More Violent Video Game Research Says Real World Violence Link Is Crap
from the murder-death-kill dept
If you've been reading Techdirt for any decent length of time, you already know that the science behind whether violent video games cause real life violence is hardly settled. With that said, it's also true that those making the claim are the ones that have to prove their case. What that means is that the burden of proof on those that claim there is a link between real violence and gaming violence is much higher than on those of us that claim no link exists. So, when the most recent work and its researchers come out to again suggest that there is simply no link between violence and gaming, it's worth highlighting, particularly considering the antagonistic approach new, younger researchers are taking against the old guard and their reaching methodologies.Stetson University psychologist Christopher Ferguson is one of the chief antagonists. In their drolly titled 2013 commentary, "Does Doing Media Violence Research Make One Aggressive?," Ferguson and his colleague, German researcher Malte Elson, invite readers to contemplate a thought experiment as a way to think about the plausibility of the "monkey see/monkey do" theory. "Take 200 children and randomize 100 to watch their parents viciously attack one another for an hour a day, the other 100 to watch a violent television program an hour a day," they suggest, "then assess their mental health after one month is over." Surely they are right when they assert that "to suggest the mental health outcomes for these children would be even remotely identical is absurd." As the thought experiment makes clear, ordinary folks do recognize that people, including children, can distinguish between real and fictional violence and will react accordingly.The thought experiment reduces the violent media concept to an absurd level, surely, but that only serves in this case to highlight what the sandbagged-claims of some researchers are attempting to hide: people are smarter than they're given credit for. The moment you acknowledge that even the youngest children can make distinctions between real life violence and fictional violence, the game is almost entirely lost from the get go. All that's left to do is to find that fictional violence doesn't also magically make children, or adults, like being violent in real life, and the game is a rout and we can all go home. If only there was some kind of published metric that would allow us to show that as violent media has become more prevalent, people have actually become less violent in real life.
In October 2014 the Villanova psychologist Patrick Markey and colleagues published a study comparing trends in onscreen violence to America's murder and aggravated assault rates between 1960 and 2012. They report that movie violence has dramatically increased in the past 50 years, and that depictions of gun violence in PG-13 movies have tripled in the last 27 years. Controlling for possible confounders such as age shifts, poverty, education, incarceration rates, and economic inequality, they report, "Contrary to the notion that trends in violent films are linked to violent behavior, no evidence was found to suggest this medium was a major (or minor) contributing cause of violence in the United States." In November 2014, the FBI reported that the violent crime rate has fallen by nearly 50 percent over the past 20 years.Who wants to suggest that movies, games, and television were more violent fifty years ago? Yeah, I didn't think so. This is the point we've been making for years. Setting aside the single, percussion-like occasions when some horrific violent act occurs, like, say, Sandy Hook, where is all this violence? Movies and television have been getting progressively more violent as time has marched on, but violent crime keeps dropping. And, don't think I'm forgetting that video games are a more recent thing, compared with movies and television.
In the December 2014 Computers in Human Behavior, a team of researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia used the standard 15-minutes-of-play format widely adopted by video aggression researchers to assess whether playing ultra-violent, violent, and nonviolent video games had any post-play effect on two measures of pro-social behavior. In one, players are paid $5, asked to fill out a brief questionnaire about a local children's charity, and told they can donate some money on their way out. In the second, players are told that they are choosing the level of difficulty of a puzzle that another subject has to finish in a limited time in order to earn money. The hypothesis was that the more violent the game, the harder the puzzle and the lower the charitable donations would be. Instead, the researchers reported that there was no difference among the three groups with regard to pro-social behavior, although the players of the ultra-violent games did donate more. "There is now growing reason to suspect that playing violent video games does not impact prosocial behavior in a normal population," concluded the researchers.Again, when the burden of proof is higher on the side making the claim that a link between violence and video games exists and the side claiming no link exists continues to bury them with good, solid data, it's probably time to give this up and move on to the next moral panic.
