freaking Pepsi and let him figure it out for himself.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It doesn't really matter whether or not violent video games lead to aggression. It is not the governments job to be the parent to the nations children.
Games have a clearly marked label on them that tells what age they are appropriate for. I understand that once kids reach a certain age, they cannot be watched all the time. However, if parents get involved with what their kids are doing, support their children in a loving environment, and show the necessary dicipline when required, then ninty-nine percent of the time, any influence that a video game may have will be cancelled out.
If Hillary Clinton, and Jack Thompson, and every other person out there who feels the need to point fingers at the video game industry really want to accomplish something, then they should direct their efforts to educating the public on what it takes to be a parent, instead of wasting taxpayer money on useless legislation.
I believe the GP was using a type of speech known as "hyperbole." It would have been much more comforting if you had said of your child psychologist friends "they work with children frequently," rather than simply informing us that they had, at one time or another, seen one of these mythical small people.
When moderating, assume I have not yet had my coffee.
On the General stores "Thumbtack Message Board" "Recent study suggests link between playing the games of "Cops & Robbers" and "Cowboys & Indians" leads to violence in your children, confiscate your kids cap guns today!!!"
It might just be the increasingly stressful environment that today's youth are subject to, where they can look forward to having to find work in a depressed economy, dealing with inflation as gas prices continue to soar (and thus drive transportation costs up, which increases the cost of ALL goods), or having the next 10 to 20 years to enjoy a war which we didn't need and can't afford to enjoy?
Add onto that the fact that today's youth have very few role models to look up to, and lots of people telling them they can't state their opinions because it isn't politically correct.
And let's not forget that one of the new non-destructive outlets they have, playing video games, is now under seige as well.
Answer me this... if kids can't kill things in video games to work off their aggression, do you honestly believe they'll become placid, malleable little zombies that society can mold into productive worker drones? I doubt it.
Kids don't form gangs to beat people up... they form gangs to relieve boredom and give themselves a sense of self-worth. Right now, many of them are in online gangs (called guilds) in MMORPG's... if you stop that, they'll switch to real-life gangs. Then instead of raiding the elf n00b zone and killing people, they'll hang around town and break stuff, or bully people.
Even then, you can actually string together something that at least looks (semi)intelligent as an explanation.
E.g., the UK produces more games and sells more copies than the USA. That's a bit surprising, but it's a fact. So one could explain it as, basically, with the rise in video game popularity, more money were earned from games, which meant bigger budgets for games (again, it's a fact: a game today has a much bigger budget than in '95), which means more people employed in the game industry.
So while video games obviously can't account for _all_ the jobs created in that interval, they did however create a few of those.
The "games cause violence" can't even show that kind of effect. You'd expect to see _some_ correlation before proclaiming causation like they do.
Unlike game employment in the UK, with games we're talking a major population segment. There _millions_ of people playing games, and increasing each year. We're talking some tens of millions of current-generation game consoles alone sold in the USA, so a _major_ segment of their youth has at least one of those. Even poorer people have those: a recent study linked-to on Slashdot said that blacks and hispanics actually play more.
So if such a large segment of the population, maybe even the majority, were subject to such a constant pressure towards violence, I'd expect to see _some_ correlation. Maybe not a nation-wide increase, but ffs, then show me something else, like that areas/groups who play more showed less of a decline in violence.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The questions are anything but simple.
These sophisticated, visceral, video games which draw the player deep into street level violence and celebrate a gangster life-style are something new.
There is historically a tendency for americans to romanticize their criminal sub-cultures, and middle class kids can be among the most naive and suggestible.
The social divide between players and non-players of these games is deep and dangerous. Mrs Clinton is a centrist politician by american standards, with important consistencies and contacts in both the inner city and the suburbs. That ought to have been taken as a warning.
You can't look at these games as descendants of Doom or Half-Life, and I suspect you cannot even place them on the same plane as the morally ambiguous stealth shooters pioneered by Rouge Spear.
My own questions are:
1. Which kind of physical altercations? No, seriously. There is a _major_ difference between being the aggressor and the victim.
Children get bullied for being "nerds" and "dorks" every day. So any study that just takes a blanket "involved in physical altercations" category, is from the start including the victims in that category.
Can you really say that games made someone violent, when they were the one beat up? By WTF of a definition of becoming violent? "Yeah, he violently had his face in front of someone's fist."
2. In the rare cases when a nerd does attack, in how many cases they were in fact provoked? Because that's the more common link that the politicians love to ignore: someone was tormented every day, and finally _that_ is what made them snap and fight back.
E.g., Columbine, as an extreme case, was not just a case of two happy kids that just got corrupted by video games and turned into killers. We're talking people who got bullied day after day, into desperation and beyond. And they finally snapped. Happens to non-gaming adults too: you give someone continuous stress, they eventually snap. Look up "postal" on wikipedia someday.
So if you bully someone every day, and they finally fight back, by WTF of a definition it's the games alone that caused that?
3. Arguing with "authority figures" instead of being sheep is already a different category, so I'm not even sure by WTF of a stretch of the meaning it's lumped together with "violence". Disobedience is quite different from beating someone up.
