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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.
Er...wait a minute...
The cake is a pie
A further study, released some time ago, suggests that there are "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
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
If they try to take my violent video games away, i will throw barrels at them until they run out of lives!
> Sun continues to rise daily, what else is new?
Ah, the old rise/set debate. Scientists continue to invistigate which happened first...
The unofficial
After a couple of hours of GTA I always want to punch someone. And I'm a reasonable, dweeby, pacificist nerd.
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 remember vividly the first time I played a marathon session of GTA and then got behind the wheel of a real car. I had to force myself to acknowledge red lights when there were no other cars around. This was after training myself NOT to stop for them in GTA because the cops didn't care.
Now this is a small example of how you can train or untrain yourself to certain stimulus, but I never beat anyone with a bat, or rigged a bomb to anyone's car. Perhaps because no one was offering me the jobs.
We are obviously affected by what we see and hear. We learn from our environment and observations what is acceptable and what isn't.
Movies, books, conversations, music and games are all ways that ideas get past from person to person. The message can sometimes get confused by the messenger. How many people have refused to read Lolita because they think other people would think they were pedophile?
As a parent, it's your job to isolate your children from input that might alter their psyche. You don't show 3 year olds Faces of Death.
Should the industry have some part in that? Yes. They should certainly give a relatively detailed list of the content. But should games be MORE responsible than other industries, like Movie Makers and the Book Industry? No.
Heh, well, maybe if they put more sex into video games, all those kids would instead decide they want to make love, not war :)
There's a line from Latin Quarter's "America for beginners" that's more in reference to right-wing politics, but it fits pretty well here -
I've been playing role-playing games since I was 11 (D&D, AD&D, Runequest, MERP, Traveller, etc..). I can't say I've ever tried to translate those fantasies into reality. Because these are social games, I know a *lot* of other people who play them. Not any one of those people has turned out to be a non-productive member of society... Some now work for the M.O.D, some for NASA, some in government, some in companies, some are lawyers, the list goes on... I would say I know (personally) well over 70 people who role-play. All of them are model citizens.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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
Can't we solve this debate using rigorous scientific methods?
* Expose the test group to violent videogames.
* Expose the control group to non-violent videogames
* Compel both subject groups to commit a series of brutal murders
* Autopsy the brains of both subject groups.
The answer should be right there, in the brain autopies.
-kgj
-kgj
One day I'll get my hands on the person who started this debate and KILL THEM!
Get your Unix fortune now!
Sheila: Time's have changed
Our kids are kids are getting worse
They wont obey their parents
They just want to fart and curse!
Sharon: Should we blame the government?
Liane: Or blame society?
Dads: Or should we blame the images on TV?
Sheila: No, blame Canada
Everyone: Blame Canada
Sheila: With all their beady little eyes
And flappin heads so full of lies
Everyone: Blame Canada
Blame Canada
Ok, I won't any farther with these lyrics but I am sick of these distracting campaines. What's Next on the calender? Meth? Rock Music, Dancing? Pool Halls? Bowling?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
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.
Well, then what about sports - i.e. football, lacrosse, hockey. They all involve hitting people, fairly hard too. I can think of many more high school/college jocks that beat up people, than other people who were playing vid games. Let's ban football - oh wait, that would be "unAmerican".
..........FULL STOP.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Comes after therefore caused by.
A common fallacy in many, many arenas, not just this one.
Studies such as these forget to examine other factors, such as "are violent kids more likely to play violent games?", and "are there violent kids who get their aggressions out through video games?", and "what in the kids upbringing or social situation could contribute to their violent behaviour?", and "do calm and non violent kids get violent or aggressive after playing the games?", and most importantly "what is the responsibility of the parents in each situation?"
I grew up watching violent movies. Did it make me a violent person? No, quite the opposite. I detest violence. Why? Because I had a mother who actually gave a shit. She cared about what I was watching, and always made a point to tell me that it wasn't real, that it was make-believe, and that there was always someone behind the camera. She also made a point of telling me that violence didn't solve any problems, and she even made me watch movies that showed the effect of war and violence on people, such as In Cold Blood and The Deer Hunter.
If violence in video games and movies was the real cause, we should be able to compare the amount of violence in the US with that of another country and see a direct correlation with the rate of violent crimes. In Japan, movies and games are far more violent than they are here in the US. Yet the rate of violent crime is dramatically lower, and gun violence is only a tiny fraction of what it is here.
Anyone who points to video games and movies and says 'this is the cause' has not only failed to do their homework, they've completely lost sight of the issue and are just looking for an easy scape-goat.
-- This sig for rent.
