please bare in mind thsi was written for the purposes of a psychology lesson
To what extent does violent games affect levels of violence exhibited by young adult males?
Nick Taylor ? Bayonet_Anderson
It is estimated over 80 percent of video games on the market contain some form of violence. In a world of escalating knife and gun crime in teenagers, where violence in video games is so common, is there some correlation between them?
Grand Theft Auto is a hugely popular video game created by Rockstar that features extreme violence and crime, and the player is rewarded for anarchic behavior. However, this game does not stand alone within Rockstar. There have been a series of Grand Theft Auto games, all of which have sold millions of copies. Yet perhaps the most violent game of all is Manhunt. The player controls an individual who is being told to ?execute? gang members, civilians and police officers in the most violent way possible, for the enjoyment of someone else. The player is presented with an array of weapons with everything from crowbars and guns to simplistic weapons such as screwdrivers and plastic bags.
The game has three 'levels' of executions, and these get bloodier as the levels of execution progress. Level 1 execution are the least bloody of the three, Level 2 executions are considerably more gory, and level 3 kills are over-the-top fatalities. The game encourages players to execute enemies as brutally as possible, and awards players who do so with higher scores at the end of the level. This is what is known as ?symbolic modelling? as players are witnessing violent behaviour being rewarded so are more likely to imitate and learn their own behaviour from the symbolic model character. Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) conducted an experiment into this.
The aim of the study was to see whether children would imitate violent behaviour after seeing role models conduct such behaviour. Researches took a sample of 72 nursery children and divided them into 3 groups. The 3 groups each watched a film under different conditions of an adult model displaying violent behaviour to a Bobo doll. The first condition showed the violent adult being rewarded, the second showed them being punished and the third was neither punished nor rewarded. Children were then placed in a room with the same doll and their behaviour was observed. The condition 1 group behaved most aggressively and the condition 2 group acted least aggressively. This implies that children observing a model being rewarded for behaviour are more likely to imitate the behaviour and those that witness a model being punished for behaviour are less likely to imitate the behaviour.
However, the experiment was not without limitations. There was the ethical issue of the children being encouraged to show aggressive behaviour, with no debriefing the children left the experiment different to how they had entered it. Some children said they experienced demand characteristics, acting violently because they were expected to. The experiment had low ecological validity as it was conducted in a lab, making it inapplicable to real world situations. Finally, the experiment has been called over simplistic as Flanagan proposed that testosterone levels have been cited as a cause for aggression also, and this could not be controlled in Bandura?s experiment. Despite this, the study has high reliability as it was conducted in a lab the Independent Variable and Dependent Variable could easily be controlled, and it is easily replicable.
Bandura?s experiment is also supported by other empirical evidence, Bandura (1933) conducted a similar experiment but showed children symbolic models (cartoons) showing violent behaviour and the results were the same. Patterson (1963) also concluded from his experiment that role models are important in the development of anti social behaviour.
So, the empirical evidence of Bandura?s experiments and Patterson?s experiment suggests that Manhunt and other violent games would affect the behaviour of those playing as the game is making the main character a symbolic model and rewarding them for violence. However, games in the UK are heavily regulated by the BBFC. These games are classified as 18 and are unavailable to minors. There have been many court cases in which Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt have arisen as possible causes for the murder but as of yet, no direct link has been found. As of September 2007, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the best-selling video game in the United States with 8.6 million copies sold. With that many copies sold, if it really did induce violence, would there not be more cases? Other psychological studies have also opposed Bandura?s evidence, such as this; a small group of university psychologists study tested 257 college students (124 men and 133 women) individually. After taking baseline physiological measurements on heart rate and galvanic skin response -- and asking questions to control for their preference for violent video games and general aggression -- participants played one of eight randomly assigned violent or non-violent video games for 20 minutes. The four violent video games were ?Carmageddon?, ?Duke Nukem?, ?Mortal Kombat? or ?Future Cop?; the non-violent games were ?Glider Pro?, ?3D Pinball?, ?3D Munch Man? and ?Tetra Madness?. After playing a video game, a second set of five-minute heart rate and skin response measurements were taken. Participants were then asked to watch a 10-minute videotape of actual violent episodes taken from TV programs and commercially-released films in the following four contexts: courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings and prison fights. The results demonstrate that playing violent video games, even for just 20 minutes, can cause people to become less physiologically aroused by real violence, perhaps making them more likely to cause real life violence.
That?s not to say there aren?t reported cases of video game ?inspired? bonuses. Every so often this controversy of violence in video games appears in the media usually due to an incident, such as this one; In March 2005, 2 police officers and 1 civilian were shot dead by 18 year old Devin Moore who was a big fan of the Grand Theft Auto video game. The game rewards the player for shooting or beating passersby and police officers, destroying and stealing cars and causing any mayhem they can. After his capture, Moore is reported to have told police, "Life is like a video game. Everybody?s got to die sometime." This tragic incident caused outrage among the public, leading the brother of one of the men shot dead to file a law suit against Rockstar, the company responsible for the creation of Grand Theft Auto. In the court case, there was no link found between real life and fantasy game violence. This is not the only case of its kind either, and the same game is involved. In Oakland, Calif., detectives said the game provoked a street gang accused of robbing and killing six people. In Newport, Tenn., two teenagers told police the game was an influence when they shot at passing cars with a .22 calibre rifle, killing one person. In each case, no direct link between the game and the violence was found. A perhaps more famous case Is that of Stefan Pakeerah. There was outcry for the game ?Manhunt? to be banned shortly after its UK release, and after the murder of Stefan Pakeerah by his best friend who was said to be ?obsessed? with the game pleaded guilty. Following the media exposure, the game was removed from store shelves such as GAME but this only increased demand for the game online. Manhunt went back on sale across the country after it was found, yet again, there was no link between the murder and the game violence.
Personally, I believe that video game violence does affect real life violence, but only to a very limited extent and it only affects a limited number of individuals. I believe that those already of a certain mindset will be affected by the shown violence and may replicate it but for the vast majority, it will have no affect as they realise it is fictional and purely for fun. As for me, and I?m sure millions of other players around the world, I?m going to keep playing so long as they keep getting made, and enjoying every gore filled moment, knowing it is just a game.
And i never said i didnt want people to discuss it. Everyone is more than welcome to coin their view.
