New Study Questions Entire Violent Videogame Debate

[medv4380]

I don't understand. Either this is missing the entire point of the argument, or I've been wrong about it the whole time. I always thought the argument was about whether or not violent videogames desensitises people (especially children) to violence, such that they consider violence to be a reasonable solution to a problem, and won't be traumatised by their actions (eg. a kid is being bullied by another kid, so they find weapon and attempt to bash the bully's head in, without remorse).

This study basically just suggests a correlation between gaming skill and aggressiveness, and questions the concept of transfer of skills from gaming to real life, which is still an interesting subject of course, and relevant to the issue, but isn't the core of the issue, insofar as I can tell. Am I wrong?

Don't want to say this, but yes you've been wrong the whole time.

Desensitizing isn't actually the issue. It's been a proven part of any medium. The more your exposed to something the more your brain no longer sees it as "interesting" and therefore it gets board and moves onto other things it hasn't seen before. It's just the basics behind how the brain works. Its basically a fact that seeing an image of something over and over again desensitizes you to that image. It's actually a proven way of helping someone over come fear.

The Issue is whether or not your brain will become more violent when exposed to violence, and in the short term the answer is yes. But no more then it makes a football player more violent to be playing football. Basically the Act of playing a violent video game or a football game does require a bit of a focused but violent mindset. Is this a temporary change or a long term change that will continue to escalate over time?

What this study shows is that even though an online multiplayer game does have violent elements in it the more Violent aggressive players arn't being rewarded for that behavior, and thus they arn't able to transfer any meaningful skills. They are actually rewarded more for working well with other, and keeping a level head.

Now here's the important part.
If the notion of transfer worked that the more you're exposed to killing the more violent you'd become then the more skilled players who play a lot would become more and more violent over time in the game, and the least aggressive players would be the novice players and have poor skills.

However, you see the opposite, the more highly skilled players are the least aggressive, and the most aggressive are the least skilled.

Basically, more exposure does not equal to more violence, and this is a pretty interesting way to show it.

Now it doesn't show whether or not a crazy with schizophrenia is affected the same way, and if they aren't I don't care. If they are crazy anyways they should be locked up and treated until they are not longer a danger to society.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Hang on..

The study demonstrates that highly aggressive people do not do as well at games as stable, context-sensitive people.

Beyond being slightly "no shit Sherlock", I really don't think anyone was saying that you get some normal, well adjusted person playing games and within a few weeks they'll be some snarling feral beast because they've been consistently rewarded for mindless and aggressive behaviour.

Yes, I get the concept of "transfer", but was it really that important? It strikes me that media effects from exposure to violent images, or the influence on a minority of people (not necessarily very good or successful gamers) with impaired self-concept would actually be the concern here, not whether healthy people are being rewarded for aggression.

Seriously, I hate science reporting for this reason (no offence Escapist, we're still cool). Any study covering an emotive or polemic issue is going to be covered like it's some definitive last word written on the tablets of Moses. It doesn't actually say anything beyond what has been measured, and I'm not sure what has been measured here actually demonstrates as much as is being claimed.

 

[Andronicus]

I don't understand. Either this is missing the entire point of the argument, or I've been wrong about it the whole time. I always thought the argument was about whether or not violent videogames desensitises people (especially children) to violence, such that they consider violence to be a reasonable solution to a problem, and won't be traumatised by their actions (eg. a kid is being bullied by another kid, so they find weapon and attempt to bash the bully's head in, without remorse).

This study basically just suggests a correlation between gaming skill and aggressiveness, and questions the concept of transfer of skills from gaming to real life, which is still an interesting subject of course, and relevant to the issue, but isn't the core of the issue, insofar as I can tell. Am I wrong?

Don't want to say this, but yes you've been wrong the whole time.

Desensitizing isn't actually the issue. It's been a proven part of any medium. The more your exposed to something the more your brain no longer sees it as "interesting" and therefore it gets board and moves onto other things it hasn't seen before. It's just the basics behind how the brain works. Its basically a fact that seeing an image of something over and over again desensitizes you to that image. It's actually a proven way of helping someone over come fear.

The Issue is whether or not your brain will become more violent when exposed to violence, and in the short term the answer is yes. But no more then it makes a football player more violent to be playing football. Basically the Act of playing a violent video game or a football game does require a bit of a focused but violent mindset. Is this a temporary change or a long term change that will continue to escalate over time?