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Filed Under: link, studies, video games, violence
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'Give up our scapegoat, are you mad?'
If society accepts that violent games/movies/comics/etc don't make violent children, then they might have to look to other potential causes, namely Parents and Society . Since parents are never at fault when kids do something, or grow up certain ways, and society is likely completely blameless, clearly the reason must be the games, movies, books, comics, or anything but the parents and the society that a child grows up in.
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Re: 'Give up our scapegoat, are you mad?'
Playing violent video games is a good way to blow off steam. Its a bit like playing squash or going for a run (but not as healthy ;-)).
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Re: Re: 'Give up our scapegoat, are you mad?'
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Re: Re: Re: 'Give up our scapegoat, are you mad?'
I suspect that the "no effect" conclusion is what studies will ultimately demonstrate, since that is what similar studies in other media have done.
There is a strong correlation, though: people who are already of a violent bent are more attracted to violent media (video games, movies, etc.) than people who are less violent. But those people are were not made violent because of the media exposure. They already were violent.
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Until we get a vaccination...
Today, it's video games. Who knows what it will be tomorrow.
I feel somewhat qualified to comment as I am in the early years of buzzardhood and I am a father of video-game-playing children. Even the violent FPS's push the players mentally to solve problems, manage resources, and work on quick reflexes. Then, I have to endure my peers echoing the garbage about video games making kids violent.
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Re: Until we get a vaccination...
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The violence is not realistic
That game was developed as a training aid for first responders to major accidents or terrorist events. The scenes were really disturbing (which in a way proves that the scenes in regular games are not).
Of course you really do want the paramedic who treats you after a car accident to save you life - not leave you to go off and throw up in a bush.
I don't think anyone who was trained on that game became violent as a consequence.
This just shows that even if the violence is realistic and even if you become inured to it - it doesn't necessarily make you violent yourself.
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Re: The violence is not realistic
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I like RTS & Tactical Sqaud Combat
Despite my "virtual" attempts mind you, I still cannot even come close to the war-like eagerness of the Military Industrial complex and the people leading those area's are not purported to play any video games. I hear, they like the vivid and realistic experience of live fire.
I suspect I am at a disadvantage somehow.
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quite the opposite
I BET MY THOUGHTS ON THIS RESONATE FAR MORE AND NEED TO GET SAID MORE OFTEN
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Strong correlation
After reading the Google results I'm thinking football should be banned long before video games are.
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The brain is an input output device the molding of which is cumulative and the result of quadrillions of interlinking variables interacting with each other. This process is impossible to study at our current levels of understanding.
Whether violent games cause violence is not the issue here, relying on these ridiculous junk science studies to try to get an answer one way or the other is. Do yourself a favor and don't take this nonsense seriously.
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That's crap. Psychology and sociology are legitimate scientific fields. By this logic, no science is legitimate. I can guarantee in 50 years every single field of science will learn something new or disprove a previously understood theory, from physics to geology to astronomy to chemistry. All of those sciences are dealing with "quadrillions of interlinking variables interacting with each other" (actually, compared to astronomy and physics the human brain is easy to account for variables...).
This is part of the scientific process. A hypothesis was raised; "violent media causes an increased level of violent behavior in those who engage with it." Now there are scientists attempting to validate the hypothesis with experimental data. And just like many other fields, you can't exactly use a school science project to determine one way or another; it's not like you can simulate a star's fusion or observe evolution in progress; we have to make conclusions based on incomplete data and what we can observe.
I hate it when people hide behind the mock-intellectual fallacy of "well, science doesn't understand all the variables, so don't believe what you read!" While you should always be skeptical and verify sources, just because something is complex does not make it false or useless to study.
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I find it interesting you used the example of Sandy Hook. Media outlets initially linked Adam Lanza (the shooter) with violent video games. Police investigation, however, revealed that Lanza had similar amounts of nonviolent video games, and according to some statements, preferred to play games like Mario and Dance Dance Revolution. The police concluded there was no connection between video games and Lanza's motives.
