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The Impact of Violent Gaming
An anonymous reader writes "IGN has an article up looking at the impact of violent videogames. It discusses some of the rationale on the gaming industry side for having violent images in their games, and the reactions from politics and lawmakers to these games." From the article: "Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work done is correlational studies which look for a link between two factors. That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?"
I'm all for taking violence out of video games. There's no reason games can't be modified to have non-violent outcomes. But then Jack Thompson would whine that realistic consequences aren't being depicted which will train cold blooded killers.
Think of Super Mario jumped on mushrooms and they turned into happy angels instead of dead pancakes? Or in Unreal Tournament you fire paintballs, or tickle people at close range? Or in Mortal Kombat you have a tickle fight, and instead of ripping out a heart, you read the woozy opponent a bedside story. I think it would sell just as well. A game doesn't have to be violent, it can be funny and still be as fun.
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I know a child psychologist working in this field. His research is pointing to something interesting, yet not earthshattering: children who play violent games outside the pervue of their parents *do* show a propensity for violent behavior. The flipside is that kids playing violent games *with* their parent's cursory involvement *do not*. This guy was ready to throw the book at games altogether, so the studies he's running came as quite the surprise, naturally.
I thought we'd done this to death in the 80s and 90s, and before that for TV, rock and roll, erotic literature, porn, sugary foods, soft drugs, etc etc, ad nauseum.
Yes, I dare say that some people, if exposed to violent games (or films, or books, etc) will go off and do stupid, stupid things. Chances are, though, that these people would have done stupid things even without the exposure. Plenty of people who have never played a game exhibit agressive behaviour.
What I don't understand is why each generation seems to be so afraid of what the younger generation is into. All we're seeing is the same arguments that were made about rock and roll in the fifties, or violent films in the late 70s and early 80s.
I'm not exactly old, but I'm not really young any more either (I'm 31), but I hope to God I'm not so fucking stupid and scared when I do become "old". (Although given I have a house, mortgage, car, daughter, etc, I think by most reasonable definitions I already am)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
It's not violent games that lead me to violence.
It's being assaulted with the same hyped-up news "story" about video game violence on every slow news day for 20 years that makes me want to hit somebody.
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Obviously, though, taking all that into account would have taken far too long to allow much chance of getting first post.
You will learn about responsibility when you have children. I don't need a study to tell me that violent videogames are bad for chidren.
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The reason why people scream "correlation does not imply causation!" over and over is because people seem to fail to understand what it means. No, they are not saying that it disproves causation. What they ARE saying is that you can't cite a correlation and then act on it like it is the result of causation, which is exactly lawmakers are trying to do. There are all sorts of correlations in this world, but you would be a fool to act on them without proof of causation.
One correlation is that the more melanin (the pigment that gives you dark skin) an American has, the more likely they are to be convicted for a violent act. You are a fucking idiot if you propose giving people with high melanin levels a drug to help bring their melanin levels down as a method of drastically reducing crime.
This foolish line of thinking is exactly what lawmakers are using. First, they are talking about a correlation without any understanding of how strong the correlation is. There might very well be a correlation between being blond haired and having higher test scores. However, if your average test score is 0.01% higher, it isn't worth looking into any further. Second, they are utterly failing to realize that even if there is a strong correlation, even if it is a significant difference (which has not been shown by the way), that STILL doesn't mean there is a causal effect at work. It could very well be that pressing buttons, sitting for long periods of time, or simply playing any game increases aggression. Has anyone bothered to see if the violence of the video game has anything to do with higher levels of aggression, or if it is simply that the violent video games they tried are more competitive then the non-violent games they tried.
I am sure UT2004 leaves me feeling more aggressive then Barney Math Fun Time, but it isn't because of a few pixels of gore. It is because in one game I am competing and the other I am being put to sleep with basic math problems.
The logic fallacies that these studies have are not minor little loop holes. They are great big gaping chasms. Further, I imagine that the people leading these studies realize the massive fallacies in their studies, but they are money pandering shit heads with an agenda who will do anything for a buck. Show me REAL science that proves a causal link, then we can start talking about "saving the children" for "pandering to suburban mom" vote. Until then, this is all political smoke and mirrors being put on by politicians too stupid to understand basic science, or politicians who are pandering for votes through intellectual dishonest. Either way, it makes me sick.
Is the experience of many violent games a contributing factor to violence in later years? Does it predispose a person to violence? Does it make a person more tolerant of violence? More apathetic regarding violence? more accepting of violence?
