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Brain Changes When Viewing Violent Media
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Scientists at Columbia University have used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to show that a brain network responsible for suppressing inappropriate or unwarranted aggressive behaviors became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence. These changes could render people less able to control their own aggressive behavior. Although research has shown some correlation between exposure to media violence and real-life violent behavior, there has been little direct neuroscientific support for this theory until now. 'Depictions of violent acts have become very common in the popular media,' said researcher Christopher Kelly. 'Our findings demonstrate for the first time that watching media depictions of violence does influence processing in parts of the brain that control behaviors like aggression.' The full research paper is published on the The Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication, that publishes all its articles under a Creative Commons Attribution License."
So passing a visual stimulus that is interpreted by the brain as violent affects the corresponding area of the brain...? Who would have guessed that...
So maybe they'll stop glorifying war, violence, and all of the blood battered details of the latest shoot-em-up rampage on the evening news? Nah, why would they do that when they can blame video games instead. Sigh.
After watching violent movies I beat my wife much worse than usual.
Trolling is a art,
Okay, but how long does it last? Given the fact that I am not very likely to take off my shoe and bludgeon the person in front of me in the theater to death, how does this effect my likelyhood to do the same thing after the movie when I see someone I am not fond of?
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
And it doesn't make me violet and well beat the crap out of the anyone that says different.
So here is a question. How does it effect younger people?
Or what is the effect if the media is interactive in nature?
I am just waiting to see what excuese the "Video games don't contribute to violence" lobby will have to say about this.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I wonder how long it takes science to figure out that spending time in the army leads to aggressive behaviour, as well.
This seems like something coming straight out of clockwork orange.
There's no discussion of how long these effects last. Of course our brain is going to prepare us for violence when we witness violence. If it didn't, you'd probably get killed in your first violent confrontation because you wouldn't be prepared to fight back. The question is, does viewing violent media today make me more likely to go kill people tomorrow.
I'd be more interested in seeing the results of people watching real violence on T.V and knowing it, or seeing the results of a child who doesn't know that fake violence in a movie is not real.
The brain reacts to violent imagery, may affect impulse control after
What they didn't prove:
Violent imagery makes you violent.
Most of the studies present a violent image and ask you questions after. Partly because it'd be unethical to show them imagery and then attempt to induce violence. Thus they must use proxies which only prove a relationship from the imagery to the proxy.
Common Study:
Show a 3 min clip from bioshock - ask "are you feeling more or less violent" or "please push this button as hard as you want" and then write a conclusion " Bioshock makes you violent".
I doubt violent imagery has no effect on you, it likely agitates the flight or fight response but I am skeptical on whether it can induce violence in a normal/average person. I dislike how media and various groups try to portray a stronger relationship. Doom 3 has not made me a serial killer, it's highly unlikely doom 6 will make my children serial killers, and if it does it's probably partly mine and my communities fault. It my kid does end up being a serial killer there is most likely a biological factor too. Media alone does not make a killer.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
When any game (video or otherwise) rewards a player for brutalizing a passive, non-threating character, I think it's reasonable to call that a desensitization device. Once someone become desensitized to something considered by all modern cultures to be objectionable, they are more likely to react the same way to similar real-world stimuli.
Just like therapists use certain interactive video imagery programs to help people with extreme phobias. If you have severe arachnophobia, but spend several hours every day interacting with realistic spiders in an simulated environment, you will be less likely to have a panic attack when confronted with a real-world spider. This is a long-documented psychologically valid method.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I would propose that perhaps the age-old argument for the presence of violent media - that it mitigates real violence by offering a release valve - would be the explanation here. I'm not a neuro-scientist (IANANS), but wouldn't less activity mean that that portion of the brain is not working as hard at blocking violent impulses, maybe because there are fewer of these impulses?
