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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.
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.
When you're sitting on the couch in your underwear playing video games 10 hours a day.
It also found that increasing the realism of violent video games does mean aggressive behavior in gamers will increase.
This error is in the article as well, but reading on makes it clear that this sentence is missing a 'not'. To wit:
it was expected that those exposed to the more realistic game would choose more violent words. Surprisingly, the researchers found no significant difference between the word choices of players exposed to either game.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The fact that the study accepted the null hypothesis argues against this being junk science. The flux in the field, with established concepts like priming being vigorously challenged, is actually good sign.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This study has a few problems. For one, the participants were all adults; the argument is usually that violent video games have a harmful effect on children whose minds are still developing, and these experiments don't assess that. Furthermore, several studies found that short-term aggression was increased by playing violent video games, but there was a lack of evidence for any long-term effects. This experiment didn't study long-term effects, either.
IMO the theories on how violent video games might mentally harm children approach Intelligent Design levels of pseudoscience, pushed by moral guardians who have a knee-jerk "think of the children!" reaction. I've played lots of violent video games, and the ones that most realistically depict violence are pretty disturbing; they make me less likely to want to employ violence, if anything.
What I'd REALLY like to see is if a VR game where you use motion controllers to punch people makes the players more likely to employ punches in real life afterward (in say some roleplay with a dummy where a punch, kick, or handshake can be employed.) I wonder if muscle memory (pressing a button on a Dualshock is nothing like throwing an actual punch) and feeling that the game isn't real (VR takes this away) are the main things stopping a connection between in-game violence and real-life aggressive tendencies. However, there's a big difference between "I'm curious if" and "I'm certain, therefore it must be made illegal immediately." I also chuckle at the idea that 'ragdoll physics' apparently equals 'realism' now; all those hours playing UT2003 and I never realized how REAL it was.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
False equivalence.
It is entirely possible that violent video games do not make people more violent, whereas sexist video games do increase the degree to which one subscribes to sexist ideals.
This study covers violence. It says nothing on the topic of sexism. So, this study lends evidence to the claim that there is no link between violent video games and violence. We cannot infer from this that there is no line between sexist video games and sexism.
I don't think we need any additional proof that social science is mostly junk science. Priming, intersectionality, trigger warnings all brought to you by these clowns.
I used to think that. My degree is in physics and I got a job later in life teaching community college physics. I got interested in the teaching craft and started taking master's level teaching courses and was forced to read these kinds of studies.
What I learned: The science for learning now humans work is way harder to study in a scientific manner than physics or math. That is, to study correctly. We don't even know how to form the questions well. We didn't even know what all the questions are. Yes, a lot of what you're seeing is in fact shit, but a big reason is that we really are only beginning to learn how humans work.
However wrong phlogiston, Aristotelianism, Ptolemaic astronomy, Dalton and so on are, they don't deserve ridicule because they're the foundation of our learning how the world works. It's the same with social sciences.
When you play a video game, doesn't need to be a violent one, your brain goes into a state of hyper-arousal. Some games are more intense then others, depends on how long you have been doing it, your age, and if its a new game.
But right after you finish playing, for example GTA, your driving around with a car and not really obeying street laws.
Right when you get done, don't go out and drive a real car, take a few minutes to get back to reality.
Here's my experience.
When some of my friends were frequently talking about their twice-weekly poker game, I heard them several times and starting thinking about if I might like to play poker. I ended up playing poker with them, twice a week.
Later, was flying home from a business trip in Vegas and wanted something to read on the flight. I ended up with three poker books. Later I put them in my reading room (bathroom). I was always reading *something*, and that month I read about poker. While driving or whatever, I'd think about what I read - think about poker. I ended up writing a poker- playing bot, spending quite a bit of time analyzing poker as I created software that played poker.
I doubt I would have spent thousands of hours on poker had I never starting hearing about it from my friends. I wouldn't have written poker software if I had read model airplane books.
Whatever book I get, I spend several hours reading about it, and several more hours thinking about it. Whichever TV series I'm into, that's what's in my head.
As a teenager, I was into heavy metal music. I constantly had heavy metal themes pumped into my head, so a lot of my thoughts were around topics in the lyrics.
Later, I started listening to Christian music. I find that when I hear a song about forgiveness, I tend to think about forgiveness. When I'm thinking about forgiveness, I'm more likely to forgive. I'm also more likely to be grateful for the forgiveness I've received, if that's what I'm thinking about because that's what I'm hearing on my way to work.
