Slashdot Mirror
Violent Video Games Only Affect Some People
An anonymous reader writes "The media would have you believe that violent video games will be the downfall of our civilization and the cause of moral decline in young people. A recent study suggests that most people aren't so easily influenced by the violence; instead, just a few bad apples are likely to react poorly, with everyone else showing little or no effect from playing these games."
The American Psychological Association has posted the academic paper (PDF) as well, in addition to a few related studies. One examines how games can be a force for good (PDF), and another looks at the motivations behind children playing such games (PDF).
Violent video games only affect the kind of people who kill small animals just to see what it feels like. It's a similar rush, just from different things. If you're predisposed to this kind of violence, watching Robocop probably has the same likely hood of pushing you over the edge as a videogame does. As much as people talk about how we're desensitized to violence from movies and videogames, the second a normal person sees someone shot or seriously injured in real life their stomach usually turns.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
So does this mean I can't use GTA as an excuse as to why I robbed my neighbor anymore?
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
...something like a video game cannot turn a normal person violent. The tendency has to be there already. You could argue that without violent games and movies these tendencies would not be realised, but I think that is a very naive notion. I think violent games for adolescents/adults are a good thing for society. In this castrated western world where two dudes wanna get drunk and fight each other are both reprimanded, and all kinds of contact sport gets softened up and dumbed down, it is natural to seek other means of expressing a competitive/violent yearning.
I don't have children, but when the time comes I will not ban them from all violent games (like my parents did) but rather let them play them as long as I am satisfied they understand the context, that there is a difference between movies and games and the real life.
I'm German, you insensitive clod!
Bemusing really, isn't it. To objectify the taking of life is commonplace in cinema and literature, but its creation is taboo.
Someone bring back common sense.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Whether someone is violent (or likely to be violent) has no correlation with his consumption of computer games. A person who has a "reason" to be violent (please don't expect a logical, reasonable reason. We're talking psychology here, or, in other terms, stuff that deals with people's emotions) will be violent. Game or no game. Do they enjoy playing those games for the same reasons they, say, kill kittens or torture their schoolmates? Most likely. Do I enjoy playing those games for the same reason that I enjoy other games that challenge my ability to react quickly and make swift decisions? That much I know for sure.
Both, that violent bully and I, play the same game. But we do so for different motivations and for a different gratification. For him, it's the blood and gore splattering across the screen. For me, it's the reward that I played better than someone else (either a real player or at least some script). Mowing down a few hundred zombies is for him a great rush because of the blood and guts spewing everywhere on screen. For me, it's the challenge that I have to get them down before they reach my character and end my game, and the rewarding experience that I could pull it off, even though the amount of enemies made it seem impossible.
But do we want to base a legislation on how someone feels about a product in question? Again? As if certain porn laws (that depend on how a judge "feels" about certain displays) were not enough bullshit littering our laws...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As someone who played it a lot said one:
"I quit because I've had a pedestrian in front of my car on a small, twisty street and for a moment I wanted to hit it".
By what I know, he never played Carmageddon again.
All handguns are banned in the UK because someone went on a killing spree with it.
AND the last one has worked because nobody has used a handgun since to go on a killing spree. The next one used a shotgun. The one before the handgun used an automatic rifle which have also been banned and since then nobody has used one either.
Hard to argue that it doesn't work, when it does.
Actually I'd argue that what you described shows that banning guns doesn't work. One guy used an automatic rifle, so they banned it. The next guy used a handgun, so they banned that. The next guy used a shotgun, so they banned that. What's next a guy using a butcher's cleaver so they ban that?
You can always find a way to cause physical harm against another person ranging from string, table legs, anvils to guns. Should we ban all those when a single person miss uses them? Washington DC has one of the strictest gun control laws in the US, and one of the highest crime rates (not counting political crimes, which would really skew the numbers). I'd say at least in the US, banning things when a very small subset of people miss use them doesn't work. If you want a historical example, look at prohibition which caused more harm then good to the country.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. " -Voltaire
The problem I find with all this research on violent video games is that it all seems to assume that video games have an effect that matters. Well, how about we study that first? Back when I learned about scientific research, especially as it applies to people, you go and do some observational research first, see if there's a trend. Only if there is do you bother with experiments.
In this case compare the violent crime rate for people who play video games as well as people who do not to the population at large. Unless you see an increase, there really isn't anything else to study. Trying to measure the effect of a videogame on an individual is going to be much harder and more error prone than evaluating statistical data. So, let's do that first. Unless there is a statistically significant difference in the rate for violent crime between the population at large and the subset that likes violent games, I don't see why further study is warranted.
Now I realize that there could potentially be other, more subtle, effects. However why do we care? Does it matter if playing violent video games causes people to get excited, or release more adrenaline or the like? Might be mildly interesting as a general psychology/physiology study, but nothing worth reporting on or making policy on. The only concern in terms of that would be if violent videogames make people more likely to commit crimes.
I'm going to say they don't just based on the fact that violent crime has been dropping for around 30 years and what do you know, video games have been increasing for around 30 years.
Bemusing really, isn't it. To objectify the taking of life is commonplace in cinema and literature, but its creation is taboo.
Put like that it sounds a bit silly, but the reality is that most people are more affected by watching sex than by watching violence. All other things being equal, there is a higher chance of you feeling like wanting sex after watching people doing it than the chance of you getting bloodlust after watching violence.
