Young People Who Play Video Games Have Higher Moral Reasoning Skills (inews.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Young people who play video games, including violent titles, display more developed moral reasoning skills than their non-gaming peers, a study has found. Researchers from Bournemouth University asked 166 adolescents aged between 11 and 18-years old about their video game habits and questions designed to measure their moral development -- the thought process behind determining what is right or wrong. The children and teenagers who said they played more video games from a wide variety of genres had increased moral reasoning scores, including titles containing violent content. Violent games were found to have a positive relationship with moral reasoning while mature content was more likely to produce a negative one, the report published in published in journal Frontiers in Psychology found.

Comments

Curious result

[alvinrod]

So violent video games lead to higher moral reasoning skills, but mature (by this they mean 'M' rated games) games don't. However, you look at their own study data (full study here) in particular Table B1, they show that there's a nearly perfect correlation (.98) between violent and mature. I don't think I've ever seen a correlation that high in any study, but it's besides the point. Since they're that strongly correlated how do they get the result as stated in the summary?

Maybe I just need to read the whole study instead of skimming through it, but the results seem strange to me. I think that this is obviously a study that would benefit from multiple repetitions and with a larger sample size.

Re:Finish them off?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody showed me Grand Theft Auto when it came out. Moral reasoning skills?

You can have sex with a prostitute. Then if you kill her, you don't have to pay!

Wowzers. I grew up on Pac-Man and Asteroids. Different world.

Re:Have they controlled for variables?

[alvinrod]

They performed regression analysis in the study, but strangely did not include the factor which correlated with socioeconomic status (in this study, whether the participant was entitled to free school meals) as a part of the regression. I'm not sure that they have a large enough sample or are controlling for enough other factors to sufficiently eliminate other causes as an explanation for their result. They didn't look specifically at a lot of other genres of games, and there are some genres or specific games that I think most would assume would have an effect on moral reasoning, at least compared to other games.

Re:Then why do I hear these stories

[Mashiki]

of the "domestic disturbances" broadcast on Twitch when the S.O. interrupts the guy's Fortnight game?

The same reason if you worked in a union shop 30, 40, 50 years ago you'd hear the same thing through a 2nd or 3rd party. The difference is people are being caught because it's caught on video, in turn people can actually be prosecuted with evidence.

What? You think "domestic disturbances" are new or something? The upside in some cases is it actually catches the instigator leading to more appropriate outcomes then simply "it's all the males fault." And of course it also catches some people abusing themselves in order to try and get the other person fucked over.

Re:Finish them off?

[AmiMoJo]

People don't have a simple "monkey see monkey do" relationship with media, but that doesn't mean it has no influence at all.

In fact the best games, the best books and TV, are often the ones that do affect the player/viewer. Star Trek is a great example, although it wasn't exactly subtle in how it went about it.