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Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

• avetisk 6y ago
  Not sure if this was taken into account, but I think there's a huge issue with the study subject itself: violence has always been there, especially in the past, death was not hidden, people were beaten and executed in public, and that violence was not necessarily what would draw people to more violence. The real question is ethics and morality in a violent context. And I don't think that aspect was taken into consideration.
• octopoc 6y ago
  Maybe I'm having a brainfart, but the abstract seems illogical to me. Can someone help me understand how > [the] group with low initial violence “was no higher [don't they mean no lower??] in aggressive behavior than the high initial violence group at the final time point.” leads to their conclusion > adolescents who played a high-level of violent video games at an early age did not show more aggressive behavior later in life than those who played fewer to no hours of violent video games at an early age. (words in square brackets added)
• moron4hire 6y ago
  I'll tell you what does make me more aggressive. It's not the content of the video game itself. It's the other players in the multiplayer. I've basically sworn off of multiplayer for well over a decade now, with only vanishingly brief revisits to confirm things are only getting worse.
  • umvi 6y ago
    Indeed, growing up my parents banned Super Smash Bros., because the outcomes of matches would sometimes enrage us so much that we would get into fights in real life. But that's true for more than just multiplayer video games. Sports come to mind. Basically anything involving intense competition and taunting is going to cause a temporary increase in aggressive behavior.
    • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      >Indeed, growing up my parents banned Super Smash Bros., because the outcomes of matches would sometimes enrage us so much that we would get into fights in real life. Personally, my take on this is you were seeing and effect; not a cause. As a kid you MAY have had a common issue expressing loss or disappointment. The game MAY have brought this up, there was always a loser every match. So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it. I MAY be wrong. I have no idea about you. But that fits ME perfectly. I found the thing that brought me out of that was stressful singular competition, fighting, shooting, chess, performance, etc. Things that you excel on your skill not anything you can blame someone else for. I learned the value in making a plan, executing it, and learning when and why if it didn’t work. Now as an adult, I find myself more ready to deal with stressful things like dogs fighting on walks, medical emergencies, criminal activity, and things I just see other adults completely lock up on. I think this comes from an inability to process loss and stress.
      • watwut 6y ago
        > So, your parents MAY have considered this the cause of your inability to properly handle it. 1.) You underestimate how uncomfortable and annoying resulting environment is for everyone in the household. 2.) "My brother and me fought" typically have consistent aggressor and removal of game is often action design to protect the consistent victim. 3.) Removal of game is logical consequence. If parent simply tolerates asshole behavior in that situation, the kid has no motivation to even try self control. It amounts to enabling where parents see issue, but tolerate it and the issue grows and grows.
  • watwut 6y ago
    This study is strictly about whether you are more violent 10 years after playing the game. If does not study at all the actual issue most of those who lived with excessive gamers (whether kid or adult) have. Meaning, annoying aggression right after playing and verbal abuse toward household members because they dare to exist if same flat where he lost the match.
    • dr_orpheus 6y ago
      Anecdotally, nearly all of my friends growing up played violent video games. I did see this behavior from one of my friends and his aggression following losing a video game. But he also had the same reaction after we lost a soccer game as well. I think that video games may show this effect, but it is not necessarily the cause. After all, all of my friends played the same violent video games (often together); the individual was the common factor in the aggressive activity, not the game.
      • watwut 6y ago
        In his case, his buddies in soccer either put up with it or don't. They have choice whether to go play with him. Also, soccer is played relatively rarely, like twice a week. In case of gaming, people in the same householde are getting that despite not having much choice. It is also much more frequent - dedicated gamers play hours and hours every day. Another aspect with soccer is that really only few people can do overnight, so again, the bad behavior due to sleep deprivation is less likely to happen. If course it can happen if you party while night or something. These logistical differences can make big difference in terms of how annoying the hobby is for those who have to put up with people like your friend.
• jcims 6y ago
  They should do the same thing with porn. Paper - https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049 https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049 It's not particularly compelling to me. Not sure what the formal term is but it's a sidecar study of another project. There wasn't much investigation into how the kids were playing the game, and level of personal aggression was determined by self-survey.
  • Hamuko 6y ago
    >They should do the same thing with porn. What's the hypothesis?
• Kenji 6y ago
  As if that wasn't super obvious to everyone except fascists.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    It's extremely important to scientifically verify "obvious" things, both because some people disagree and because things that are widely believed sometimes turn out to be false.
  • tjpnz 6y ago
    More likely those looking for an easy scapegoat.
  • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    "except fascists"?
    • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      Why the downvotes? I'm asking for a clarification.
• qrybam 6y ago
  I think for those of us who have played any amount of shooters can attest that the game itself wouldn’t make you any more violent. It’s one of those “common sense” things that for non gamers seems obvious: “violent games make you more violent”, and the for the gamers out there the opposite is true, it’s obvious that they don’t.
  • scotty79 6y ago
    Yeah. After a game of pew pew you simply don't feel like getting up and out to f__k s__t up. If you play to your satisfaction you just feel like doing something entirely different for a while. With possible exception of multiplayer games that you loose too much. Those things can enrage you.
  • Miner49er 6y ago
    Maybe? It depends on how you look at it. I've heard of a guy inspired by playing Prison Architect to become a corrections officer. Or I wouldn't be surprised if many people joined the military because of being inspired to by COD.
  • Plestor 6y ago
    I think maybe there is some discussion to be had about the difference between personal violence, such as a particular person carrying out a violent crime, and the general acceptance of violence as a viable solution to a myriad of problems.
• sizt 6y ago
  The link is between humans and their tendency towards violence. Video games are just an outlet, like sports, for humans to express their urge for violence. Video games are probably a good way for many people to vent this urge.
• nchase 6y ago
  This reminds me of when I was at grad student in that area. It was really frustrating to read all of the studies from e.g. Anderson and Bushman asserting the links between violent media and aggression. These publications were headline-grabbing, but some of the study design was laughable. The whole state of affairs led me to leave the discipline (which led me to a career as a software engineer). I'm glad that I did, because the reproducibility crisis hit hard within a few years of me deciding to do something else with my life. Some of the studies that I read made me think that there was a link between frustration (caused by e.g. undesirable outcomes in videogames, or performance issues like high latency) and aggression, but of course the researchers assumed it was the violence.
  • nchase 6y ago
    PS: if you want a real treat, take a look at how some of these studies measure "aggression". My favorite was where they used the volume of hot sauce poured into a cup as the measure of aggression. Hopefully they've come up with some better ways of measuring it since then.
    • jccalhoun 6y ago
      Anderson and Bushman never met something that didn't cause "aggression." And in the several studies coauthored by Anderson that I have read I have not seen a definition of what they mean by aggression. I remember one mentioning "raising your voice." Then the news media just reads the abstract and says "a new study shows videogames make you violent!"