I'm not saying that the reaction is a basis for banning one over the other, but I think that you are over simplifying.
Too bad parent poster is wrong.
http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/12-dead-in-uk-killing-spree-460161.html
This guy would have lasted about 3 minutes in my neck of the woods, where quite a few *law-abiding* citizens have legal concealed carry permits. Do you realize how many times you have to reload to kill 26 people with a standard 12ga shotgun?
There is a war going on for your mind.
Bemusing really, isn't it. To objectify the taking of life is commonplace in cinema and literature, but its creation is taboo.
Put like that it sounds a bit silly, but the reality is that most people are more affected by watching sex than by watching violence. All other things being equal, there is a higher chance of you feeling like wanting sex after watching people doing it than the chance of you getting bloodlust after watching violence.
Agreed. I don't think either topic in general reaches the level of 'taboo'. That said, claiming that 'creating life' is the taboo subject ignores both that the content we're talking about is casual sex that doesn't result in reproduction, and that the intent is to limit childrens access to the content (since it's undesirable physiologically and financially for 14 year olds to be pregnant).
That said, at least we KNOW sexual content affects people and makes them want to engage in sexual activities (as anyone who has seen pornography will attest to), while we also know that violent content does not make the vast majority of people want to engage in violent activities (as all of us who played Doom but didn't go on a violent rampage can also attest to). At least if we're going to regulate who can view a type of content, it might as well be the one that actually affects our behavior.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Well, a meat cleaver is a lot harder to go on a killing spree with than a gun.
You mean like these?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
While if you sucumb to "feeling like wanting sex" doesn't usually harm others, sucumbing to "getting bloodlust" is highly likelly to harm others.
The GP point still stands: sex (which harms nobody) is taboo while violence (most definitely harmful) is commonplace in cinema and literature.
Even if seeing sex in movies is more likelly to make you want to have sex than seeing violence is likelly to make you want to go on a rampage, that is not a reason to not show sex on movies while still showing violence since even frequent mass-orgies after movies would harm less people than a single individual going on a rampage.
With a whip and handcuffs, just like everyone else.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Even wars that are fought in the name of religion are usually fought in reality for land, money, power, and revenge. Just like all the other wars.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
>Agreed. I don't think either topic in general reaches the level of 'taboo'. That said, claiming that 'creating life' is the taboo subject ignores both that the content we're talking about is casual sex that doesn't result in reproduction, and that the intent is to limit childrens access to the content (since it's undesirable physiologically and financially for 14 year olds to be pregnant).
Talk about intent failing due to ignorance then... study after study have proven that the younger teenagers (And this is doubly true of girls) start masturbating the OLDER they tend to lose their virginity. Girls who own vibrators and (are encouraged by their parents to) watch porn tend to wait even LONGER.
Simple really - if you know how to deal with your OWN hormones, you don't HAVE to rely on boys to do it for you... and then you can actually choose who you have sex with on more than just "I'm horny right now and I can't control the need" because you've previously learned how to deal with that need on your own, it's not so overwhelming to be near orgasm when you've been past it a few thousand times already.
In short... basically it seems to have the OPPOSITE affect. Honest sex-ed that admits sex is fun, often engaged in for that purpose and can be almost as MUCH fun by yourself is known to reduce pregnancy and STD rates, denial and "condoms break" and "never ever tell the poor mite she has a clitoris" is known to lead to MASSIVE spikes in pregnancy and STD rates...
Of course adding insult to injury for the moral brigade... during the Bush years' insistence on repeating the old abstinence-only sex-ed model (despite it's persistent faillure in the past) it was found by one study that more than 70% of the teenagers who abstained from penetrative sex as a result of those programs practised both oral and anal sex on a regular basis, usually without protection.
"I'm saving myself for marriage, fuck me in the ass instead"...
What can I say, I guess the moral brigade has an easy task - they want to stop teenagers from having sex, well that shouldn't be so hard. it's not like teenagers are horny after all... oh wait... remember what it was LIKE to have puberty's hormone levels ?
Best thing we can do is give teenagers information, and ACCESS TO RELIEF WITHOUT GUILT... and then let them make their own informed choices.
How many more times must society SEE how every other approach fails disastrously before we figure this out ?
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I really feel as though the reason the media harps on video games is because they are still under the assumption that video games are made for kids and teenagers. Key demographics these days are probably closer to the 20-30 year old range. I would argue that it's probably not the greatest thing for a kid to be playing GTA IV, but that's just one man's opinion. When I have kids, I will use the ratings system as a suggestion on what to purchase for them, the same as I would do for movies or any other media.
Agreed. I don't think either topic in general reaches the level of 'taboo'. That said, claiming that 'creating life' is the taboo subject ignores both that the content we're talking about is casual sex that doesn't result in reproduction, and that the intent is to limit childrens access to the content (since it's undesirable physiologically and financially for 14 year olds to be pregnant).
Please explain to me why the USA, being such a puritan country, ranks a lot worse in teenage pregnancy that European countries, that have a very liberal vision regarding sex education of teens. I mean, you teach stupid things like abstinence (that is considered ridiculous by most normal Europeans) instead of teaching contraception, then your results are so bad, and you still think your way is better? How about some rational behaviour, for a change?