the issue of unwanted expression of violence isn't that you can't suppress it, but that you have too much rage. it doesn't matter if your ability to decipher right and wrong is pristine when you are in a fit of madness: the gates of reason may be strong, but the flood can be worse
therefore, a superior way to prevent spasms of violence in real life is to allow for some way to express violence in harmless ways
such as violent videogames
what gets released harmlessly on a keyboard or joystick is that which will not be released in real life situations
it's not like the violent videogame creates violence. what made the ancient romans violent? violent is inherent to human nature. look at a roomful of 4 year olds if you don't believe this. a violent videogame can only catalyze the release of violent potential that is already in the person
so certainly, if someone is already unstable, a violent videogame could serve as the flashpoint which makes a previously unstable person blow up. but this still isn't a ding against violent videogames, since something else would have eventually set an unstable person off
by and large, violent videogames reduce violence in society
the daily friction of life creates a build up of rage. the question is how is that rage released. a violent videogame provides that release, in exaclt the mechanism described above. but it's not like that rage has anywhere else to go were it not for violent videogames
i think we as a society should play more violent videogames to reduce real world violence
i am not in the least joking
there are unstable individuals who can't differentiate from reality who should not play them, sure. as if the existence of violent videogames or not makes them any more or less unstable
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Perhaps because it's a way to release aggression in a safe way? I mean how often do you say "I just want to punch something" and you would take it out on a punching bag, but not on a person? I'm certain that if I did I would temporarily lower my own inhibitions, just like a meditating man can slow his heartbeat. Why? Because I know it's a punching bag I'm punching, so I can just let go, let the adrenaline flow and punch the shit out of it. Which pressure cooker would you have, the one with or without a vent?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In America, everything we watch has violence. You can't get away from it - go ahead, try to! (God forbid if a women's nipple is shown! Think of the children! It's OK for them to see someone get shot, though.)
What I'm trying to say is, we're constantly seeing violent images. Yeah, if you just saw that one movie or played that one game and then went into a monastery, sure the effects may not last that long. But I think that the researchers are confusing long term effects with cumulative effects.
Let's face it, we're in a violent and hostile society. The signs are all over the place: road rage, shootings, media content - violence sells after all!, how people interact in everyday situations, etc...
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense
FTFY.
I'm sure everyone responds differently, but what we all have in common while viewing violent images is empathy.
Language is the perfect example of the brain learning by imitation. This research is common sense. If the brain/mind is exposed to a lot of a particular stimulus, it will associate with that stimulus as being okay and worth mimicing. A lot of it probably has to do with survival. If you see everyone around you drinking water, it probably makes sense to drink water. Conversely if you see everyone around you avoiding poisonous berries, you probably want to avoid the berries too.
If this was the case, then why doesn't every boxing match break out into 50,000 individual boxing fights? Apparently it only affects people who would not only reenact something that on the surface is dangerous, but also explicitly says "DONT DO THIS" in effort to dissuade people from ... trying to do it.
stuff |
Not in the traditional sense. It is much more similar to how /. works. PLoS ONE accept articles from all branches of science and medicine, and the articles are deemed "worthy" of publication by the editorial board mostly on technical issues (necessarily so, since no editorial board can cover all branches of science). Like /., the *real* "peer review" is done after publication, by comments and annotations.
/..
This is quite unlike traditional scientific journal (and unlike all the other PLoS journals which are quite traditional apart from being Open Access) where an article is reviewed anonymously by peers (from the same discipline) before publication.
It is actually quite nice that PLoS, apart from pioneering Open Access, also experiments more fundamentally with the scientific process, by adapting techniques from sites like
But it is misleading to state that the article has been published in a peer reviewed journal, as it means something different in this case. It would be more correct to say that it has been published for peer review in a journal. At the time I'm writing this, no peers have yet to review the article.
Most scientist would hesitate publishing in PLoS ONE simply because it does not have an impact factor rating, which is very important for how valuated when seeking grants etc.
I'm the author of this paper from Columbia. I'm happy to answer any serious questions about it if people are interested. I can tell you a few things right off, though: 1) We are not advocating censorship of any kind, nor will we participate in any effort that does. This sort of research exists for the sake of being informed, as well as being educated about how the brain works. 2) If you read the paper, we clearly state that these changes in neural processing are not sufficient on their own to make a normal individual become a rabid killer. That would be absurd, and it would totally contradict everyday life. Without a doubt, the observed neural changes must interact with other factors and circumstances that are still being identified. 3) PLoS One is peer-reviewed (or, at least, we were), so I'm not sure where that comment came from suggesting that it wasn't. 4) I assure you that no money was taken away from cancer or dementia research for the sake of this study. 5) Although some people feel the conclusions are obvious (i.e. that the brain is affected by what it sees), assuming something is probably true does not equal scientific evidence.
I wonder if there is in fact a connection. The kind of short term warfare in the Classical period did not lend itself to desensitisation. The audience had probably seen arrows and spears sticking in people they knew. They knew what war was about, and they did not need or want a graphic representation in a tragedy.
If this bit of cod philosophising is right, then perhaps violent games do have a desensitising effect similar to that experienced by real soldiers in prolonged wars.