    • dr_orpheus 6y ago
      Oh yeah, the "Hot Sauce Paradigm" easily quantifiable, never backed up that it actually correlates to aggression in real life. From Adachi and Willoughby (2011): "Lieberman et al. [1999] found that scores on [the hot sauce] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab." https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c375259442c9dc7d7e7.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2cab/940f9292928a48d57c3752...
• newman8r 6y ago
  I'd be interested in seeing some studies that focus on possible links between gaming addiction and violent behavior, or other addictions in general (or other undesirable outcomes).
• chillwaves 6y ago
  Can we do a study on a link between video games and ADHD or dopamine deficiency? https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/adhd-and-video-games-is-there-a-link https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/adhd-and-video...
  • emteycz 6y ago
    People with ADHD are very likely to find themselves abusing drugs, or videogames. Not even dopaminergic drugs are causing ADHD, so why would games? Or what do you want to study? Yes, people with ADHD are likely to abuse games, that's well established.
    • chillwaves 6y ago
      Why is the prevalence of kids addicted to video games on the rise? People are too quick to say "causation/correlation" but often times there is overlap. One can encourage the other.
      • oblio 6y ago
        > Why is the prevalence of kids addicted to video games on the rise? Because we have tons of companies peddling and researching how to create addictive games, without much regulation. Several of them even hide gambling (lootboxes) within games. I played Hearthstone quite a bit in the past. The loading screen is literally the screen of a slot machine!
        • chillwaves 6y ago
          Yes, this speaks to why I am rejecting the idea that the kids addicted to gaming just happen to be broken in a neurochemical way. Something else is going on. There is a positive feedback loop of some kind, and it seems apparent if you follow the money.
      • emteycz 6y ago
        Videogames definitely do not encourage ADHD. But yes, it is well established that people with ADHD are likely to abuse drugs or videogames.
• hliyan 6y ago
  Perhaps in the case of some individuals, there may even be a negative link: finding a non-destructive outlet for violent tendencies. I recall seeing a recent article (the title and site escapes me) that posits something similar with regards to the rise of internet pornography and a seeming reduction in serial killings.
  • notsureaboutpg 6y ago
    This is odd because the rise of internet pornography has certainly led to a rise in more violent and extreme sexual activity. We are starting to see choking accidents during sex at higher rates than before (very obviously because it is being popularized through pornography). BDSM has also had a popularization through various media and that is becoming more ubiquitous in everyday life. Video games are clearly fantasies you can't ever live out (you can't be the guy in GTA because you'll go to jail). But pornography is a fantasy you can very easily replicate, and I think that difference is important here.
  • CiceroCiceronis 6y ago
    Probably not the article you were referring to, but I’m reminded of this interesting piece I discovered the other day; https://jacobitemag.com/2018/04/24/uncanny-vulvas/ https://jacobitemag.com/2018/04/24/uncanny-vulvas/
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    > Perhaps in the case of some individuals Sure, but that’s my problem with this whole thing. Some idiots and media claimed there was some obvious links to violence and video games to use as reasoning for increased government control... and now the push back is NO NEVER HAPPENS! But in some people yes, of course it hurts. There are definitely some people who are unstable and seeing hyper-graphic depictions of violent mutilation is not healthy. There are some people in the opposite. These studies always end with a DEFINITE correlation or lack of. The truth is obviously it’s a scale. And while the result is yes, some people might be negatively effected that doesn’t mean the population at large needs to be “protected” with censorship. I really hate the black and white of this.
• MisterTea 6y ago
  My mother specialized in early childhood learning and developmental psychology. She never once blinked when my brother and I played Doom or Wolfenstein, some of the most violent games of their times. We were allowed to play with toy guns and listen to whatever music we wanted including heavy metal (which my father despised.) I asked her about this later in life and her answer was and she laughingly told me "I knew you two were well aware of the fact that it was a fantasy. I never saw it influence any unhealthy behaviour. Plus its a good aggression outlet for young boys."
  • elboru 6y ago
    I live in a Mexican city near to the border with the US, the violence got really bad 10 years ago (some cartels were fighting for the border, now it is a lot calmer). Anyways “Narco culture” has influenced a lot of people (mostly on poor neighborhoods) and therefore it has influenced kids, it’s really sad to see boys playing with guns pretending to be narcos. The government has tried to ban those kinds of toys, I don’t know, does that really help? I guess I don’t have a strong opinion since that doesn’t look like a solution, but in the other hand it’s sad to see those boys aspiring to be narcos.
    • raztogt21 6y ago
      I'm from Mexico too. Kids (males mostly) playing with toys guns or swords is normal. Almost all games/sports are microcosms for wars, football, basketball, tag, hide n seek. Both kids and adults love these microcosms of war. They don't pretend to be narcos because they like toy guns. They do it because they aspire to a quality of life they will never get via a normal working job.
      • wwtrv 6y ago
        The third paragraph kind of contradicts the second one one. I mean why don’t they pretend to be businessmen, politicians or investment bankers then?
        • LocalH 6y ago
• Waterluvian 6y ago
  Somewhat Tangential: Without any instruction my 2 and 4 year olds know how to turn things into weapons to beat each other with. Like puppies they seem to be testing limits to rough play. What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the younger one additional toys. Maybe this is an unoriginal idea but it bears repeating: I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having.
  • Darmody 6y ago
    That's why it's so important to let them play. They end up figuring out a lot of important things by themselves that it would be almost impossible otherwise.
    • Waterluvian 6y ago
      It's kind of like watching kids invent society. Really quite fascinating to watch.
      • thepete2 6y ago
        who knows, maybe they come up with something better
      • Darmody 6y ago
        I don't know if they are inventing society or they are learning how to act on a society. And what I mean by "how to act on a society" I mean to learn how to interact with others, where are the limits, the consequences of your actions, etc.
  • Ensorceled 6y ago
    > I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having. This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.
• louwrentius 6y ago
  Fox News and Facebook did to our parents what they said video games would do to us. Credit: https://twitter.com/allymayn/status/1328448039497867264 https://twitter.com/allymayn/status/1328448039497867264
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    One of the big pushes for this came from Tipper Gore and slightly the Clinton Admin in the 90s. Do you think that was Fox News or Facebook?
    • louwrentius 6y ago
      I think you missed the point of this quote.
• Ellipsis753 6y ago
  Does anyone have a non-paywall link to the PDF? It's pretty annoying that so many studies are paywalled.
  • drannex 6y ago
    You could check out sci-hub(.do) and plug the DOI (https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049 https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049) into the search field. One of the greatest resources for researchers and the scientific community at large.
• fortran77 6y ago
  I wonder if there's a similar "no link" between 'educational' video games and improved education.
  • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    I would be much more interested in that topic. But like this one, I suspect there is a gray area that no one wants to talk about at all, and for some reason the answer must be black and white. Which makes me suspicious.
  • tobylane 6y ago
    I believe there’s a very narrow link between the specific thing you practise in the game and any real life use of that. Nearly every game is gamified too much to be useful in this way. The n-back games may be an exception.
• amelius 6y ago
  Not yet, but this could change with VR, I suppose, as games become more immersive.
