Violent Video Games May Desensitize Users
They’re at the top of many people’s holiday gift list, but violent video games can change a person’s brain function and desensitize them to real-life violence, a new U.S. study suggests.
The study included 39 male undergraduate students who provided information about how often they played their five favorite video games and the levels of violence depicted in those games. The students were then assessed for their irritability and aggressiveness and were measured for a type of brainwave called P300, which is believed to be an indicator of physiological arousal.
December 16th, 2005 at 7:48 am
Studies like this are stupid. Changes in brainwaves doesn’t prove anything, much less prove that games are dangerous.
Notice words like “may”, “could”, “implications”. There’s no proof of anything; it’s all conjecture and hopeful theory. *Where are the dead gamers and their unsuspecting victims???*
If games were really bad for people, everyone that played games–unanimously–would be killing everyone else in sight. Or at least fist-fighting. Or at least leering at each other in a mean way. Obviously, that doesn’t happen on a scale that merits legislative panic.
December 18th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
I don’t recall the article claiming that games were dangerous, nor the neccesity for legislation.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Jason: Actually if want to find the dead gamers and their unsuspecting victims - look at the Colombine massacre, and the UK pair of teenage boys arrested for randomly shooting at motorists, just for two off the top of my head. You’ll find more if you investiage. As for these two cases, the perpetrators *were* violent-games players, if not somewhat obsessed with such games. (The Colombine’s were obsessed with Doom, the UK pair with Sniper.)
…I actually think studies like such as the above-mentioned are kinda obvious!
Recently there was a murder in NZ (where I live) of a prostitute by a couple of guys in a car intentionally ramming her against a brick wall and… laughing. This is conjecture, but I have seen *exactly* the same situation play out in a popular violent computer game… complete with the laughing.
Given the realism available in games today, and what is sure to follow tomorrow, we can expect the immerse environment to easily reach the point it is hardly distinguishable from reality (if it isn’t close enough already)… and if, for example, you could teach a kid to get good at aiming a gun and hitting a target using a computer game (a reasonable suggestion), could you not also get them to associate violence with enjoyment? Are these games not played for pleasure? In my opinion its a no-brainer!
And indeed, this is precisely why the US army and Marines use computer games as a primary form of training. Its a no brainer… if you want people to be desensitised to, and even to the point of *enjoying* violence, get them playing todays violent computer games, where the two ideas are often inextricably linked.
Pretty sick if you ask me…
February 7th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
Causation != Correlation. It’s sad that a lot of social scientists still haven’t learned that. I read this article on the survey to get a more clear view of what was going on:
http://www.umich.edu/news/?Releases/2005/Dec05/r120505
From that it is evident that they did very little to differentiate between correlation and actual causation. The researcher indicates that, for example, military personnel may need to be “desensitized”. But aren’t military personnel who play video games also going to correlate strongly with violent games? Isn’t the very fact that one is squeamish to violent acts going to indicate a tendency towards other sorts of games in the first place thus removing from the sample of violent video game players a lot of people that are just naturally sensitive to violence. In such a case, no desensitivity has been caused by playing video games, it is simply the case that those who are more sensitive to violence due to prior factors don’t play games that showcase violence (duh!?).
The whole study seems to have been initiated from a position of ignoring such possibilities. The researcher from UM involved with the study is quoted as saying, “It’s already well known that playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior and decreases helping behavior”. In my opinion this only makes it very clear that he had chosen his conclusion before even starting the study as the relationship between video games and aggressive behavior is still a very open and controversial one with no clear conclusions (a good article I found on this is here: http://www.livescience.com/technology/051204_video_violence.html).
A good scientists, scientists who wishes to be taken seriously by those who don’t already agree with them, should start from a position of neutrality and challenge their own hypothesis whenever possible. It is a scientist’s responsibility to look for possible flaws in their experiment. These guys clearly aren’t interested in that. I have to guess it is because a study that was unabashedly open about its methodological shortcomings and possible errors wouldn’t lead to sensational headlines and media attention.
February 7th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
P.S.
Another study (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050203_finger_length.html) found that aggressive tendencies correlate with index finger length in men. Were we to do this study slightly differently, we would almost certainly find that index finger length correlated with playing violent video games.
Does this mean that playing violent video games causes your fingers to grow? Of course not! But that is the sort of logic being used in the study cited here.