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.
Does that mean that if I hear you say the words "eat cheese" I'm going to immediately run to go eat cheese? Of course not? But if people are constantly offering me different kinds of cheeses, talking about which cheese goes well with what, I just might try some cheese every so often.
If my mind is on violence several hours per day, sure whatever I think about a lot is going to tend effect what I'm more likely to do.
My mom still doesn't believe any of the reports...
However wrong phlogiston, Aristotelianism, Ptolemaic astronomy, Dalton and so on are, they don't deserve ridicule because they're the foundation of our learning how the world works. It's the same with social sciences.
It's not about being wrong, it's about being wrong and simultaneously applying that wrongness to change society. They're like monkeys with atomic bombs, poisoning society with psychology the way an a-bomb would with radiation. The ends are little different. Being wrong is great, that's how people learn, being wrong and applying that en mass (or even in their shitty social experiments like MK Ultra) isn't just being wrong, it is wrong.
Is it? Just because the narrative that violent video games causes violence didn't turn out to fit reality, that doesn't mean that violent video games doesn't affect behavior. Granted, it's not just video games, but violence in media, including video games, may beget violence, but desensitizes people to it. That can affect behavior in ways they aren't looking at, like how one reacts to certain news stories - like how one reacts to stories (either way) violence happening throughout the world, which affects how you might donate time or money, or whether you support your government's reaction (or lack thereof) to it, or what you do when your neighbor is beating their spouse or kids.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
those who spend huge amounts of time playing video games avoid personal growth and avoid connecting with the world.
Do you have any actual evidence for this? Or are you just spouting off the same "conventional wisdom" that is debunked by this study?
Sure, introverts may be socially isolated and play a lot of video games. But that doesn't imply that the games caused the isolation, nor does it imply that the isolation is actually harmful, to the introverts or to the rest of society.
When I was a kid, there were no video games (other than "Pong"), yet we still had socially isolated people, watching Star Trek on TV, reading SciFi, and playing D&D. So are interactive video games "worse" in some way compared to likely alternative activities? I have seen zero evidence for that.
It seems like a study is done every 7 years saying the same thing since the 80s?
Before that it was cartoons...
It should go away soon... Gamers are getting older and this kinda crap is getting less and less traction as the non-gaming geriatrics are kicking the bucket.
Politicians are starting to realise that gamers are a wealthy(ish) demographic, and that it doesn't pay to piss on or off; least they start loosing votes
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
Interesting statement. Of course, my argument was as to whether or not video games made people violent, not as to whether they changed people in some way.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
* Marcus Brigstocke
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
No, but they're not sciences in the way that, say, particle physics is. As Lubos Motls pointed out the number of sigma required to verify a hypothesis is very different
https://motls.blogspot.com/201...
Some disciplines of science try to be as hard and reliable as particle physics so they adopted the same 5-sigma (1 in 3 million) standard for discovery; most other disciplines, especially soft sciences such as medical research, climate science, psychology, and others, are often satisfied with 3-sigma (1 in 300) or even 2-sigma (1 in 20) evidence.
That's assuming there's enough data for this sort of thing, which there most likely isn't for history where you're relying on a couple of second hand sources.
That doesn't mean history is junk, it just means you can't be as certain of it as you can with physics. And in fact new discoveries turn up all the time and change the consensus view of historical events. Similarly the consensus on economics can change pretty drastically - e.g. Keynesianism took a major beating in the 80's due to stagflation. Arguably post Keynesian economics did post 2008, though that may be coming to an end.
Social sciences have fuzzy data and the interpretation of the data is influenced by politics - that's especially true of climate change and economics. They're not at all like particle physics with its spectacular 5 sigma near certainty. You could probably find examples of present day politics influencing linguistics too.
Incidentally literature isn't science and it definitely isn't junk. And good literature isn't influenced by politics, except in the extreme Orwellian case where a worst case totalitarian regime ends literature.
http://www.orwell.ru/library/e...