  • ourcat 6y ago
    Definitely. I'm about half way through 'Medal of Honor' on the Quest 2 and I've never really been in to war games (or movies) at all. But I've been having an absolutely great time doing the various missions - and training - where you get to mow down the nazis with a variety of weapons. And naturally, different to a console game, I'm physically pointing the weapon (controller) at the (virtual) target. It's really more fun than it should be ;) It feels like being a character in a (cheesy) WWII movie. (Also, I don't think stabbing zombies in the head in 'Walking Dead :Saints and Sinners' will ever get old)
  • scotty79 6y ago
    I think the change might be multiplayer. The games where you loose half of the time (often in ways that seem unfair) can be really infuriating.
• person_of_color 6y ago
  I'm a rabid anti-gamer and I will tell you they are a gateway drug to antiproductivity.
  • justaman 6y ago
    And depression. Seriously there is a significant overlap between people who game daily and anxiety/depression/personality disorders.
    • chillwaves 6y ago
      I think it's clear that video games are addictive, and they are so by design. What's not clear is the effect this has on developing minds.
    • hnra 6y ago
      Anecdotal or research?
    • skocznymroczny 6y ago
      Perhaps, but is depression the outcome of video games? Or videogames are a popular activity for depressed people? If you don't have friends, can't go out, socialize, you are likely to either watch TV all day or play videogames.
    • KittenInABox 6y ago
      Very confused where personality disorders come into that. They're a completely different category of illness from the first two!
  • oblio 6y ago
    Which is not necessarily a bad thing, if you're not looking strictly for productivity.
  • roland35 6y ago
    Games in moderation are a great form of entertainment. Just like anything else they can be abused. I have spent many hours playing games and I used to regret that, but looking back I had fun with friends and was still able to get good grades and stay active. I would take games over TV any day!
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  I had an idea games should be made as hyper-realistic, brutal and bloody as technically possible so every gamer would know actual war is nightmare, not fun and they really want to avoid it at all damn cost - the way those who has actually witnessed war feel.
  • Item_Boring 6y ago
    That’s the thing with media portraying violence (and I’m saying this without judgement) it is always glorifying violence (“gewaltverherrlichend” in German) since one doesn’t experience the violence itself. Even if (war) video games were to be made “gorier”, bloodier, more brutal one still doesn’t experience losing someone, re-building a life in a country that has been bombed to ruins, or dealing with the aftermath such as physical wounds or mental trauma.
  • watwut 6y ago
    The primary difference is point of view - whether you make audience to imagine themselves as perpetrators and emphatize with them. Or whether you show the point of view of victim, civilian and make audience emphasize with them. Super realistic blood is not necessary, treating victims as primary fully developed characters would be. The entertainment is designed to make you feel good and make you feel like soldiers are overall good heroes.
  • ourcat 6y ago
    There's a part of a mission in Medal of Honor (recent VR version) where you're trying to make your way up Omaha Beach in WWII. The way it's done is very good, and really seems to drive home to the player just how utterly harrowing the whole experience must have been.
• anoraca 6y ago
  Who funded the study?
  • judofyr 6y ago
    From the full article (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049 https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049): > Author Disclosure Statement: No competing financial interests exist > Funding Information: No funding was received for this article.
  • tokai 6y ago
    Brigham Young University, the employer of the two authors by paying their salary. The paper states that «No funding was received for this article.».
• umvi 6y ago
  I always thought violent video games had the opposite effect of aggression - desensitization. At the beginning of playing "The Last of Us", I sort of felt bad whenever a (non-zombie) human died (either by my hands or part of the story). I especially felt bad when I made a 14 year old girl kill someone. But by the end I remorselessly hunted and executed every human I came across no matter which character I was. Of course, that didn't translate to any real life loss of empathy (I don't think), but it was interesting how quickly the game desensitized my regard of fictional humans so that I stopped seeing them as anything of value but rather an enemy/monster to be unquestioningly destroyed.
• fnord123 6y ago
  > a large north-western city... 65% were Caucasian, 12% black and 19% multi-ethnic, 4% other. What year is this from where Caucasian is still used? And northwest of what country? I guess US since the authors are from there? Original article is behind a paywall. -1
• mikesabbagh 6y ago
  Looking at my children, when my wife stopped them from playing video games, they fought much more. Gaming is the opium of the children!
  • scotty79 6y ago
    Maybe rather valium for children?
• Dumblydorr 6y ago
  No one who thinks video games are to blame for violence is going to be convinced by a study of any length. People form their beliefs on COVID, vaccines, video games, and anything else in an irrational way. We need to pierce information silo's and echo chambers so these studies actually affect the ignorant who feel they are right with bad evidence and their misfounded opinions.
• KlimYadrintsev 6y ago
  I think that even if there are negative consequences, there are just as many benefits of putting kids into the systems with rules and structure to learn and improve.
• Zenst 6y ago
  Even with a 10 year study, there will still be groups/collectives soliciting political posture and donations on the back of fighting all this with the usual "think of the children" trope to push it along. Simple fact is we have far more evidence to prove the Earth is not flat and yet there are those that still insist in going against all the evidence in the World. This will be no different.
• almost_usual 6y ago
  They should run this study for Twitter and Facebook.
• yazboo 6y ago
  I have noticed that many social science articles posted on Hacker News bring out critical comments about study design, doubts about the strength of the study's conclusions, that kind of thing. This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agreement with its supposed conclusion.
  • FeepingCreature 6y ago
    Free on sci-hub.
    • vlz 6y ago
      https://sci-hub.st/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049 https://sci-hub.st/10.1089/cyber.2020.0049
  • umvi 6y ago
    It's probably confirmation bias. Same reason a study with positive outcomes about coffee/alcohol/gay parenthood/gender reassignment/<insert issue> are not criticized as much as a study on the same topic that had negative outcomes. We want certain things to be true so we (consciously or not) avoid criticizing studies bolstering what we want to be true and harshly criticize studies we want to be false. I like to think science always prevails in the end (like with tobacco), but it can take half a century or more to converge on the truth.
    • mywittyname 6y ago
      I mean, part of this is probably also some degree of us intuitively knowing the answer. If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results. That might sound ridiculous, but lots of people here grew up playing "violent" video games through the 90s-00s, and had large friend groups who did the same. And it's pretty likely that, for most of us, none of our friends ended up with violent or aggressive tendencies. Anecdotes are not scientifically rigorous, but they aren't completely useless either. If violent video games caused measurable increases in aggressive behavior, people who were around a large cohort of people playing these games would notice this fact in action. Just like they'd notice that friends who eat a lot of cake tend to be larger than the one who don't.
• samschooler 6y ago
  I feel like this exemplifies the phenomena we see in the news today, and over the past few years has been increasing. Anyone can just say something on the news, and get a bunch of attention and credibility. But in order to disapprove it, we need a 10 year study, and multiple citations plus a large N value. Even then a lot of people won’t believe it nor will they take the science as a more credible source than the original person. - video game violence causes real word violence - vaccines cause autism - insert conspiracy theory here
  • Avamander 6y ago
    I think this isn't really a phenomena of we see in "news today", it's a really old problem but tech has made it much easier to have your voice heard. We have proverbial phrases about this, e.g. "One fool may ask more questions than ten wise men can answer." and all the different variations in other languages.
