New Study Finds No Link Between Violent Video Games and Behavior (dailydot.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Dot: Scientists have been investigating the impact of violent video games on behavior for more than two decades, and the results are still being debated. In a 2015 resolution on games, the American Psychological Association reported that multiple studies found a link between violent game exposure and aggressive behavior, though critics at the time questioned the findings. Now, a new study published by researchers at the University of York in the journal Computers in Human Behavior further challenges the connection.

It has long been theorized that exposure to in-game concepts like violence has a "priming" effect on players that ultimately impacts behavior, leading scientists to believe that a player exposed to in-game violence will be more susceptible to displaying such violence in real life. The new study found the exact opposite to be true in some instances. In a series of experiments with a little over 3,000 participants (more than any past study to date), university researchers found that exposure to video game concepts like violence won't necessarily impact behavior. It also found that increasing the realism of violent video games does mean aggressive behavior in gamers will increase.

Comments

Re:I'm Skeptical of This Particular Study

[clovis]

I did see a study done back in the 1990's sort of like what you're describing.
They observed some groups of the kids for some time before bringing in games, and the kids were graded on how many times they acted aggressively (toy-stealing, shoving, hitting, etc). Kids are people. Most are decent and some are jerks.

Then some groups got non-violent video games and some got violent video games.
In the places that got non-violent games, the individual kids aggression levels remained much the same before and after.
In the groups that got violent games, what they observed is that the non-aggressive kids remained the same, but the aggressive kids got worse, and some much worse.

This sort of thing has been born out in other studies in various populations and situations.
It looks to me like healthy people aren't affected by exposure to violent shows, porn, criminal caper TV shows or whatever. People who aren't mentally healthy get worse. I suspect those people whose lives get devoted to playing Everquest, CoD, Warcraft or whatever, would get "addicted" to something else, perhaps poker playing, perhaps collecting Hummel figurines, if the games did not exist.

I read many studies on the topic of media-induced behavior changes, and I am very sure that the people who have an agenda know this about the differing reactions of healthy and non-healthy people and design their studies in such a way to take advantage of this phenomenon.

For example, suppose that the people who did the study I described above chose to not differentiate ( not publish those measurements) between the known violent and non-violent kids, but just published the group's number e.g. "before violent games, the group had 5 assaults per hours, and after there were 10 assaults per hour". If you didn't know that only one kid in the group was doing all the assaults, you would get a different conclusion that if you did know that fact.

Re:My own experience

[Kiuas]

From my experience, it seems obvious that whatever I'm exposed to a lot affects what I think about. What I think about a lot tends to affect what I do.

This is correct obviously, but there are 2 important distinctions that you left out that make a huge impact on the discussion about games/media and violence,

Firstly, as an avid gamer since my teens I've played a lot of violent games, and I find myself often thinking about them when I'm not playing, but those thoughts are not violent in nature. That's because I don't think of shooting a virtual enemy as an act of violence anymore so than I think about capturing a pawn on a chess board as an act of violence. I find myself thinking about stuff like level layouts, how to improve my use of cover, etc stuff that relates to my goal, which is completing the game. I don't play the games because they're violent, I play them because I enjoy puzzles and challenges, and games offer that. Some of them with a violence as a mechanic, some of them without it. I've never had violent thoughts towards real people as a result of playing a lot of games, because my mind is perfectly capable of discerning between actual violence, and a a virtual character on screen being 'shot' at.

Secondly, even if one's thinking about violence, that does not automatically mean one will become more likely to be violent. Here as an example I'll use my brother who in his teens was actually quite aggressive and short tempered as many young males especially are and often got into fights. Then he started kickboxing, which is an extremely violent sport by all metrics. Now, is he thinking more about violence these days than in his teens? Very likely so, he watches matches, practices a lot and teaches techniques etc. But he's not gotten into fights outside the ring since he became an adult because he's now found himself a 'game' in the real world that has given him an avenue to deal with violence in a manner that's more sensible, and also more rewarding as it is a competition. He's learned a lot about respecting other people via the sport. So for him not only thinking but actively engaging in more violence in a controlled setting has actually made him less likely to be a risk for others in the world. He's much more in tune with his emotional responses to situations now, and while he still gets angry and loud easily, he doesn't transition from yelling to actually punching someone but has instead learned to walk away from the situations before they spiral out of control. That self-control is entirely the rest of a combat sport (and good coaches) teaching him discipline.

The primary question with regards to games and media of a violent nature is therefore not 'does the media make people think about violence more?' because even if it does that's not necessarily a bad thing, but 'does the media lessen people's impulse control and/or dehumanize other individuals so that they're more likely to use violence in the real word?'. To me there's no evidence that this is the case. Violent crime has gone down and is going down in pretty much all advanced societies, even though the amount of violent media in different and more graphical forms (think Game of Thrones cutting of limbs and dicks and burning people alive, murdering children etc) has exploded.

Now it's also obvious that people with pre-existing violent tendencies still likely gravitate towards violent entertainment, but as is the case with my brother, I remain unconvinced that that is necessarily a bad thing, because these are precisely the people who in fact need to think about violence and their own relation to it more in order to attain control over their own impulses and behavior towards others, and it's far better for them to do it via something like a game or sport rather than actually getting themselves into violent situations.