Long-term Study Finds No Link Between Video Game Violence and Real Violence

SternisheFan sends news that a study has been completed on the long-term effects of violence in movies and video games on violence in real life. A researcher at Stetson University found no link between the consumption of violent media and an increase in societal violence. The study was published in the Journal of Communication. From the article: "Entertainment Software Ratings Board ratings were used to estimate the violent content of the most popular video games for the years 1996-2011. These estimates of societal video game violence consumption were correlated against federal data on youth violence rates during the same years. Violent video game consumption was strongly correlated with declines in youth violence. However, it was concluded that such a correlation is most likely due to chance and does not indicate video games caused the decline in youth violence. ... Previous studies have focused on laboratory experiments and aggression as a response to movie and videogame violence, but this does not match well with real-life exposure.

Comments

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

So what you're saying is that humans can tell the difference between reality and video games??

Re:What?

[davydagger]

most of them.

Glaring exceptions for the ones in politics, the media, teaching in high schools, serving on PTAs, and participating in some forms of religeon.

Meanwhile...

[ArcadeMan]

Another long-term study found a link between empty wallets and gaming PC upgrades.

Re: Meanwhile...

[Electricity Likes Me]

Except correlations can be due to chance. You can test this, by picking things which can't possibly be causally linked, running the same statistic analysis, and observing how often you get a correlation hit.

And it's important to know this, because such a statistical issue was very much the cause of various excited reports of radiation, cellphones, powerlines and every other type of factor "somehow" increasing risk for cancer, despite the absence of any measurable causative effect.

Until it was realized that if you ran the analysis on any set of variables, you'd always get "roughly double" the risk even if the question was "cancer rates vs. mean daily use of swear words" or "cancer rates vs. global population of pirates".

Which is why they don't just report the result. Because without context, the result is meaningless.

Re: Sweet, can we stop talking about it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not. Now that they've ruled out video games causing violence we have a new crowd attacking games from a different angle. Now Grand Theft Auto doesn't make gamers into violent crooks, it makes them in misogynists because the game contains hookers. Princess Peach isn't just a pointless bit of story to explain why you're crushing mushrooms and turtles, she's "teaching boys to keep women in the kitchen."

So conservatives may have finally moved on, but a new group is attacking video games as being "bad for us" from a completely different angle. So be prepared to hear even more about that. And once people prove that isn't true, I'm sure the goalposts will be moved yet again.

No link?

[roc97007]

I would actually have expected a reverse link -- violent video games having a cathartic effect.

Re:No link?

[roc97007]

I would actually have expected a reverse link -- violent video games having a cathartic effect.

Oh wait, according to TFA, there is a reverse link.

But but

[russotto]

but Anita Sarkeesian swears it does!

Oh, wait, no, that's sexism, not violence. I'm sure it's completely different.

Re:But but

[squiggleslash]

I don't agree sexism in games causes sexism either, but I don't think you can link it to a "violence in video games" study.

Sexism is about attitudes and how people are viewed. Violence? Only partially. And arguably a case can be made that violence in video games could decrease violence in real life because it provides an outlet for aggression. As in "My boss was an ass to me today, I'm going to take it out on some virtual cops rather than deal with my anger issues the traditional way".

Whereas it's hard to make that argument work with sexism. "Oh, I asploded a stripper on the way to rescuing a 2D princess who will be my property when I get her, now in real life I'm going to treat men and women the same at the office and stop sexually harassing passers by because I got my fix from Grand Hitman Mario." Yeah. Doesn't really work, does it.

I think minds are a little more complex than those who look for causal links between sexism in media and sexism in real life claim, but I wouldn't think for a moment a study in violence in media is somehow relevant to the issue of attitudes towards roles seen in media.

Re: Sweet, can we stop talking about it now?

[russotto]

She never claimed that games turn people into misogynists

She does, in fact, claim that. She just uses more words to do it.

In other words, viewing media that frames women as objects or sexual playthings, profoundly impacts how real life women are perceived and treated in the world around us. And that is all without even taking into account how video games allow for the more participatory form of objectification that we've been discussing in this episode.

Compounding the problem is the widespread belief that, despite all the evidence, exposure to media has no real world impact. While it may be comforting to think we all have a personal force field protecting us from outside influences, this is simply not the case. Scholars sometimes refer to this type of denial as the âoethird person effectâ, which is the tendency for people to believe that they are personally immune to media's effects even if others may be influenced or manipulated. Paradoxically and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.

In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.

Re:Guns

[Firethorn]

Probably negative in both cases.

From what I've seen, violent types will seek violence, gun or no gun. There may be something to the idea that allowing them to play out violent fantasies on a computer is catharic enough to reduce real world violence(and who cares how many digital mooks that have to 'die' in the process).

What guns tend to do is increase the consequences of the violence. Complicating matters is how do you differentiate people who have guns as recreation -hunting, target shooting, and such, and those that have them as a criminal trade tool?

Re:Sweet, can we stop talking about it now?

[UnknownSoldier]

The blame game has always been popular. It is always some made up bullshit excuse instead of finding & treating the root problem. One small set (or sect/group/cult) of society tries to blame an inanimate object for all of society's woes and spreads their propaganda to anyone who will listen.

Every "next technology" is always scapegoated.

1900 Film
1920 Prohibition (Alcohol), Phonographs
1930 Jazz, Movies
1940 Radio
1950 Dancing
1960 Psychedelic Drugs, Sex
1970 Rock n Roll, Movies (again)
1980 MTV, DnD, Heavy Metal
1990 Computer Games
2000 Internet and "strangers online"
2010 Guns

Then you have idiot psychiatrists like this who say 20+ year olds playing computer games is not "normal."
http://www.destructoid.com/pla...

To which I'll counter:

1. Hey fucking retard -- the medium is irrelevant.
Why is playing a card, board, or sports game like poker, go, chess, or baseball / hockey / basketball / etc. considered "normal", yet playing a digital game isn't normal??

2. Well guess what -- all these people were not normal as well:

Leonardo da Vinci was not normal
Isaac Newton was not normal
Charles Darwin was not normal
Albert Einstein was not normal
Stephen Hawking is not normal

Normal people don't do exceptional things.

The real issue is:

Are _you_ balanced in your daily activities, responsibilities, and hobbies?

Re: Sweet, can we stop talking about it now?

[Anonymous Coward]

> In short, the more you think you cannot be affected, the more likely you are to be affected.

This is a nice kafka trap because you can't deny it without making it appear true. That leaves you with science vs. rhetoric and, well, let's just say that rhetoric tends to win even if it shouldn't, logically speaking.

They don't make you a misogynist either

[Karmashock]

Can't wait for this latest attack on games to collapse under its own incompetence.