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Daily Dose of Violent Video Games Causes 'No Significant Changes' In Behavior, Study Finds (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new, longer-term study of video game play from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Germany's University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf recently published in Molecular Psychiatry found that adults showed "no significant changes" on a wide variety of behavioral measures after two straight months of daily violent game play. Most scientific studies on the effects of video game violence measure participants right after the completion of a gameplay session, when the adrenaline prompted by the on-screen action is likely still pumping. Researcher Simone Kuhn and her co-authors argue that "effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video game play affects behavior on a more long-term basis." To correct for the "priming" effects inherent in these other studies, researchers had 90 adult participants play either Grand Theft Auto V or The Sims 3 for at least 30 minutes every day over eight weeks (a control group played no games during the testing period). The adults chosen, who ranged from 18 to 45 years old, reported little to no video game play in the previous six months and were screened for pre-existing psychological problems before the tests. Over 208 separate comparisons (52 tests; violent vs. non-violent and control groups; pre- vs. post- and two-months-later tests), only three subjects showed a statistically significant effect of the violent gameplay at a 95 percent confidence level. Pure chance would predict more than 10 of the 208 comparisons would be significant at that level, leading the researchers to conclude "that there were no detrimental effects of violent video game play."
Isn't this the same thing gamers have been saying for years? Nice to finally have a study to back it up.
Yes. It's guns. Access to guns. Also, not having proper mental health evaluation prior to allowing a person the privilege of buying a firearm to go form their militia.
Don't believe people who say that the purpose of guns is "intimidation". That's horseshit. The only purpose for guns is to kill or maim.
Q: How do you get a conservative to care about using proper pronouns? A: Call an AR-15 an "automatic".
There is a difference between someone who is ill and plays video games, versus someone who is ill because they play video games.
violent crime committed by kids is way up
No it isn't.
correlated almost exactly with the rise in popularity of video games
You mean it started in the 70s, crashed, then went nuts in the 80s?
and it's leading to school shootings
No it isn't.
I'm not in the "games have no affect on kids" camp, but I'm also not a fan of "saying violent crimes committed by kids is way up" with no evidence camp.
Because they're actually way down from their height in 1994.
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb...
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb...
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb...
It's turtles all the way down.
It's a lot longer than 3 or 4 years. Remember Tipper Gore in the 1980s?