• Kaze404 6y ago
  This is only tangentially related, but one thing I find interesting is how video games contributed to us being desensitized to violence. It's funny hearing from my mom about how The Exorcist was terrifying back then, while nowadays it's borderline funny to watch (and not only because of the technology not aging well). Makes me wonder if any studies have been done regarding that.
  • slothtrop 6y ago
    Eh? If someone doesn't think the Exorcist is terrifying then I'm not sure what is, speaking as someone regularly playing violent games (though not usually horror or gory stuff)
  • roveo 6y ago
    Dunno, I watched The Exorcist a couple of years ago and it's one of scariest horror films that I watched. Not even in the same league with modern stuff. Not saying I'm not desensitized to fake on-screen violence (I eat comfortably watching The Walking Dead), I just think horror being scary has nothing to do with violence being scary.
  • karaterobot 6y ago
    Beware of generalizing: I find The Exorcist terrifying. It also remains at the top of most "scariest movies ever" lists (based only on a DDG search)
• jameslk 6y ago
  I remember the days when the Columbine school shooting was being blamed on video games (amongst other things like movies and goth culture) and as a result, all kinds of new fun censorship measures and laws were being talked about here in the US. FEPA[0] eventually being one of them (much later on). Luckily the censorship laws were struck down as unconstitutional[1]. Funny to have more evidence now that it was all misguided. Something I've always felt having been raised on violent video games myself and never feeling the urge to commit violent acts just because I played Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Entertainment_Protectio... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchants_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
• pansa2 6y ago
  I must admit, I don't understand the appeal of the most violent video games. I recently read "The Last of Us Part II" described as being "about [...] the awful things that humans can do to each other" [0]. Why would I want to spend my leisure time experiencing that? How is that entertaining? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/23/the-15-best-video-games-of-2020 https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/dec/23/the-15-best-vi...
  • gruez 6y ago
    Is it any different than any other forms of art (eg. movies, tv, books) that depict human cruelty?
    • afandian 6y ago
      I agree with you, and the GP. Hyper-realistic movies depicting human unpleasantness aren't much different to hyper-realistic games depicting human unpleasantness. Why do people enjoy spending their leisure time experiencing that? It's not a rhetorical question.
      • gruez 6y ago
        >Why do people enjoy spending their leisure time experiencing that? It's not a rhetorical question. I don't think anyone's watching the show specifically for the unpleasant scenes, it's just that the unpleasant scenes enhances story/drama aspect.
      • sosborn 6y ago
        I enjoy movies that make me uncomfortable because of the self-reflection they tend to induce. Those films don't make me want to treat people poorly, they make me want to be kinder.
  • borepop 6y ago
    >Why would I want to spend my leisure time experiencing that? How is that entertaining? As another commenter above noted, it's a form of wish fulfillment and imaginary transgression, which is particularly appealing to teenage boys, since virtually all forms of actual aggression are off limits. Sports are the only arena where boys are allowed to be physically aggressive in real. Other than that, we have an entire group of young people who once would have been learning to hunt and kill and defend their clan but who now have to sit around and do very little besides read, write, and stare at computers. Arguably it's a positive thing to have less violence, but it leads many young men to wonder why the hell their bodies are strong and powerful. In video games, they at least get to pretend that there is some utility to being able to be forceful.
• prionassembly 6y ago
  If you assume there are two types of people: prone to violence (not necessarily violent, given socialization and incentives) and not prone to violence (possibly due to physical skills or a more generally submissive personality): - Sociological stereotype goes that videogames are mainly popular among those not prone to violence. Therefore most results on the matter might only mean that videogames cannot make people not-prone-to-violence act violently. If they're physically unfit (and not deranged enough to use guns) this may be obvious a priori. - The data says little about whether videogames increase the likelihood that someone who is prone to violence will act violently.
• seizethecheese 6y ago
  FarmVille doesn’t turn people into farmers either. I wonder if we need a study for that.
• afandian 6y ago
  I'm one of those people who is entirely bemused by violent videogames and films (I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be bemused by my pastimes too). I'm not trying to argue to stop anyone doing it, but I would really like to understand it better. Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping blocks into place, building a city, chasing and eating ghosts, flying a plane, performing magic spells, or engaging in physical violence. And there's a never-ending push to make experiences more photorealistic, to make simulator even better. From that I can only conclude that people want to get as close to the experience of perfoming the prevented act as possible. Chopping someone up is heavily frowned upon in real life, but perfectly acceptable to emulate in someone's living room. Somehow the simulation escapes the taboo. And that escape seems to be absolute: In the range of violent acts you could commit, from a gentle nudge to grisly murder, simulation of the most extreme extent is permitted. But if that's the case, why is the realistic simulation of some societal taboos (e.g. physical violence to the point of murder) mainstream, but others (e.g. sexual violence in any of its forms) not? They are both very serious offences, but somehow one gets a free pass to let anyone pretend to do it, but the other not. Is it a reflection on the ultimate limits of those taboos in the society that produces most of these games? Or is my logic broken somewhere?
  • vlunkr 6y ago
    I would argue that in most games, the violence is not the goal, just the mechanics. You're either competing with other players, trying to fulfill a quest, surviving the zombie apocalypse, etc. Very few games are really "murder simulators" and when they do come along, even if they are meant to be satirical or something, they are usually controversial.
    • afandian 6y ago
      I'm not necessarily suggesting that the participant in the simulation is trying to do nothing more than commit acts of violence. But if the goal is predicated on committing violence, and can't be achieved without it, then I don't think it's logical to dismiss the violent aspect. To transpose the argument to reality, a serial killer may see the act of killing as a neutral act pursuant to a goal they consider important. There are plenty of serial killers with manifestos. Whatever they are trying to achidve, they aren't welcome in society.
• JTbane 6y ago
  Kind of sad there isn't much discussion on the positive effects of video games, which can boost reaction time and teach kids critical thinking skills.
  • lostlogin 6y ago
    The gamers from my school years have all ended up being pretty good at coding, hacking, and bringing together a functional solution to difficult technical problems. The effort and skill required to play a multiplayer game back then may have been part of this. ‘Who’s got a spare terminator?’
• tartoran 6y ago
  Yeah, I doubt that video games will take a perfectly balanced healthy person and turn them aggressive. The problem though I think is that people who are aggressive to begin with may in fact normalize violence and in a stressful thoughtless moment IRL they may act on that violence. Again, this is not for most gamer folk but the ones who are predisposed to violence in the first place. Also sedentarism in children may be a factor to increase of violence.
• slothtrop 6y ago
  Lots of talk about desensitization. Personally I can't watch any gruesome "beheading" videos or anything of that nature, and to the best of my knowledge it would sicken most others as well so I'm not sure the idea holds water. I think cartoon violence desensitizes you to cartoon violence, and real violence desensitizes you to real violence.