If so it is worrying, because desensitisation is part of the military process of overcoming the reluctance of citizens to be soldiers. (This is necessary to keep soldiers alive on the battlefield. My father had the job of landing boatloads of Canadians on the beaches on D-Day. When I asked what happened to them, he simply looked very miserable and said "They were too nice", and would not be drawn further.) Perhaps the US Government is covertly keen on the idea of producing a large pool of potential killers without the expense of all that military training. But the worry must be that after a period in which violence in society has in general been in decline, as the violent game generation grows up it may start to rise again. The corollary of which is that the research needs to be done, and the opposing sides need to do what comes so hard to bigots, which is shut the fsck up and pay attention to the results of that research, wherever it leads.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Individuals are still responsible for their own actions, that has not changed.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes it shows brain activity! woooooooooooooo.. Its called thought and response.
It doesnt mean its negative or positive response, that would still be up to the individual.
Good point. There is a big difference between Bugs Bunny violence and hyper realistic violence - whether movies or todays super 3D performance video games. There would also seem to be some survival value in the response. If there is a lot of violence going on around you, you need to be ready to respond in kind (or find a good hiding place).
So let's forget about anecdotes and look at the statistics. What has happened to rates of violent crimes as games have gotten more and more realistically violent? They've dropped. What's more, they've dropped most dramatically in the very demographic group that plays these games. That doesn't necessarily prove that games prevent violence, but it does prove that the pro-violence effect of games (if there is any at all) is so small as to be utterly swamped by other social and demographic factors affecting rates of violence.
As for brain scans, you can be sure that pretty much any activity that people enjoy and like to do repeatedly alters brain activity, but the interpretation of these changes in blood flow over rather large regions of the brain is still pretty much at the level of "Just-So" stories. At this point, it's a lot more speculation than science.
the study was "Is there an effect of the brain." Using an fMRI they detected an effect.
"In a paper in the Dec. 5 on-line issue of PLoS ONE (published by the Public Library of Science), Columbia scientists show that a brain network responsible for suppressing behaviors like inappropriate or unwarranted aggression (including the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex, or right ltOFC, and the amygdala) became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence."
That's not junk science. IT's saying "Is there an effect, and if so what is it?"
They know a lot about what the brain does. the fMRI in it self is amazing. for example, limited studies have shown it to detect when people are lying 100% of the time. Pretty cool stuff. The next question, does that hold for a larger pool of people. If it does work, is it considered self incrimination? or is it physical evidence?
Any ways, the mysteries of the brain are starting to unravel in some very unexpected ways.
This study seems good. certianly good enough to warrant a better study with a larger pool of people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is a pretty convincing body of evidence which suggests that the "Werther" effect is in fact real. I.e. that reading about a sympathetic character who commits suicide makes one more likely to do the same. So yes, I would say that reading does invoke the same effect.
Here is an interesting link for you: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Conf/MemePap/Marsden.html
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
And 2005 is lower than 2000. But this kind of data snooping is meaningless. If you cherry-pick at these little year to year fluctuations that are down at the level of the statistical noise, you can rationalize any kind of claim you want. I'm not talking about the small and obviously statistically nonsignificant fluctuations over a year or two. With this sort of statistics, only large, consistent multiyear trends are meaningful. And the clear trend over the period when videogames have been increasing in popularity has been downward.
Which merely restates my point--the pro-violence effect of videogames if any is negligible relative to other social and demographic factors impacting rates of violence.
As for the "uncanny valley," the term was coined to account for the fact that people find state-of-the art humanoid computer graphics in multimillion dollar movies where each frame can take minutes to render to be eerie, rather than convincingly human. Are you seriously arguing that the much less sophisticated graphics in games have crossed the valley?
This is sheer rationalization. Over the period when games have gone from blocky 2D cartoon characters to 3D human-looking characters with simulated blood and gore, the only clear trend is downward. So you are arguing that it is just about to start trending upward "real soon now?"
I am a neuroscientist, and have been following such studies for years. I stand by my assessment. These blood flow measurements are intriguing, and can tell us a lot about which parts of the brain are being activated under particular circumstances, but we are a long way from understanding what that means in terms of human thought, emotion, and behavior. It is still very much speculative.
Still doesn't looks like an upward trend, though does it? If anything, it seems to have stabilized, and at a much lower level than before videogames became popular. Obviously, a downward trend cannot continue forever, or criminals would at some point be resurrecting the dead. Currently, we aren't that far above the levels that prevailed in the '50's. If videogames had such a powerful pro-violence effect--one sufficient to justify all of this concern and investment in research, then shouldn't there be a clear upward trend?