Literature has sometimes flourished under despotic regimes, but, as has often been pointed out, the despotisms of the past were not totalitarian. Their repressive apparatus was always inefficient, their ruling classes were usually either corrupt or apathetic or half-liberal in outlook, and the prevailing religious doctrines usually worked against perfectionism and the notion of human infallibility. Even so it is broadly true that prose literature has reached its highest levels in periods of democracy and free speculation. What is new in totalitarianism is that its doctrines are not only unchallengeable but also unstable. They have to be accepted on pain of damnation, but on the other hand, they are always liable to be altered on a moment's notice. Consider, for example, the various attitudes, completely incompatible with one another, which an English Communist or 'fellow-traveler' has had to adopt toward the war between Britain and Germany. For years before September, 1939, he was expected to be in a continuous stew about 'the horrors of Nazism' and to twist everything he wrote into a denunciation of Hitler: after September, 1939, for twenty months, he had to believe that Germany was more sinned against than sinning, and the word 'Nazi', at least as far as print went, had to drop right out of his vocabulary. Immediately after hearing the 8 o'clock news bulletin on the morning of June 22, 1941, he had to start believing once again that Nazism was the most hideous evil the world had ever seen. Now, it is easy for the politician to make such changes: for a writer the case is somewhat different. If he is to switch his allegiance at exactly the right moment, he must either tell lies about his subjective feelings, or else suppress them altogether. In either case he has destroyed his dynamo. Not only will ideas refuse to come to him, but the very words he uses will seem to stiffen under his touch. Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The idea that you will go out and be violent because you've seen, and been involved in violence in games is a flawed abstraction of the idea that you repeat what you are exposed to.
When people are exposed to violence, real or in games, the constant practiced activity between both situations is that it demands of them to observe the situation and then learn to change how they make decisions for a better outcome for themselves. They can either enforce their decisions on the others present, or find a solution that doesn't require that. When you are exposed to real violence, often there is no way to get a positive outcome for yourself without enforcing your decisions on others, this unfortunately when practiced becomes habit and leads to more violence. Video games have a fixed rule system, you cannot enforce any kind of logic of your own unless you cheat, and certainly not on other, real people who can argue back, so this negative re-enforcement cannot happen. Video games while in use, prevent the player from practicing learned behaviors that lead to violence.
OK, if there is no link between violent games and violence. How come we are not allowed to see female nipples on tv? Or cursing?
Is that different somehow? And if it is not, how come ads are effective?
People will be influenced by what they pick up. I am sure that violent games will not cause violence, but it might raise the bar a little bit on a much wider scale,
We think rape in prison is funny. Many believe that police violence is just a way to best solve things.
So what it might do is change the norm about violence.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I remember the first time I watched Smokey and the Bandit at the movies. When I got in my car, I wanted to speed all over the place.
But I didn't ... because I'm not stupid and know I could crash, kill someone or me, or at least get a ticket.
I'm sure violent video games can make violent people more likely to be violent.
That doesn't mean the other 99% (made up statistic) of society should be kept from playing them.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Most people who play video games where you get a gun and kill other people, never dream of killing people in real life at all (most, especially non-Americans, don't have guns and have never handled one).
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?
I guess that question is answered for non-Americans, then.
I grew up watching "The Three Stooges" with other school kids. We didn't go into the schoolyard and gouge eyeballs out, tear out hair or put heads in vices.
Now we see the violence inherent in the system . . .
Whether a child is violent or not has one overwhelming factor: The parents, or lack thereof.
Don't blame schools, video games or Global Warming on your child's behavior.
Bad parenting, period.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Umm... you forgot to add how this is on topic in any way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So Tomb Raider, where I spend the entirety of the game staring at some shapely female butt, isn't sexist?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Really? It is possible to hurt people over the internet now?
Damn, this guy really did it, I didn't believe him.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
i jaywalk becuase of Frogger
If a lifetime of playing video games, including first-person shooters, had ANY VALUE at all as 'target practice,' my IDPA ranking would be WAY higher than it is. Oddly enough, though, pointing a mouse cursor and clicking, or tilting a thumbstick and hitting a button, doesn't really magically translate into completely different sets of physical action.
I mean, by that logic, you could go play Track & Field and become an amazing athlete.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
We have had proxy activities for competition, aggression, and violence since the dawn of history. Everything from boxing, rugby, and polo to swimming and track to Go and chess.
Video games are just a new spin on an ancient habit. We substitute relatively harmless activities as outlets for our less-than-friendly instincts. In this respect, we have reached a new zenith with the variety, ubiquity, and flexibility of computer games. Participation in previous sports or hobbies has never been as safe and widely appealing as video games.
I'm not surprised there is no link between video games and violent behavior; the games themselves are the outlet for the urges that lead to violence.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.