Two Studies Suggesting a Link Between Violent Video Games, Real-Life Behavior Have Been Retracted (qz.com)

Keith Collins reports via Quartz: In the first three months of 2017, academic journals retracted two papers that suggested a link between violent video games and real-life behavior. The first, entitled "Boom, Headshot!" was published in the Journal of Communication Research in 2012 and, after years of controversy, retracted last January. That study looked at the "effect of video game play and controller type on firing aim and accuracy," and found that playing first-person shooter games can train a player to become a better marksman in real life. Patrick Markey, a psychology professor at Villanova University, found some inconsistencies in the data published in the study. In January 2015, he and a colleague alerted Ohio State University, where the authors of the paper conducted the research. The lead author of the study, psychology professor Brad Bushman, emailed an official at OSU a month later, suggesting the allegations were part of a smear campaign against him and his co-author, according to Retraction Watch. Last January, the Journal of Communication Research retracted the paper. Bushman had agreed to the retraction, and began an attempt to re-do the original study with a larger sample size. A paper published in Gifted Child Quarterly in 2016, authored by Bushman and three others, caught the attention of Joseph Hilgard, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. The paper had studied the "effects of violent media on verbal task performance in gifted and general cohort children," and found that when children watched a violent cartoon for 12 minutes, their verbal skills dropped substantially for a temporary period. What surprised Hilgard most, according to an interview with Retraction Watch, was the sheer size of the effect. Hilgard said that OSU, Bushman, and others he spoke with about the study were helpful and forthcoming, but could not provide information on the study's data collection process. The author who collected the data, it turned out, lived in Turkey and fell out of contact following the recent coup attempt. Last week, Gifted Child Quarterly retracted the paper.

Comments

I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Qbertino]

Link or not, I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death. Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce. Battlefield 1 was the pinnacle: Celebrating the massakre that WW1 war as something enjoyable left an awkward taste behind. Yes, the GFX were aweseome and I'm sure the leveldesign and the gameplay were top notch. ... But why again do we have to simulate and fetishize real war as close as possible?

I read an article about a scandinavian dad who had exact same discussion with his teenage boys. He made an agreement with them: They would travel to israel and talk with israeli and hamas veterans and visit the places where they hang out and tell their stories. After that, the boys could play whatever they chose to. ... Smart dad. I don't know how that turned out though.

I do get Unreal Tournament CTF, Tribes CTF, Xonotic CTF and Quake 3 Arena CTF. Bouncing around through space with teleporters, strange gaming levels and respawning instantly once your fragged and shooting bizar weapons that don't exist in the real world is all-out fun. And the direkt link to violence I don't see in both cases. ... I do get stress and anxiety issues when playing these games for an extended period of time though.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Dunbal]

I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death.

And why the hell would you just single out video games. Been to the movies in the past century? How about television? Death is part of our culture, rightly or wrongly.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[jellomizer]

Well for teens and preteen they are strong and smart enough to survive without their help there is an urge to prove one self. War/survival fantasy is very compelling to play out as it puts you in the ultimate test.
Now this urge will get kids in trouble in real life putting themselves in dangerous situations, willing to fight people at a drop of a hat or performing other deviant behavior. Kids causing trouble has been going on for much longer than they were humans.
Social norms now say we shouldn't be in that situation all the time. So kids will escape into a world where they can feel powerful in their fantasy.
So for things like...
Video Games for this generation
Watching violent TV shows for the previous generations.
Comic Books for the generation before that.

Popular "Wholsome" active which are popular with older kids like sports, camping, etc... put the kid in a controlled challenge where they can be tested. But these kids are no less trouble makers than the ones playing games.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[CrimsonAvenger]

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die.

Note that the characters you refer to above are the "good guys" in the movies.

In games, death is usually reduced to a score count

Note that those are the "bad guys"....

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nitehawk214]

Playing paintball is a more realistic war simulation than Battlefield 1.

Maybe it's the anti-gaming people that are the ones that need to get out of their basements.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

Go play Spec Ops: The Line. The entire game is a criticism of glorification of war and the people who play games that do so.

The entire game is literally a Middle East-set Apocalypse Now, which is itself an adaptation of Heart of Darkness. Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[goose-incarnated]

For example, good movies make you care about the characters, and care when they get injured or die.

Really? How many movies made you care about the enemy bodycount? I can't think of many (none come to mind, but there *must* have been a few).

