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Do Violent Games Hinder Development of Empathy?
donniebaseball23 writes "Although there's yet to be a study that conclusively proves a direct causal relationship between video game violence and real-life violence, psychologists are continuing to examine the effect violent media can have on children. A new study in the Journal of Children and Media notes that violent video game exposure can actually hinder a child's moral development. 'Certainly not every child who continues to play violent video games is going to go out and perpetrate a violent act, but the research suggests that children — particularly boys — who are frequently exposed to these violent games are absorbing a sanitized message of "no consequences for violence" from this play behavior,' said Professor Edward T. Vieira Jr."
I believe that only a few of them would get that message. But even if they did, instead of having parents ban the games for the child, why don't they teach them otherwise and then let them play them?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Looks like Professor Edward T. Vieira, Jr. is in need of an ass-kicking.
Right after I finish clubbing this baby seal to death in Grand Theft Orca.
Maybe it's boys (and girls for that matter) that spend all their time playing video games (violent or not) and no time socializing. The lack of social interaction would hinder the development of empathy. How are you supposed to empathize, with "that which has no life?" (Oblig. southpark quote)
I wonder what they would find if they ran a similar study of a semi-controlled environment filled with their peers with regular violence that was inconsistently punished rather than video games.
Fark user FloydA: I think if boys play this game, they will grow up to abuse women, in exactly the same way that I played Asteroids when I was young, and I grew up to be a triangle.
(said in regards to the "Capture the Babe" multiplayer level category in Duke Nukem Forever)
Yes but only violent videogames. Other forms of media that depict violence such as movies, magazines, books, comics, and songs no. Actual violence no. Videogames yes. THEY ARE THE WORK OF ALAN TURING'S HOMOSEXUAL DEVIL MACHINE.
That would be The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in a nutshell.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Even when playing a violent game as a child, I hated to lose the game or die and have to start over.
So when you die in a game it hurts. If they don't think it hurts enough then perhaps the punishment for death in the new games should be like it was in the old games. When you died in some of the old school games that was it, or you'd get 3 lives and after losing all 3 that was it, and you had to start from scratch to get back to where you were. So dying in a game meant something.
Such as if you play a game and you play violently, maybe your enemy just attacks you harder, forcing you to be more tactical rather than just trying to rambo your way through the AI.
Also dying in a game should be a bit more painful. You lose all your gear and you start at the first level, thats how it was when I played growing up. They didn't have a "save" feature.
"no consequences for violence"
Not in any game I've ever played. You take a level 1 trainee mage up against a "boss" dragon, you get turned into ashes. Not fun at all.
I think a better way to study the influence of violent video games would be to study attitudes in boys about sizing up the opposition, and estimating the oppositions abilities, having a plan for running for it, and sharing gossip with their buddies about the best way to beat the other kid.
I'm thinking there is no influence... Stories about my grandfather getting into fights as a little kid sound about like my sons stories, yet my grandfather was too young for video games by about half a century.
Typical boy fight for the last couple centuries or longer: "Well he said some $#%^ so I decided to whack him one to teach him a lesson and one thing led to another and next thing you know we're in the principals office getting disciplined"
Theoretical boy fight, when affected by video games: "Well I heard he drops phat loot and my buddy told me he's vulnerable to bludgeoning weapons and I need a defense against his poisonous spit, and I figured he's about a level 9 boy based on his STR and CON, and I'm about a level 10 boy based on my WIS and INT and CHA, so I figured I can take him pretty easily, and I got a cellphone-rune-of-recall if I need help, and a level 2 flask of bactine and a healers kit of bandaids, so I'm all good, I'm gonna camp his respawn point and get him when he steps off the school bus".
Pretty obvious which is more realistic.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
As a result children have less empathy. Empathy isn't rewarded in society. Look at this society and tell me why you'd expect any other result besides less empathy from children?
Do the corporations have any empathy? So why expect it from children?
The thing is, when you actually go outside with your friends and play swordfight or war, you learn a degree of empathy that you don't get from video games since you won't have anyone left to play with if you insist on actually harming people. With video games, there's an entire internet full of strangers for you to remorselessly frag/spawncamp/teabag so there's no reason to learn how to actually socialize with them or even consider them to be human beings.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Every sponsor of the study has its own angle on the issue, as such the result of the study is already predestine to prove the sponsor right. It's largely irrelevant what the result is as the result is pegged long before any data is collected or interpreted.
Studies that disproved their sponsors' views have ways of disappearing into unfunded abyss.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The thing is, when you actually go outside with your friends and play swordfight or war, you learn a degree of empathy that you don't get from video games since you won't have anyone left to play with if you insist on actually harming people.
That's not how it worked when I was growing up (pre-computer-game). Instead, you learn that your gang needs to go bully someone weaker than you, so you can indulge in all the violence you care to, without consequence. Empathy? Some people enjoy hurting others - being there in person makes it better for the bullies.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I type this from a federal penitentiary. When I was 12 my parents bought me a game for my Sega Genesis called "Mortal Kombat." "It's only a game," right? If only that "game" had done a better job of explaining the consequences of one's actions, I wouldn't be doing 30 consecutive life sentences for ripping the heads off two dozen of my classmates (spines attached) and then tearing the skin off my face and proceeding to breath searing flames on my teachers, burning them alive until they were just charred skeletons.
Parents, talk to you kids about the REAL cost of a "Fatality!" Before it's too late.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Then, as I was saying, our youth should be trained from the first in a stricter system, for if amusements become lawless, and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted and virtuous citizens ... Thus educated, they will invent for themselves any lesser rules which their predecessors have altogether neglected.
What do you mean?
I mean such things as these:--when the young are to be silent before their elders; how they are to show respect to them by standing and making them sit; what honour is due to parents; what garments or shoes are to be worn; the mode of dressing the hair; deportment and manners in general. You would agree with me?
Yes.
But there is, I think, small wisdom in legislating about such matters,-- I doubt if it is ever done; nor are any precise written enactments about them likely to be lasting.
Socrates complaining about Kids These Days.
I am officially gone from