Other shootings have shown similar things. There have been decent links found between violence and mental health issues, abuse, and extremism (racial hatred, religion, etc.).
But violent media? Not really. Whatever, people used to think that chess caused violence. Actually, that turned out to be somewhat true, except it was the people that played chess who received the violence, not who were violent themselves. Yay bullies.
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Only in one direction though. Mental health problems are not a predictor of violence.
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Absolutely, good point. To my knowledge this applies to all factors, however; just because someone was abused, or is from a low income family, or has mental health issues, etc. does not mean they'll become violent, even though individuals who are violent tend to have one or more of these factors. There are things that increase risk of violence but nothing that can accurately predict violent behavior.
Also, my use of "mental health issues" was probably too vague, as there's a big difference between someone with depression versus someone with antisocial personality disorder. I probably should have said "certain mental health issues."
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it's true?
That's an assumption rather than an inarguable fact. All arguing parties would have to agree to that in order to use it as a premise to build an argument upon.
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Re: it's true?
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof
It's not an assumption. Burden of proof, without evidence, is on those asserting a new claim. Once evidence is presented that a claim is true, the burden of proof shifts to those arguing against the claim. If evidence indicates more strongly that the claim is false, the burden of proof shifts back, etc.
There have never been any studies that have shown a connection between violent media and actual violence. There have been a couple that have shown a slight increase in aggression by those who play violent video games immediately after playing (no long term effects were observed). Later studies demonstrated that this increase only applied to competitive and aggressive games; cooperative violent video games actually decreased aggression.
Read the sources carefully, and keep in mind that an increase in aggression does not necessarily lead to violence. Also keep in mind that there is a strong correlation between competition and increased aggression. Then compare the studied games and determine whether or not competition, either against other players or virtual opponents, existed in those games.
In general, the rate of violent crime has decreased over the last 50 years. Also, the rate of violent video games, and the graphic depiction of violence, has skyrocketed. Between the studies and general facts, there is no solid evidence that video games cause violence, and never really has been.
Therefore the burden of proof is with those who are trying to claim that violent video games cause violence as they are trying to assert a claim that has been refuted by the evidence we have available. Opponents can argue with this "assumption" until they're blue in the face but disagreeing where the burden of proof lies is irrelevant to the facts.
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If you haven't heard already, the Anti-Defamation League is pushing an agenda for Common Core claiming video games are sexist and instructs students to write letters to video game companies stating this.
http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/is-gaming-a-boys-club.pdf
What the hell is going on here?
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I suppose you've never noticed all the conspiracy theories floating around the internet, or the billions of believers of religion the permeate the earth have failed to catch your notice. Perhaps you even watched Nightmare on Elm Street as a young child and weren't fazed by it at all: Freddie Kruger had no impact on your ability to sleep soundly at night.
If all the above is true your blinders make you lucky, as i would love to live in a world with no conspiracy, no religion, and no fright from fictional characters. But i don't, and Freddy Kruger sure scared the hell out of me (not to mention Kain the priest from Poltergeist 2), and i couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy while cowering under my covers. I also believed some of the nonsense i heard at church, and often lent an ear to conspiracy theories.
The point is that humans, especially children, are abjectly TERRIBLE at telling fiction from reality. The proof is all around you, from children cowering in the dark, to lunatics who think Sandy Hook was a government pschyop, to the billions of people who kneel and kill in the name of their preferred imaginary father. For you to even suggest otherwise shows me how blinded by bias you are on this issue. What a joke.
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I suppose you've never noticed all the conspiracy theories floating around the internet, or the billions of believers of religion that permeate the earth have failed to catch your notice. Perhaps you even watched Nightmare on Elm Street as a young child and weren't fazed by it at all: Freddie Kruger had no impact on your ability to sleep soundly at night.
If all the above is true your blinders make you lucky, as i would love to live in a world with no conspiracy, no religion, and no fright from fictional characters. But i don't, and Freddy Kruger sure scared the hell out of me (not to mention Kain the priest from Poltergeist 2), and i couldn't tell the difference between reality and fantasy while cowering under my covers. I also believed some of the nonsense i heard at church, and often lent an ear to conspiracy theories.