4. On the "autority figures" topic again: what is the cause and what is the effect there?
Because for example a common group that's having problems with authority figures _and_ with bullies, which is what gets them often bullied, are Asperger's Syndrome sufferers. The inability to distinguish body language can get one in all sorts of trouble of exactly that kind.
Incidentally Asperger's Syndrom also makes one more likely to like computers instead. Either programming or video games, stuff that's on a computer tends to be stuff that you can do/play on logic alone.
So what is the cause and what is the effect there? Are games _really_ the cause there, or are we talking two different effects of autism. Until they actually separate those in a different category, for a segment of their study they're basically pulling a "A => B and A => C, therefore B => C".
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
From TFA:
" "Research indicates exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth, the association said in a statement issued Wednesday. In addition, the APA statement said, this exposure reduces helpful behavior and increases physiological arousal in children and adolescents. "
So:
A) While they might have measured _some_ correlation (more about that later), what they present it as is causation. Sorry, there's no other way to read that.
It doesn't say "we found some correlation between violence in school and the fact that some people involved were playing games." It goes on and on about how it _makes_ you violent, makes you think violent thoughts (although even as a correlation, that appears nowhere in their actual study), makes you refuse to help other people, teaches you that violence is _the_ solution, teaches you that violence doesn't have consequences, etc. That's all one big lump that's presented as a clear cut cause-effect issue, not just as a correlation to base future studies on.
B) Even as a correlation, they just didn't measure that, any way you want to slice it.
If you look at what they measured, it's not even measuring one variable, it's lumping together such disparate issues as being an aggressor, being a _victim_, and questioning authority. E.g., if you're a gaming nerd and a jock (who doesn't play games) beats you up in school, congrats, according to them you're part of the "games cause violence" sample.
The whole thing is a textbook example of a Verbal Fallacy: they switch between two very different meanings of "violence". They use one definition in their sample (basically "any kind of physical conflict"), and another definition in their conclusion (basically "aggressor"). _And_ if that wasn't enough, they include stuff in the sample that doesn't fit either one.
"In any event, that variable could interact in that it enabled the relationship or made the relationship stronger, but it cannot somehow unmake this correlation as some people seem to think."
Again, you miss some points:
1) Again, it was presented as causation, not correlation. They presented it as: games _make_ you violent, less helpful, etc. And that can very well be "unmade", if another issue is the dominant cause.
2) In fact there isn't even that much to "unmake", since there was no "make" to start with. They haven't made a point, they just took a big leap of faith that isn't supported by _any_ logic or data. So there isn't anything to "unmake".
Even if I was to accept that correlation (although it's bullshit anyway), from there to the causation they present, it's just one big leap of faith. There's a whole big pile of work to be done in between finding a correlation between A and B, and concluding that A _causes_ B. Work which involves precisely separating all those other variables and their own influence on the measured result.
It's the kind of leap of faith like starting from "I've noticed a correlation between being thin and tall and being a maths nerd" (hey, that's the kind of maths nerds I've met in school), and extrapolating that going on a diet will improve your maths grades. Sorry, no. There is nothing to "unmake" there, since the whole "make" part between that correlation and the conclusion is just completely missing.
"So why bother doing studies at all?"
Definitely not to take them as more than just that: one correlational study, which says nothing about cause-effect. The study does raise some questions and can serve as a base for further studies on the topic, yes. But that's about it. It's not something that's become the One Truth, to be carved in stone, and that noone should dare question.
"This study presumably was peer reviewed, by the way."
I'd be interested by whom. The tobacco companies "there's no correlation between smoking and lung diseases" stud
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It would interest me to know how many parents are really the utter zombies I seem to see around at the mall. Just basic checks getting at "Are you making conscious choices at ALL?" might show a shocking level of apathy. (Apathy like that in, oh, American voters?)
My 12-year-old boy/girl twins both play video games, and I'm pretty attentive about which ones but I'm cool with that. I'm also pretty easygoing about half of what gets an R rating for movies -- the kids see little violence, but skin I think they are familiar with seeing as how they have some, so that doesn't bother me as much. The basic deal is that you have to be making conscious choices about what to expose your kids to.
The advocacy groups who object most vociferously to video games aren't about those conscious choices at all. They're about arbitrary standards, imposed by some sort of body of authority. I don't trust that impulse a bit.
The question has never been "Can stuff kids play with affect their attitudes toward the world?" Duh, yes it can. The question is whether video games are somehow the pervasive, destructive influence that luddites and a weird mixture of nannystaters and "social conservatives" think they are. Or are they just a form of media that parents need to keep an eye on, like -- duh again -- everything else including TV? I'm a reasonable parent, and personally I think MTV (for one example) is a much more corrosive presence in kids' lives. It's a nakedly brazen front for all things consumerist and sexist. Video games don't have nearly the same cultural weight behind them. Where game writers are mostly just trying to make a buck building something fun, advertizers are actively, consciously doing everything they can to exploit my kids and brainwash them to spend a lifetime thinking about nothing but products and money. There are whole academic fields -- "advertizing psychology" -- in support of that effort.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.