  • bonoboTP 6y ago
    Cartoon violence is so over the top and symbolic when you see actual violence. The stomach turning aspect of real violence/torture/murder/rape is its bland mundane banal nature. No dramatic music, no redemption, no happy end, no heroism. So raw. I've seen quite some real gore online, similar to many online people. I don't know how it affects my psychology. I like to think it has at least some positive effects, like not fainting and less of a shock if I need to act in such a situation. But maybe real world violence seen through my eyeballs not through a screen is a whole another thing again. Maybe hearing and seeing real abuse is not something you can "prepare for" through gore videos.
• calhoun 6y ago
  I heard it was also a thing that there are less murderers, because the type of people who are targeted by marketing and generally play video games is young men. Essentially, shifting the pool of potential murderers inside to play video games.
• technotarek 6y ago
  Just speculating: While there may not be a link with aggressive behavior, might there be greater ambivalence toward it?
• MrZongle2 6y ago
  I can't help but think that we'll need a few more ten-year studies before this notion goes away. By which I mean enough time will have passed that the primary proponents of the theory have died or no longer have the limelight.
• lb1lf 6y ago
  I sadly do not remember who came up with this quip (c.2000), but it went something like this - "If video games influenced behaviour, those who grew up in the eighties would run around in dark rooms, listening to monotone music while popping brightly coloured pills."
• andrewla 6y ago
  It's worse than I thought. They measure "aggressive behavior" based on a questionnaire. They look for a correlation between the "class" of gamer; literally "people who play a lot at younger ages, drop, and then increase", "people who play a moderate amount at younger ages, drop and then slightly increase", and "people who play only a little bit at a young age but increase" and report no correlation between those classes and the aggression assessment based on the questionnaire. I admire the fact that they didn't do more work to p-hack their way into a correlation; they went with one methodology and showed that it didn't produce a correlation, and reported that. But even though I agree with the article's conclusion, I don't think the data support it in any meaningful way.
  • ineedasername 6y ago
    I can't see the full text to evaluate the server, but if there is an established and proven diagnostic tool for measuring aggression and that's the tool they used, then the methodology may be sound.
    • andrewla 6y ago
      Look in the comment thread to links to scihub. Yes, they use an off-the-shelf diagnostic tool. No, that does not make the methodology sound. They use a word like "aggression" which has a qualitative meaning and attempt to assign a quantitative metric to it. To assign a meaning to it, I would have to go to other studies to find out how this links to my various qualitative notion of "aggressive": incidence of violent crime vs. cutting in line vs. correcting people's grammar. You may say "this is impossible, the bar you are setting means that social science papers can't even use the word 'aggressive' to describe quantitative results". And yes, that's true, they can't. They can say things like "convicted of a violent crime" which we can at least agree means something objective that vaguely correlates to aggressiveness (although this has limits). The media can report this as "aggression" and that's fine too, so long as we know what is actually being measured.
      • ineedasername 6y ago
        If they are using an existing & proven diagnostic tool to quantify aggression then you can't criticize them for quantifying a qualitative variable (which is perfectly acceptable when done right) unless you are appropriately addressing flaws within that diagnostic tool. You're correct, use of such a tool doesn't automatically validate their methodology, but it does shift a lot of the focus of any criticism in the direction of that tool and its implementation, which is not a discussion I've seen in the comment thread. Criticizing or affirming the results of the study are pre-mature without that.
• ausjke 6y ago
  one of the key questions is that who sponsored this study, e.g. if the gaming industry is sponsoring this kind of study it got to be biased and misleading to say the least.
• yters 6y ago
  Otoh there are studies carried out by Stanford, iirc, demonstrating the opposite. I guess the studies that support the conclusion I like are the correct studies.
• brandonmenc 6y ago
  Is anyone studying how violent video games affect the mentally ill? It seems like most of our mass shootings are perpetrated by people who are both mentally ill and obsessed with playing first person shooters.
• itsbits 6y ago
  Examples of violent behavior by playing PUBG https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/belagavi-mobile-games-addict-son-kills-father-who-objected-to-it/article29373762.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/belagavi-mo... https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-boy-fakes-kidnapping-to-extort-money-from-mother-then-buys-smartphone-to-play-games-1.73190410 https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/india-boy-fakes-kidnap... https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2020/jan/23/inspired-by-pubg-teenager-throws-rocks-at-cars-houses-police-ties-him-with-rope-2093428.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/states/karnataka/2020/jan/2... https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/gaming/three-pubg-mobile-players-kill-an-innocent-man-with-wooden-logs.html https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/gaming/three-p... https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/boy-addicted-to-pubg-steals-rs-3l-from-own-house/articleshow/74421199.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/rajkot/boy-addicted...
  • eivarv 6y ago
    These could also be described as examples of violent behavior by drinkers of water, for that matter. There is nothing pointing to a causative relationship here.
  • hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Well, the whole problem is that you need more information before you can claim that the activity they happened to be addicted to on their phone is what caused the violence rather than the addiction itself, or other possible factors like mental illness and unexpected variables. Here's an article of a 16yo killing his parents because his iPod was taken away: https://time.com/138601/teen-kills-parents-because-they-took-his-ipod/ https://time.com/138601/teen-kills-parents-because-they-took.... You'd be jumping the gun if you looked at his most played tracks and concluded that Bruce Springsteen or the iPod's uni-wheel interface caused violence, though I'm slightly more open-minded to those ideas.
  • 1MachineElf 6y ago
    You're getting a lot of replies to this comment saying these examples show correlation and not causation, which is a fair thing to say, but also dismissive. A similar question worth considering is whether or not violent people are drawn to violent videogames. In my somewhat-informed opinion, they are, and that's significant.
• techlaw 6y ago
  This is frustrating. Although I understand why this study is helpful, I believe it would have been much more helpful had we been asking a different question. Violence, per se, is not as relevant as the context for that violence. The more revelatory question is not whether 'violent video games do lead to agression' but instead whether they could. If, for example, the protagonist in a video game has an attitude or behavior that is treated as aspirational then it's more likely that players of that game (especially those with less life experience) will themselves ascribe to that attitude or behavior. And if that newfound attitude or behavior persists, then over time it is likely to lead to changes in action. The study that would be more helpful is not the one that evaluates the impact of violent content due to its mere presence but rather evaluates the impact based on the context in which that violence is presented.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • GreenWatermelon 6y ago
    Going by your example, it would be less about games and more about every single form of Storytelling, including films, TV shows, books, anime, manga, etc...
• mayormcmatt 6y ago
  The authors clearly never had a bad night playing Tarkov...
• honkycat 6y ago
  Public hangings, an event where you could go and watch someone be drug out into the town square and hung from the neck until they were dead, used to be an event people would gather to see. People used to fill bags with cats, dose the bag in oil, and then light the bag on fire for the joy of watching the cats die from the fire. During combat sports you are watching two fully grown people destroy their brains and their bodies for your enjoyment. People regularly died from these sports. Video games have no stakes. Even children understand this. Clicking on a pixelated simulation of a nondescript soldier who always comes back for the next round is Disney cartoons compared to what people used to get up to.