I think you're missing the point - it's not that you ought to be keeping your kids away from pop culture or violence in games, or whatever. The point is you ought to be being parents! No-one said it was going to be easy...
*You* have a responsibility to raise your kids. It's *your* values that they will start with, if you can be arsed to get off your backside and teach them. Sure they'll rebel (it's part of growing up), but what is learned early is learned best. Give them freedom to choose their actions from an early age, and give them the consequences of their actions as well. That simple lesson is what is missing in most kids that have "gone off the rails".
Actually I think it's just as negligent to keep the kids away from bad influences (to a certain degree anyway). If you don't let them make mistakes when the consequences are small, they'll make the same mistake when the consequences are large, because they'll know no better.
It's a bit like when children grow up in antiseptic conditions - smothered by well-wishing parents, they never cut themselves, never get dirty, etc. They grow up with a significantly-impaired immune system, subject to allergies for the rest of their lives. The time put-aside by nature for "learning" things was wasted, and the nascent adult suffers because of it.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
For those with a brain who like to read the original sources instead of the popular media's hack job of the summaries here are (I think) the two opposing studies.
Dmitri Williams (University of Illinois, Urbana)
"Internet Fantasy Violence: A Test of Aggression in an Online Game" Communication Monographs Vol. 72, No. 2, June 2005, pp.217-233, (this is a pdf) which says there's no link
AND in the other Corner
Well, no one paper, actually. The APA "Committee on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media" appearently did a metastudy of several papers on the topic and come up with a resolution (pdf) and press release. At the end of the resolution is a bib of the papers taken into consideration. I certainly don't care enough to plow through all those - but William's paper isn't in the bib. I suspect there was lots of group thought going in that committee -lots of the papers were written by members of the committee.
I suspect that you can't make a blanket statement on video games. Folks with a predisposition for violence might be pushed over the edge to real life violent acts from habitual video play; whereas there are, I'm sure, many more level-headed people who understand this is all fantasy and escapism and can easily dissociate the video playing with real life. At least I hope so. Otherwise you all better run away from me. Fast.
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
If you read through the press release, we find that the lit review is presented by "Jessica Nicoll, B.A., and Kevin M. Kieffer, Ph.D., of Saint Leo University." Those in academia know that it is kind of unusual for a prof to collaborate on a paper with an undergrad. Looking at his webpage I didn't see any paper that seem remotely close to violence or media effects stuff. THe press release says they are from St. Leo, so a search of their website finds that on April 21, 2005 Jessica Nicoll gave a paper called "Violence in Video Games: A Review of the Empirical Literature" (page looks like ass in Firefox). That panel was chaired by Dr. Kevin Kieffer. So, unless the paper underwent serious revision between then and when it was given at the APA, this is really Jessica Nicoll's paper.
That's right, this paper that is getting a press release and all sorts of media attention is the work of an undergrad. While it is wrong to judge the quality of the paper without having read it, it seems safe to say that *gasp* just maybe this is being blown out of porportion a little bit...
This seems especially true when WebMD quotes Kieffer as saying ...none of which sounds all that groundbreaking to me and pretty tame.
Furthermore, this post links to the APA's "Resolution on Violence in Video Games and Interactive Media." If you look at the press release about that resolution you will see that at the bottom is states: As this post points out, If you look at the resolution's references we see 3 papers authors by Elizabeth Carll, 4 by Dorothy Singer, 6 by Craig Anderson, 5 by Brad Bushman, and 2 by Karen Dill. OF all the people on the committee, Lilli Friedland is the only one that has not listed as a reference for the ill effects of videogames. One more cynical than I might think that these people have an agenda or something... (And this doesn't even mention that they start the resolution stating, "...decades of social science research reveals the strong influence of televised violence on the aggressive behavior of children and youth.." as if were a given fact that too much tv makes you violent.)
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Most Child "Psychologists" never even meet real children.
This is totally untrue. I am not a child psychologist, but I do have an advanced degree in Psychology and I know many child therapists and researchers in the field and they have all met children before.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
What's more, many of them were once children themselves!
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.
Your ironic turnaround would make so much more sense if that initial debate about "whether or not parents should take some responsibility" was really taking place.
And I mean a real debate about, for example, the effects of an economy that essentially requires two working parents on our children. I'm no "social conservative" and it seems to me the only people who're bringing that up just now are the fundies, who obviously have their own ideological axes to grind and who are more interested in manipulating people's anxieties than in allaying them.
If Americans are especially conscious of how parenting has changed in just my lifetime, I think they're trying not to admit it to themselves. If anything they're pushing their anxieties about the changes into red herrings like "video games are responsible for all our problems."
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.