I'm not really surprised you choose the Jack Thompson side of any issue, but still ... surely you must put at least some thought into your words?

Re: I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Besides being good fun, paintball also teaches you how easy it is to get hurt in a firefight. Think you're under good cover with a buddy having your back, and still get hit in the head, shoulder or ankle. Now think what that would be like if those were real bullets...

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a kid(I'm 49) I use to play with GI Joe dolls and army men. In fact I still have my original GI Joe toys packed away somewhere at my parents house. There were no video game systems then yet we still played war. The bad guys were Nazis and my friends and I got to be heroes. I use to build tanks and airplanes out of Lego and play space battles and crazy adventures where things would "blow up". As a father I use to take my boys out twice a month and go play military simulations using Airsoft guns before I became disabled. In fact playing Airsoft is whole lot closer to real then any computer game or movie. Airsoft battles can be very intense when the BBs start flying in all directions and people are yelling.

It's very normal for a boys to do such things and a few girls as well. It is exciting and thrilling and we get to be heroes and kill the bad guys. I see nothing wrong with how I played as a boy nor do I have a problem with it now as a father and a former Airsoft player.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[nedlohs]

No. https://www.dailydot.com/layer...

I wouldn't call him "smart" though.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[ckatko]

You don't get it mostly because you're an idiot. :P

You know what men like? COMPETITION. You know what those games represent? COMPETITION. They have "hunting". They have gathering resources.

Quake 3 isn't about killing people. It's about winning a game. (Notice I said "Game" and not "Video game".) An abstract game where people don't actually die. It's NO different than playing tag. No different than playing cops and robbers. The robbers "compete" to FLEE, and cops "compete" to CATCH.

When someone in Quake 3 dies, there is no family crying. There is no funeral. There is no sadness. You just respawn.

Men naturally (that is BIOLOGICALLY) create hierarchical systems, and then compete within those systems for the top. Men compete in chess. Men compete in drag racing. Men compete in soccer. Men. Compete. It's a biological need. And only in the last couple decades where we've forgotten 95% of "what it means to be a man" is this a remotely novel concept.

Now, contrast this with war and, accidentally, some modern games. Google the death scenes in Dead Space. They're horrific. I can't play those games without intentionally desensitizing myself--and I don't want to. They're graphic. They're horrible. I don't want to watch my guy, screaming and crying out for help, as his spine is ripped out from his living body by a monster. We're heading fast for the uncanny valley and past it, where we're no longer shooting at 2-D sprite monsters going "ugh." every time they get hit, and heading for realistic looking pain and suffering. When you can actually empathize with simulated pain and suffering, that's no longer a abstracted "game" like cops-and-robbers. It's a simulation. And we SHOULD be super-careful about letting our kids play that.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Anonymous Cow Ward]

Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Yes, but adaptations can add themes to varying effect. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to set a story about "the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us" in a war.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[Nidi62]

Those stories aren't about war, they're about the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us.

Yes, but adaptations can add themes to varying effect. As it turns out, it's pretty easy to set a story about "the depravity and inhumanity that can live inside all of us" in a war.

That's true, but let's go back to the source material. Heart of Darkness takes place not during war, but during European colonization and exploitation of Africa (which was certainly violent and had plenty of wars-and the boat is attacked in Heart of Darkness). It attempts to show what can happen to people when societal norms are stripped away, where a person has absolute freedom and control over life and death of others. No societal pressure to conform to any sort of moral view, no one to reproach you or question your actions. It just so happens that today, the only way you can really get in a situation like that is through war, so that is the medium you have to use to tell the story.

Re:I still don't 'get' realistic war simulations.

[EndlessNameless]

This man needs positive moderation.

Competition and the desire to prove oneself are two of the defining characteristics of young adulthood. From puberty until mid-to-late 20s, those drives pop up in all aspects of life. This is true for both men and women, although their outlets vary.

Men tend to be drawn toward violent entertainment because physical prowess has always been respected, and most violent work is perceived as masculine. There may be exceptions, but they are few and far between.

Violence has been a part of nature and human culture so ages, and some video games play into those tendencies.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[silentcoder]

Violent media is not, however, "violence". There is a difference between "depiction of violence" and "violence".

There is little doubt that experiencing or witnessing acts of violence can engender future violent behaviour - that this is traumatic, but the claim that the same trauma can be engendered by fictionalized depictions of violence is dubious at best.