  • rantwasp 6y ago
    > People used to fill bags with cats, dose the bag in oil, and then light the bag on fire for the joy of watching the cats die from the fire. damn. that was unexpected
  • trianglem 6y ago
    I recently came across a description of how people reacted to blood sport in arenas. Apparently the moment of death/gore/violence would elicit a gasp in the audience followed almost immediately by raucous cheering. It’s something we just don’t do anymore maybe with the exception of UFC but that’s not even close.
  • highstep 6y ago
    additionally, in past, we were much more connected to slaughter of animals as a normalized activity.
• ohdannyboy 6y ago
  Doing a quick review of the literature I can find shows we don't have a completely clear picture yet. The link in young children is definitive and the link in adolescents is murky but it looks like one of many risk factors. I am inclined to entirely disregard the linked study as garbage since it gives a very definitive black-and-white answer that is in opposition to highly cited literature. I think the main reason it is at the top of HN is that we want this to be the simple black-and-white answer. As someone who grew up with violent video games I think this issue is taken way too personally by most of us. The idea that video games will necessarily make you violent is absurd and not being proposed by anyone (that is mostly a straw man used to dismiss the idea). The question is whether violent video games can push some kids over the edge -- kids who are already predisposed to violence. Imagine an abused kid with no farther figure who would probably be a violent teen anyways. Will playing violent videogames numb him to the idea of killing, give him neural pathways that make the repetitive action more likely and start him with some bad ideas? Could it be the difference between him getting in some fist fights and indiscriminately murdering schoolchildren? The answer looks like "yes." The case made in the book On Combat is very interesting. That book is considered one of the definitive secondary works on combat psychology and he spends significant time on this question. I strongly recommend the book.
• andrewflnr 6y ago
  Here's my hypothesis: in healthy individuals, video games do not lead to violence. But in an unhealthy person who is already looking for an outlet, shooter games provide a template to follow, that may allow unfocused anger to turn into an actual plan. Is there any good science on this idea? Guns and mental health problems had already been present in America for decades before mass shootings started happening. Video games are the only new ingredient I can see. I can't take seriously any full dismissal of their role until that timing is explained.
• TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  I’d really like to see a similar study comparing modern military combat video game playing with attitudes about war and overseas military occupation and invasion. The US military partners with games like Call of Duty and uses them as recruitment tools. I’d be surprised if they didn’t contribute to a sense of dehumanization of our proclaimed enemies.
• crawfordcomeaux 6y ago
  I wonder how they define "aggressive behavior." In learning about and practicing nonviolent communication, I've come to realize there's a lot of normalized behaviors out there in terms of interpersonal interactions, but without physical violence or even the threat of it. Someone who's choosing to ostracize another person within a social group is a bit more covert and difficult to detect. Is this considered "aggressive behavior"? This is one example of a type of behavior that I'd consider to be aggressive and likely not fitting the definition of the study. There are many others out there. And I'm betting some of them are impacted by the games. Why? Because I'm recovering from gaming/media addiction and I would adopt behaviors and lines from things I played/watched to use in real life. I'm waiting for the study that actually detects me and people like me. I suspect it'll take about as long as the tobacco industry took to conduct and release studies showing tobacco can cause cancer.
• d33lio 6y ago
  If only we could conduct a similar study to understand why criminals (yes - individuals with intent to commit violent acts or felonies) overwhelmingly prefer stolen serialized firearms to 80% "ghost guns"? A curious compromise could be agreeing to defund and dissolve both the ATF and ICE. Constitutionally, both are "unnecessary" and infringe on the rights of citizens. For The Children TM
• simias 6y ago
  I doubt there's any kind of direct link between video games and people becoming violent, but I do think it reflects poorly on our societies that we seem to be fine with young kids shoot each other in the face with realistic weapons in CS:GO and Call of Duty but if you show one women's nipple it's unacceptable. While it probably doesn't directly incite violence in well balanced individuals, it does in my opinion trivialize war and glorify armed combat. I'm reminded of that French soldier who "cosplayed" Ghost from Call of Duty while on duty in Mali. I guess it's not really new, literature always told stories of war and it's an extension of that, but a book and a game are not the same thing. I wish that was what the discussion was about, instead of this dumb tabloid-tier "Doom creates serial killers" narrative.
  • noobermin 6y ago
    I believe the US military uses COD and games like that in their recruitment. I definitely think that part is real. I personally always liked quake and doom, disliked Counter Strike and Call of Duty, so this might be my bias, but it seems easier to use the latter to soften people's perspective on war and conquest while the former are just so cartoonish levels of violence that you can easily distinguish it from reality. That might just be my perspective.
  • adamnew123456 6y ago
    > but I do think it reflects poorly on our societies that we seem to be fine with young kids shoot each other in the face with realistic weapons in CS:GO and Call of Duty but if you show one women's nipple it's unacceptable. I havent seen this personally, but isn't this more of an American tendency than a general western thing? On the American side media violence is penalized less (in terms of adult ratings) than nudity/sex while across the ocean you see the opposite trend. Can anyone with more exposure to European (or Aussie/Kiwi) media confirm/deny this? I'm curious to hear the reason why if true.
    • simias 6y ago
      It's definitely worse in American media but I think this bias exists even in Europe, just to a slightly lesser extent. Also, even though we're not quite as prude this side of the Atlantic ocean, we still have to abide by American cultural rules when we use Facebook, Twitter and similar services that have strict no-nudity rules. Similarly, any media produced over here that ambitions to enter the American market will also have to follow these guidelines. American culture is very pervasive.
• sonthonax 6y ago
  Does anyone think that psychological research into videogames and violence is an epistemological dead end? In the same way that saying books cause violence is also practically meaningless. Societal violence isn't as simple as neurological desensitization to stimuli. To take Call of Duty for example, the violence is so incredibly unrealistic, the only thing I could imagine it desensitise someone to is the cocophenious stimuli of Call of Duty itself; the actual reality of soldiering is too corporeally miserable to form any meaningful connexion between the comfortable experience of playing a video game. However, Call of Duty creates a very reactionary world where you get to be part of the machinations of a barely legal extra-judicial dark operations. While I do not think it is obliged to do so, it never really comments on the morality of what you are doing, as you are always fighting evil - and this evil happens to be either Russian, Brown, or Marxist. It's not scientific to draw the connexion between videogames (as literature) and violence, but you'd have to be deliberately obtuse to deny that ideas (even within videogames) effect change. No one today talks about opera as a medium being a catalyst for violence, but opera was a surprisingly common source of riots; sometimes even igniting revolutions. Following the July Revolution in France, the Belgians enthused by 'La muette de Portici' and its nationalist idealism, rioted and occupied the government buildings, and splitting from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Anyone who claimed it was the soprano's vibrato rather than the librettist's lyrics would be dismissed as mad today. In a way it's similar to claiming that a red pulsating vignette in COD causes bloodthirsty violence. However, it's completely valid to critique games as literature that encourages dehumanisation that leads to violence.