The point is that humans, especially children, are abjectly TERRIBLE at telling fiction from reality. The proof is all around you, from children cowering in the dark, to lunatics who think Sandy Hook was a government pschyop, to the billions of people who kneel and kill in the name of their preferred imaginary father. For you to even suggest otherwise shows me how blinded by bias you are on this issue. What a joke.
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This is obvious; even as an adult, I can go to a movie and feel sad when my favorite character dies or scared when the monster stalks the main character. I know it's not real, and more importantly, the effect it has on me is significantly different than if the events onscreen were happening to me in real life.
Likewise, people can be convinced of things than are not true, or at the very least not supported by evidence. For example, you believe there are "billions of people who kneel and kill in the name of their preferred imaginary father" which is a statement equally insane to the "lunatics who think Sandy Hook was a government psychyop" (whatever that means).
If you actually studied anything about religion you'd realize that human activity is largely independent of religious influence; most "religious" conflicts, with even a small amount of historical analysis, are mainly conflicts between political groups, economy, and ideology. War is, and has always been, a political activity, and it wasn't until the last hundred years or so that religion and politics weren't equivalent (and really, are only somewhat separated in the U.S.; the majority of countries today still have a strong religious connection to politics and the U.S. is no exception).
The point is that although fiction can affect us it doesn't drive our behavior. I may feel angry at Prince Joffrey in Game of Thrones, but I haven't gone out and attacked the actor who plays him. This is true of most human emotions; I get mad at my boss or the guy that cuts me off in traffic, but that emotion doesn't suddenly make me kill my boss (like in Horrible Bosses) or run a guy off the road. And in this case, these things are actually happening in real life.
The point is that children can tell when something is real and when something isn't, and while they may be scared of something that isn't real, they aren't going to be affected the same was as if it IS real. Video games aren't real, and we can all tell. Unsurprisingly, people who play video games aren't going out in droves to act the way they do in games. Around 58% of all Americans play video games. About 0.4% of the population commit violent crimes, and (probably by coincidence) as the number of video game players has increased, the overall violent crime rate has decreased. This probably doesn't mean that video games decrease violence (they're probably unrelated entirely), but it certainly makes it a hard sell that there's a positive correlation.
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Unless children are exposed to content that contradicts your claims at an extremely early age. That is why certain countries have generals going by the name of "General Butt Naked"...I shit you not!
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Congratulations, you completely validated my point. Joshua Blahyi was forced to commit actual murder (not virtual murder) at age 11 and was exposed to some of the most brutal and insane aspects of the human condition. You cannot rationally compare exposure to being forced to murder a child and eat her heart and exposure to violent media. That's like saying an ear flick is the same act of violence as rape. The effect on an individual are not even in the same realm.
I'm really not sure what your point is, unless you didn't bother to actually look up who "General Butt Naked" was and thought the name was funny. An 11-year-old absolutely can tell the difference between reality and fiction (and is not an "extremely early age" by any stretch in that context) and would be deeply scarred by the act of cold-blooded, premeditated murder and cannibalism. You don't need a degree in psychology to figure that the human mind would use any method possible, including hallucination and extreme dogmatic thought, to protect itself from such a horror.
Of all the examples to use, you chose one of the greatest examples of real violence's effect on the human mind. I can't tell if you did it on purpose to be ironic or, well, I don't even know.
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We all have an instinctive fear of the dark. That isn't the same as not knowing the difference between violence on TV and violence in real life.
It's a sad state of affairs when children can tell the difference between fiction and reality better than adults can.
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His actions had absolutely nothing to do with violent media. He was violent because he was trained from childhood to be a warrior and participated in ritual killings and cannibalism from the age of 11. His village probably didn't even have electricity, let alone access to video games.
I don't even know how to describe how dumb your comment is in a polite way. So I didn't try. You're welcome.
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