Re:Violence inspires violence

[Narcocide]

Furthermore, such depictions of violence may actually be a safer - even necessary - outlet for such emotions.

oh hell yeah

[FudRucker]

i love to play GTA 5 on my PS3, but i know if i tried to do that sort of thing in the real world i would be either killed by the police or put in prison for the rest of my life, it is just an amusing game for entertainment and stress relief (i get to do stuff in that game i could never get away with in the real world)

i get killed by the Liberty City Police a lot in the game but at least i get to re-spawn, the real world dont work like that

OT: Gifted Child Quarterly???

[AntronArgaiv]

Sounds like something Lisa Simpson would subscribe to... :-)

Study complete

[Zero__Kelvin]

There are millions of people playing these games, but not going around committing actual violent acts. No causation; Study complete.

Male hero fantasies

[sjbe]

I do think videogames are still too one-dimensional in dealing out death.

Probably true. I find it particularly curious that violence in movies and games is more acceptable than sexuality. Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

Also I really don't get why male teenie fantasies have to evolve around the closest approximation to real war we can produce.

Because males tend to fantasize about being tough and dangerous and are willing to pay to indulge those fantasies. Jerry Seinfeld said it best that all men secretly regard themselves as sort of low level super heroes. This combined with hormones and physiology and societal expectations you get a tendency to glorify violence. Boys learn to play "war" from a very early age and at least in the US we have a gun culture that makes a fetish out of the idea of shooting the "bad guys". Whether you think all this is good or bad I leave up to you.

Re:Male hero fantasies

[nedlohs]

Probably true. I find it particularly curious that violence in movies and games is more acceptable than sexuality. Decapitate someone in a movie and you might get a PG-13 rating. Show a breast and you go straight to rated R. Very odd.

I don't think that's universal. Different societies have probably developed different views...

But sexuality being considered worse for children to view than violence makes some sense. Violence is outside of the everyday experience for most people, while sex isn't.

That makes violence more comfortable for parents - they can after all just say it's just fantasy in the real world you will be hurt or dead on the receiving end and in prison on the handing out end. Whereas, sex is uncomfortable to talk about for many people (the very people movie ratings are made for). Possibly because they don't want their child doing it now but do in fact want their child to do it later - so they don't want to call it "bad" but also don't want to call it "awesome".

Most people are never going to find themselves using their very particular set of skills to hunt down and murder the kidnappers of their child. Most people will engage in sexual activity at some point in their lives. One is clearly fantasy (especially to the target of movie ratings), one is reality and thus,more difficult to deal with.

At least that's the armchair analysis I pulled out of me ass...

Re:Male hero fantasies

[Feyshtey]

So on the one hand you are normalizing violence beginning at a young age. It's just something that everyone should expect and accept. On the other hand you're teaching kids that sexuality is shameful , and hide it from them until they are older and need to start figuring it out without any context or guidance.

How is it logical to give a pass to violence with kids by saying it's "outside the normal experience" while also saying it's perfectly acceptable in society to glorify it, and telling kids at the same time that sexuality which is nearly universally something that will be part of their "normal experience" is something that they should feel ashamed of?

People seem to think it makes perfect sense to glorify the thing that we do not want people to engage in, while demonizing the thing we know they will engage in as an entirely natural and healthy part of human existence.

Not realistic at all

[sjbe]

The difference between games and movies is that AAA movies are usually at least somewhat responsible about portraying war as a horrible thing where everyone suffers.

Oh that's just nonsense as a general proposition. Sure some movies do but far more often they out and out glorify the violence. There are plenty of movies where the violence is the main attraction and they don't make any effort to make it seem horrible. Heck most of the Marvel movies make it a good approximation of bloodless.

Re:Not realistic at all

[EndlessNameless]

In Avengers, the bad guys had names. That already puts them away above the average FPS goon.

It doesn't matter. You can give the goon a name, but he's still nothing more than an obstacle.

If you want the enemies to have character and meaningful interaction, you're looking for adventure games and RPGs.

I mean, think about it: you're talking about a FPS... did you forget what the "S" stands for? The entire genre revolves around shooting things.

There are certainly action movies that have a similar feel to FPS games, e.g., Commando and Rambo II, but they have fallen out of favor with the public. This may be due, in part, to an overlapping audience that is more satisfied by playing FPSes.