• duce332 6y ago
  "Participant families were recruited through “a large north-western city” beginning in 2007 (Wave 1) via telephone directories and required to complete questionnaires. 65% were Caucasian, 12% black and 19% multi-ethnic, 4% other. Families of lower socioeconomic status were underrepresented as part of the initial sample group and therefore needed recruitment via referrals and fliers to add and diversify the sample group." The sample size of the study in the article is way too small in my opinion to apply to the whole US population, I wish they didn't put it behind a paywall because they still might have some interesting insights on the local/regional scale :(. They mention the only city used in the study is "a large north-western city". Doing some back of the envelope math I just used Seattle as an example. - Seattle has ~800k people today and ~610k people 10 years ago. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-population https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-popul... - Today there are ~2.5 billion gamers in the world. ~27% of those gamers are under 18 (all genders) so ~650 million kids play video games. Source(Not sure how accurate but assuming on the same order of magnitude): https://techjury.net/blog/video-game-demographics/ https://techjury.net/blog/video-game-demographics/ At best if their sample size was the entire city of Seattle that would be ~1% of kid gamers. Their real sample size is probably at least an order of magnitude less than the size of the city so < ~0.1%. I am interested in the study though just not $60 interested :(.
• stakkur 6y ago
  It's interesting that we find links between environment, habits, and behavior in every other facet of life, but--somehow, repeated simulations of visceral violence (violent video games) are an exception. This isn't a simple thing to measure. Players of violent video games have diverse environments, social supports, and other factors. These mitigate the effects of playing these kinds of games; in other words, while the games may encourage violent behavior, person A with a stable environment and strong social supports may not be effected in the same way (or enough to measure). Person B with a different environment and fewer supports may exhibit violent behavior. Some studies may claim to account for these, but that should be met with skepticism and rigorous discussion.
  • golemiprague 6y ago
    If your claim is that it is not measurable, like many other social "science" fad research then you can't claim that it goes either way. But it is pretty clear that it is even better for people with background social issues, preventing them from getting out to the street and actually being involved in violence.
• praestigiare 6y ago
  I would be more interested to see a study on whether there is a correlation between violent video games and police violence.
• deleted 6y ago
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• fevangelou 6y ago
  Is this like the studies paid by fast food chains on whether eating fast food is healthy or not? :D
• deleted 6y ago
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• jeffrallen 6y ago
  Fine. But my kids are still not allowed to play them. My house, my rules.
• adamredwoods 6y ago
  I think any study has validity, but when religion is involved, my suspicions begin: Dr. Sarah M. Coyne, School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. Specifically: https://familylife.byu.edu/ https://familylife.byu.edu/ "Provide instruction that fosters commitment to the principles in The Family: A Proclamation to the World." ...and that proclamation is.... "THE FAMILY A PROCLAMATION TO THE WORLD The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."
  • andrewnc 6y ago
    I think if you actually knew Dr Coyne you would see your suspicions are unfounded. She is an excellent scientist and often provides research counter to what is comfortable at BYU.
    • adamredwoods 6y ago
      I don't know her personally, so I went to the guiding principles of who is funding her research.
• HeavyStorm 6y ago
  I doubt it very much. Certainly, games aren't to blame for real killings, terrorism, shootings, etc., but they ARE part of the equation whether we want it or not. Our society still has a cultural foundation on violence. As the time passes it _seems_ to be diminishing - as we can see by the rejection of violence against woman or other minorities becoming ever more common - but our heroes tend to be aggressive, our tales and stories contains death, killings, etc. Again, less than before, but far from zero. Studies so far are controversial (to say the least) and it's hard to take sociological statistics at face value, therefore is hard to conclude anything. But it's impossible to believe that spending several hours a week pretending to do violence against ever more realistic cyber impressions of life wouldn't have ANY effect on our selves.
• Miner49er 6y ago
  A lot of the comments here are replacing "aggression" in the title with violence. Yeah, maybe people aren't more likely to be aggressive on an individual level from violent video games. A much better (but harder to answer question) is do violent video games cause society overall to be more violent? Is someone who played COD more likely to support military action? Or vote for a violent politician? Or join the military? These all contribute to violence in the world as a whole.
  • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    Careful. Did they play CoD because they support military action or the other way around?
• lcfcjs 6y ago
  This is just a red herring pushed by the Gun nuts in the United States.
• peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  They already had this debate in the 1980's -- that video games were "taking over teenager's minds", that they were "promoting violence", etc., etc. What a lunk of crap! I mean, back then we didn't have 16 Million colors or high-resolution monitors with small fine pixels -- all the games used color palettes of 16 or 8 colors, and they were blocky as hell... like my tank (represented as a block) shot a smaller block (the bullet, use your imagination, work with me here! <g>) into your tank (represented by yet another block of a different color!) and the "explosion" was that the other tank would turn a series of (lame) colors -- and disappear! So my question is, WHERE IN THE HELL IS THE ACTUAL GRAPHICAL DEPICTION OF VIOLENCE? -- in these early video games? This is like saying that "Pong" -- made people violent! It didn't! (Well, unless they were violent to begin with and lost a game of pong, and were prone to violence when they lost various games! But those people are the exception, not the rule! <g>) You see, that video games cause violence was a lie back then, and it's still a lie today! <g>
• szundi 6y ago
  László Mérő, Math-Psychology prof here told me like 20 years ago that it is simple: if you see others committing violent acts, it increases the violence in you. Even if it is an abstract drawing on screen. If you control it and you do it basically, then it does not. Just remember: were you agitated more after a Tom&Jerry session or after Call of Duty. With my brother we always were crying 3 minutes after one VHS of Tom&Jerry ended :) Never after killing 1000 nacis on screen or similar.
• threwawaysoff 6y ago
  Anecdotally, I'm aggressive because I'm French and Irish. ;) Doom and Quake didn't change that. Never was in a fight in school (I was too big and quick for anyone to chance it). Aggressive behavior I believe comes from parental issues, antisocial/criminal personality, lack of self-control, lack of chill, insecurities, and/or emotional regulation issues.
• miramardesign 6y ago
  fatherlessness is the most common factor. yet noone wants to touch that.
• RamiMorrar 6y ago
  Time to regurgitate the last same statistics people have been saying for the last 20+ years
• coding123 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting#Video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_s... I mean it's hard to say there's "no link" given that the above link is a link.
  • xavierlint 6y ago
    > The final report by the State Attorney did not make a link between video games and the motive for the shooting. From that same section of the article.
• dorkwood 6y ago
  In my experience, video games didn't desensitize me to violence -- the world just hadn't sensitized me yet. I spent my youth playing first person shooters. Now, with a little bit more life experience under my belt, participating in a war simulator feels a bit tasteless.