What this study shows is that even though an online multiplayer game does have violent elements in it the more Violent aggressive players arn't being rewarded for that behavior, and thus they arn't able to transfer any meaningful skills. They are actually rewarded more for working well with other, and keeping a level head.

Now here's the important part.
If the notion of transfer worked that the more you're exposed to killing the more violent you'd become then the more skilled players who play a lot would become more and more violent over time in the game, and the least aggressive players would be the novice players and have poor skills.

However, you see the opposite, the more highly skilled players are the least aggressive, and the most aggressive are the least skilled.

Basically, more exposure does not equal to more violence, and this is a pretty interesting way to show it.

Now it doesn't show whether or not a crazy with schizophrenia is affected the same way, and if they aren't I don't care. If they are crazy anyways they should be locked up and treated until they are not longer a danger to society.

Firstly, I think you are getting a bit confused about the difference between desensitisation and adaptation. What you're describing pertains more to adaptation, which is the physiological tendency for sensory nerves to ignore constant stimulus and focus on change. Granted some adaptation may occur at the level of the brain, but only to a small degree, and is the same basic principle of focusing only on change.

Desensitisation is a much more complicated psychological phenomenon which has many different underlying factors and causes, which all depend on the circumstances. Different people can be emotionally affected to highly varying degrees by certain stimuli, depending on age, sex, past events, environment, etc, but that doesn't mean that their bodies will show different degrees of physiological adaptation. If you're constantly activating touch sensors on your arm, after a while the sensors will adapt to the stimuli and sensation will be reduced, while if you remove the stimulus, the sensors will regain their sensitivity. If you force an arachnophobe to sit down and look at pictures of spiders, their brain isn't going to get "bored" by spiders and simply not react next time they see one; that's simply not how it works. Generally there's some underlying issue that manifests itself or leads to a phobia, and there can be all sorts of factors at work.

There is a complex psychological process involved in desensitisation, and the issue is whether or not playing violent videogames can serve as that process. I don't think that they necessarily makes you more violent, but I think it can make you desensitised to the consequences (ie. guilt of having killed someone). Furthermore, I don't think children are "more violent" after playing violent games, but I think it inforces the idea that a violent solution to a problem is the most efficient and logical solution. I don't have data backing that up - there might be some out there, but I can't be bothered looking right now - but that's just my opinion.

What this study shows is that the good players are those that can effectively manage aggro (an enemy's attention), and it argues that the ability to manage aggro is a skill that may be construed as "desensitisation" or increased aggression, but to state that the skills obtained within the game can be generalised to other situations outside of the game would be "hyperbolic". That says nothing of whether or not bad players, or even the good players for that matter, can become violent in real life, not because the game taught them to be violent, but because it inforces the idea that violence is a logical solution: "if bashing someone's head in in LotRO stops them from beating my avatar up, then that's clearly a solution to a real bully beating me up, and hey, noone punishes you in the game, right?"

Again, transfer of skill is an issue, and even the study states that the analyis doesn't reject the possibility that games might have some transferable effects, but I still don't think that's the core of the issue.

 

[Strazdas]

I don't understand. Either this is missing the entire point of the argument, or I've been wrong about it the whole time. I always thought the argument was about whether or not violent videogames desensitises people (especially children) to violence, such that they consider violence to be a reasonable solution to a problem, and won't be traumatised by their actions (eg. a kid is being bullied by another kid, so they find weapon and attempt to bash the bully's head in, without remorse).

This study tells you that the argument in itself is incorrect.


As always swedish people bring logic and reason, this has been done so many times i always want to stereotype swedes with smart people just like americans are stereotyped with stupid.


As Pacman creator have said: if games influenced people they will all be runing around in darkened rooms eating magical tablets while lsitening to techno music.
Oh wait..... [http://www.papermashmusic.com/filess/Feb/5/rave-babie-blue-lights.jpg]

 

[webkilla]

speaking as someone with a master in science and a grad thesis on internet culture and norm-formation

You would be the perfect person to ask then, why do people's reactions to reports of scientific studies on the Internet always fall into the following categories:

- Well duh, this is obviously true I don't need science to tell me that.
- Without reading the actual study, I can tell they haven't taken X into account and don't know as much about Y as me and so this study is obviously nonsense.