Does it contribute to the idea that violent solutions are more acceptable and viable than other solutions. Does it promote a violent sense of politics?
Does it contribute to an ability to confront and handle violence, and the artifacts of violence, such as guns, weapons, and social consequences of violence? Does it create an independent citizen, bane of ditators everywhere?
Do these factor effect people equally? Or does it "merely enhance" these bad characteristics in people who are already predisposed to them because of other factors, social, enviromental, and genetic? Does it only enhance the "bad seeds?
I imagine that it has each of the above effects, and many more, depending on the particular individual, and the factors that they find themselves in as they grow and develop. It is a specific application of the "nature vs nuture" debate, as applied to a specific element in the experience of the person as they grow up. Of course, other things, such as television, also apply. The fact of whole generations growing up in an environment where nuclear weapons are the rage (1950s and 60s, etc) is likely enough to throw a wrench in the works.
This actually can be traced back to WWI, which has been said to have had an incredible traumatic effect on the culture. The innocent sense of civilization they had before the war was fairly well shattered with the death of millions of men in modern warfare, each side proudly proclaiming "God is with us". The cascading effects and reactions to this have been with us ever since.
People are still acting this out in the games they play, with the echoes of other wars. But without resolving the actual source of the issue, they might only unknowingly reinforce the very elements that they say they object to.
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Correlation most definitely does imply causation. It just doesn't prove causation. Correlation gives you a place to start looking for proof of causation.
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Personally, I don't think games induce violence as much as they inspire violence. Which is to say that, although the type of violent acts may very easily be copied from populair entertainment, I highly doubt if the amount of violence can be traced back to the amount of violent entertainment which is consumed.
When I decide to go on a murderous rampage to kill random people after having played a game of Carmageddon, it is obvious that my violence is inspired by the violence which is so abundant in that game. What is not obvious is that I wouldn't have found another way to express my violent needs for lack of creative inspiration. People have been torturing, maiming and killing each other for a little while longer than high-tech-taintment has existed.
I find increasing overpopulation to be a much more likely source of violence than increasingly violent entertainment. But, after all, a correlation does not necessarily indicate a causal relation. Such relations are difficult to prove without a rigidly set up experiment.
Morality is usually taught by the immoral.
Actually, I can't remember where I read this - someone link if they know what I'm talking about.
There was an interview with a Marine Drill Sgt. who was commenting on how video games have affected his recruits. He said that one of the hardest things to teach was target to target movement. The act of killing a human is a traumatic experience and the most common reaction is to freeze on the spot. This is not a desireable trait to have on a battlefeild.
He then went on to say that the kids he has come into training who play alot of video games don't have this issue. They move from target to target like it was natural, the effects of all the shooting and killing don't manifest until AFTER the scenario at hand is over.
That says alot to me. The dehumanization part isn't there, but the ability to temporarily pause your natural response because you are relaxed with the concept of target to target movement is.
God, that statement is so dishonest.
"Correlation is not causation," is useful when teaching introductory students the risks in too-readily drawing causal conclusions from a simple empirical correlation between two measured variables.
The people I work with, involved in very real research, do NOT take "Correlation does not imply causation" as simplistic. While it may be useful for suggesting avenues to research, it is just not much more useful than that.
Whole scientific fields are based on correlational data (e.g., astronomy).
I doubt an Astronomer would entirely agree with this statement.
Well conducted correlational studies provide opportunities for theory falsification.
YES! But in this case, he is NOT falsifying a theory. A true statement should not lead to a false result. However a false statement doesn't tell us anything.
They allow for statistical controls of plausible alternative explanations.
They allow us to reject plausible alternative explanations. Other than that, I do not follow his argument.
In young children the number of cavities present and the size of their vocabularly have a strong positive correlation. It would be unethical to do an experiment where we allowed half of a sample population go without proper dental hygiene in order to properly test this. So we are left with the correlational study data. Hence, cavities must improve a child's vocabularly, right??
As children age they get more cavities. They also learn more words. Thus both cavities and vocabularly are effects of age; of course they are correlated. But the "cause" in this case is incorrect.
If it is true that people with a propensity for violence like to play violent games *and* they like to commit violent acts, then playing violent video games and committing violent crimes WILL BE CORRELATED but neither will be a cause of the other. Until these people come up with a control for the variable "propensity for violence" their studies will be specious.
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The article is actually pretty interesting, because, although he seams to have an agenda, he cites a lot of scientific evidence.
And about TV (from the article) :
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.