• Binichgross0 6y ago
  I killed a man and I played video games
• deleted 6y ago
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• einpoklum 6y ago
  Can someone explain this "person-centered approach"? The slickness of the name makes me a bit suspicious: "I didn't use regular statistics, I did it the person-centered way"...
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  I have no doubt that people with violent tendencies are attracted to violent games, I believe that's probably the only correlation. I think regular people can separate fantasy from video games so these games are fine for them. It's a like enjoys like problem not X causes Y. I always tried to explain this to people but parents rarely seem to get it when they complain to me about their kids playing COD and headshotting people.
• analog31 6y ago
  Ironically, the entire business model of silicon valley is founded on the belief that digital media can be designed to influence behavior. So the lack of such design in video games, while possible, should be seen as an anomaly.
• lmilcin 6y ago
  When I was a kid our activities included regularly running around shooting from imaginary guns, forming "bands" and watching cartoons where characters would constantly be doing/trying to do harm to each other. I think this isn't an issue because a healthy person can not confuse fantasy and reality. I can see how these kinds of activities can give ideas, but you would have to be already dysfunctional in the first place.
• Sideloader 6y ago
  Isn’t this beating a dead horse? The video game/violence link has been debunked many times. OTOH, a comprehensive study determining whether violent games and movies contribute to people becoming desensitized to actual violence would be interesting. I recall an interview with US soldiers in Iraq saying that shooting people was “just like playing a FPS game.” It can’t be denied that our society is obsessed with violence. Americans have been like this for a while but recently produced movies and TV shows in Europe and the UK feature much more graphic violence than they did two decades ago. Why? Is it a reflection of a more ruthlessly competitive society or are there other reasons?
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    Well yes, but the study was started over ten years ago :)
• raindropm 6y ago
  Last time I play Assassin's Creed:Origin, I have to stop halfway because I'm tired of all those senseless killing. I feel bad and sad for those virtual Roman soldier I've killed, how can that even happened? (P.S. I'm not the only one) I think part of it is because videogames graphics and animation these day is so realistic(and it will keep getting more real) All the blood and gore and violence and how you kill someone are realistically depicted. Or maybe its objective clashes with my identity and values(I'm not okay running around and killing people in real life, of course) Note that I can "kill" hundreds of infantry in Dynasty Warrior game (which is much less realistic) and doesn't feel a single thing. I believe that what you consume, whatever it is, effect you one way or another, despite "researcher" tell you otherwise.
  • Bjartr 6y ago
    Of course, but there's no reason to disparage those that aim to study these phenomena. This study didn't conclude that the media you consume had no effect. It merely reported observed effects and concluded that playing a lot of violent video games as a child is a poor predictor of aggression later in life. That's it.
    • raindropm 6y ago
      Well, that’s true. I think most of us realize that the scope of most research is super specific (with tightly control variables) and just can’t apply broadly. Just don’t let the media see this, because that’s when it will blown out of proportion :P
  • Jeff_Brown 6y ago
    It's conceivable that this study's results apply only to video games with sufficiently unrealistic depictions of violence. The newest Assassin's Creed depicts human violence more realistically than anything I've ever seen before. It's still not quite there, but once we get there, maybe the psychological effects will be different.
    • raindropm 6y ago
• AntiImperialis2 6y ago
  Whenever someone tells you this, ask them if they think religious texts make people violent.
• AntiImperialis3 6y ago
  Studies backed by the tobacco industry showed that there were no adverse effects and doctors recommended them for a long time. How is this different? As long as there is a lot of money in video games, there will be enough scientists whose research budget will be covered by interest groups with representatives from the video game companies... and the research will largely continue to show that video games are good for people.
• aksss 6y ago
  Sometimes these studies ask the wrong questions. I don’t want to censor video games but I do wonder what the effect of murder simulation is on people, along with regularly witnessing the frequent sexual assaults that get dramatized in our media (movies, TV). Does it lead to aggressive behavior? Maybe not, but I’d be surprised if these influences are a net positive for the well-being of individuals or communities. We’ve lost much of any ability to have community standards with any toolset other than the force of the law, but all this energy people put into trying to ban words or speakers, topple statues or cancel companies might be better focused into social disapproval of the portrayals of murder, rape and the rest of the violence we inundate ourselves and our kids with on a daily basis.
  • sacomo 6y ago
    I've been playing violent video games my entire life. Depictions of rape and murder still make me cringe. I can't even sit through 20 seconds of slaughterhouse footage. But I love watching statues of dictators or pro-slavery losers topple.
  • 392c91e8165b 6y ago
    >all this energy . . . might be better focused into social disapproval of the portrayals of murder, rape and the rest of the violence we inundate ourselves and our kids with on a daily basis. I tend to agree, and the "rekt/gore" threads on 4chan strike me as particularly low-hanging fruit.
    • aksss 6y ago
      At least 4chan is in a narrow corner of the internet - most people don’t get exposed to it, ‘specially not like prime time TV and mainstream movies, which contain just gratuitous levels of physical/sexual violence and are readily and regularly accessed by the majority of society. 4chan is comparatively inconsequential I think.
      • hollerith 6y ago
        Have you seen "rekt" threads in /b/ or /gif/?
• metaxy2 6y ago
  I'm not surprised if there's no link between violent games and violence in real life. But as a subtler concern, I do wonder if (some) violent games help to cultivate a sense of general nihilism and lack of value. I work with teens and maybe 15% of them have this sense of "blankness" in the spot where a sense of value/meaning/morality should be. (Not even in the classic 90's sense of "teen apathy" -- more like they've never even been notified that anything can mean anything.) I do wonder if spending 40% of your waking hours playing simulators where you dice people up for no good reason, might contribute a little to that attitude. Especially the kids that already aren't being socialized particularly well (abusive parents that barely talk to them, etc.) Hell, I'd even be alright if it were games that have loads of violence but with a sense of purpose (e.g., the Half-Life series, or many Bethesda games). The truly aimless violence is what kinda worries me.
  • DangitBobby 6y ago
    Consider the rest of their environment. I think the nihilism among young people has more to do with coming to terms with the mortality of your country and planet than anything else. Violence is not a new thing, but haven't solid evidence that it will only get harder for you and future generations is pretty new.
  • whydoineedthis 6y ago
    I would argue if they are spending 40% of thier time on games, than it's the lack of other stimulation required for development that's the problem. If they were playing Atari Pong for that long, I would suspect he same outcome you observe. The violence in the video game had little to no impact on this scenerio.
  • Can_Not 6y ago
    More likely, teenagers play video games, if not just for fun, to escape from the "general nihilism and lack of value" that our society exudes on them, despite society desperately trying to blame all it's flaws on video games.
• b0rsuk 6y ago
  It's interesting that many games show violence but not many show suffering and pain. People just drop dead when shot. Quake 2 had very painful death animations for the weakest enemies. Games that want a PG16 rating need to remove blood splashes. In most game, your shots don't hurt bystanders. There are no ricochets and usually no civilians. No one's running away, putting out fires, crying over dead bodies.