?

Good questions, I hope this answers it

For the first one: Because often science is often used to definitively prove "things that we already know". I once made a little study to see if people could still get motion sick from playing FPS games on PCs. Found plenty of testimony online about it. Tested it: It's true. No big surprise, but fun to watch.

The point is that 'common sense' can account for quite a lot of things - but actual documentation for events or phenomena needs to be done thoroughly, even if the outcome is quite obvious. Think theory of gravity: We all agree its there, but without the science you wouldn't be able to build rockets to fly into space.

For the second one: Because science is often done in highly controled enviroments to limit variables. Its like the mythbusters really: It is very hard to replicate random real life variables in a test setup. Thus, when experimenting and later when analyzing test data, you will never get results that 100% match real life results - but that's a variable you can take into account.

Plus, when it comes to studies on gamer culture and internet behavior - you would soil yourself thrice over if you knew how few professors and whatnot actually 'know' internet culture, at least to the point of getting the jokes and whatnot. Fairly certain that also applies to gaming culture and behavior.

It might be 20-30yr old grad students running the tests - but the joker ultimately analyzing and evaluating the data and going "Why do these kids play TF2? Its so violent!?" are +50yr old geezers who have never touched a video game or seen a picture of a cat with captions outside of Dilbert.

Basically, in a lot of fields of science, there is a huge generation gap. This is mainly because it takes so damn long (A couple decades usually) to get recognition and a name in academia. SO a lot of big-wigs today started out 20-30 years ago...

 

[webkilla]

Desensitization

On that topic you also have to consider that even if you're playing CoD or TF2 - then people still know they're playing a video game.

that level of abstraction is incredibly important to keep in mind.

The people who can't tell the difference between that kind of fantasy and reality - well - they're in trouble already, as they probably think that action flicks on tv are hardcore snuff.

Basically: You know that you're sitting in front of a computer. You are well aware that while playing TF2 you aren't actually shooting skinny boston-accented twerps with tinys heads, radioactive soda addictions and big bats.

Its the same logic that means that paintball players don't go on shooting sprees in high schools and malls all the time - because they can tell play from reality

 

[Andronicus]

Desensitization

On that topic you also have to consider that even if you're playing CoD or TF2 - then people still know they're playing a video game.

that level of abstraction is incredibly important to keep in mind.

The people who can't tell the difference between that kind of fantasy and reality - well - they're in trouble already, as they probably think that action flicks on tv are hardcore snuff.

Basically: You know that you're sitting in front of a computer. You are well aware that while playing TF2 you aren't actually shooting skinny boston-accented twerps with tinys heads, radioactive soda addictions and big bats.

Its the same logic that means that paintball players don't go on shooting sprees in high schools and malls all the time - because they can tell play from reality

Hehe, I probably should have said this before. There is no doubt in my mind that these are the sorts of people that don't need a videogame or a movie or a book or whatever to initiate a killing spree; they were unstable from the beginning, and should never have been allowed near a weapon in the first place. If you can't tell the difference between a game and real life as a child, it's basically because you're a child, and your parents need to do some actual parenting. If you can't tell the difference between a game and real life as an adult, then it's basically because you're certifiable (or you had REALLY crappy parents). The point I'm trying to make is that kids are impressionable, and I believe that games can leave impressions, much like, you know, everything else in the universe ever. And, as is seemingly always the case in these matters, it really comes down to parenting.

 

[Frankster]

Shame the article is on springer, can only read the abstract and preview page of the full research :|

But from what I see, whilst it can be contended that their results are heavily influenced by limiting their sample to mmos, a genre which rewards cooperative behavior over individualistic, the idea that you could transfer positive skills from gaming (in this case, the ability to work together with a team) to other aspects of life and the idea that the type of game you play affects your cognition (so players playing calm games will be more calm) is in line with existing psychological theories and seems legit.

why do people's reactions to reports of scientific studies on the Internet always fall into the following categories:

- Well duh, this is obviously true I don't need science to tell me that.
- Without reading the actual study, I can tell they haven't taken X into account and don't know as much about Y as me and so this study is obviously nonsense.

Just to add to the other guys answer : people never bother reading the research themselves, they usually just look at titles of articles such as this and jump to whatever conclusion pleases them the most.

This has resulted in legit research being linked on the escapist and most people missing the point completely of that research and what it set up to do and what its findings were (this is especially obvious when non positive gaming research is reported on and everyone here calls BS and the study false and biased, etc... Which might be true, but again no one ever checks up the research itself to logically argue their point)

Also credit to Andy for doing a good job of summing up the research. Disagree with his conclusion at the end though, from what I understand higher agressiveness in videogames wouldn't necessiraly lead to a rise in crime (though there might be a correlation), rather playing agressive games would make you a more agressive person (which might then lead to higher incidences of risky behavior, including crime) and being the antisocial jerkwad in mmos will mean you're more likely to adopt antisocial jerkwad behaviors in real life too.

Wonder if this applies to forum posting too? ><

 

[Soak]

Really, this is getting boring, nothing more.
Just look at the quantity of the comments, even if it's "good news", it draws no interest anymore, because the whole debate was a bad joke from the start, now becoming old.
Nothing more to say, most comments in here state the important things already.

 

[Nocola]

TIL: I might be douchebag... Because science.

 

[punipunipyo]

so.. poor gamers (noobs) makes for the murders/domestic violent bunch of the gamers... not the vet/pro.. right? that actually made a lot of sense! why would any one feel the need for expressing anger when they win all the time? cool! now all we need to know now is how to make the loosers feel less noob than they actually are (or get rid of the underage gamers, you know.. the 12 years old who trash talk all the time, it's illegal for them to play anyways, where are their parents? they need to do their job; parenting!!!)

 

[IWCAS]

This study basically just suggests a correlation between gaming skill and aggressiveness, and questions the concept of transfer of skills from gaming to real life, which is still an interesting subject of course, and relevant to the issue, but isn't the core of the issue, insofar as I can tell. Am I wrong?

Very good point. This article seems to be suggesting something other than "Do videogames make kids more violent?". It seems to be suggesting that the homocidal lunatics suck at videogames.

Maybe this arguement is a little flawed, but I still agree that the whole videogame=homocide arguement is flawed itself.

It's all in the parenting.

 

[FoolKiller]

As always the sheep of the masses will always blame what they do not understand and it will always come down to bad parenting but nobody wants to blame the parents.

Or just blame the individual. The parents could be wonderful parents and the kid could still turn out to be a total shit or vice versa.

At the end of the day the reason behind why anyone does anything is simple: That person chose to do it. Their motivation aside, it was still a choice they had to make and they knew the difference between right and wrong.

 

[webkilla]

The point I'm trying to make is that kids are impressionable, and I believe that games can leave impressions, much like, you know, everything else in the universe ever. And, as is seemingly always the case in these matters, it really comes down to parenting.

Oh no doubt

but then you can just as well ask what kids 'learn' from what Tom & Jerry, or Naruto

heck, there was the famous sANd HERO kid a number of years ago who dug a little hole in his sandbox, stuck his head in it, and then kept it there until he suffocated because he thought he'd get super sand powers like that emo kid in Naruto with gourd on his back. No really.

Impressionable? No doubt. but again I'll put this down to parenting: Kids are supposed to have been taught not to emulate Tom & Jerry at around age 4, at the very latest. No chasing other people around with kitchenware, knives or axes.

I know common sense is difficult to argue for on a micro level - since common sense can only really be observed on a macro level. This isn't unlike the outcry that came a number of years ago when british parents found their todlers' language skills actually deteriorating because they let them see too many reruns of the Teletubbies. The kids learnt to 'talk' like teletubbies, meaning that they didn't learn to talk at all.

Too much of any kind of good thing - is usually bad. Then again, there is no algorithm for being the perfect parent: you only have to be 'good enough'.

Its funny actually: Over the last two decades I sense there's been a sharp increase in parents who are genuinely scared to discipline their children - which I think is also part of this. Blame overprotective child services, or asshole kids who threaten with child services, or just parents who are smart enough to not hit their kids, but can't think of other ways to dicipline the little rugrats. (this is probably why programs like Supernanny exist)

One thing is ensuring that your kids know right from wrong, and that things you see on TV aren't necessarily real, but if you never say no then kids might also get the impression that their own ideas are always right... and then they stick their heads in the sandbox to gain superpowers.