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Games Lead To Violence and Drugs?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Apr 11, 2006 04:44 PM
from the unlikely dept.
from the unlikely dept.
A joint University of California, SFO/University of Pittsburgh study has been released which finds "playing violent videogames can lead young men to believe it is acceptable to smoke marijuana and drink alcohol", Gamasutra reports. Reuters is also carrying the story, with some information about methodology available in that piece. From the article: "Brady and Matthews had a group of 100 male undergraduates aged 18 to 21 play either Grand Theft Auto III or The Simpsons: Hit and Run. In the Simpsons game, players took the role of Homer Simpson and their task was to deliver daughter Lisa's science project to school before it could be marked late. In Grand Theft Auto III, players took the role of a criminal, and were instructed by the Mafia to beat up a drug dealer with a baseball bat."
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'Boozy Gamer' Researcher Questioned 109 comments
Via GameSetWatch, a Gamespy interview with Sonya Brady, the person who ran the research study we reported on a while back. The one that claimed gamers enjoy getting high, drinking alcohol? From the article: "What kind of feedback have I received? My feedback from research colleagues and other older adults has generally been positive. What I find most interesting is the feedback I have received from adolescents and young adults. Some people are interested in learning more about the research, even if they are skeptical of the results. Other people have been very angry."
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We used to get wasted (Score:5, Funny)
Flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
Mark article "redundant" (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't accumulate more truth by saying it more often. Games make you as violent as D&D did in the 80s, TV did in the 60s, radio did in the 30s and books did before that. It's the same "old generation who don't know jack about X blames it for the problems created by the way people are" shit we've been seeing for centuries now.
Re:Mark article "redundant" (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Mark article "redundant" (Score:3, Insightful)
Be thankful...you've got a good father. The question may have sounded stupid to you, but if your dad actually bothered to ask you what you are up to, get your feedback on why it interests you, and trust your judgement as to whether it was a healthy hobby, I hope you are walking around knowing he's the shit.
Hell, invite him to join your next session.
Re:Mark article "redundant" (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Mark article "redundant" (Score:3, Informative)
Comic Books "Many adults think that the crimes described in comic books are so far removed from the child's life that for children they are merely something imaginative or fantastic. But we have found this to be a great error. Comic books and life are connected. A bank robbery is easily translated into the rifling of a candy store. Delinquencies formerly restricted to adults are increasingly committed by young people and children
what are the numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not impossible, of course, I just want to see the results validated in a larger trial. At the very least I want to see the numbers from this trial -- I suspect that the effects are very small and just on the edge of statistical significance.
Standard FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
"Regardless of whether they grew up in a violent environment, the researchers found, young men who had played the violent game were less cooperative and more competitive in completing an assigned task with another person, compared to those who played the Simpsons game. They were also more likely to have permissive attitudes toward alcohol and marijuana use."
How exactly does one get from "have a more permissive attitude" to "more likely to use drugs/drink"? Fucks sake, I've got a completely permissive attitude to other people's bad habits, but that doesn't mean I'd like to share them. If you spun this study the other way, it'd be saying "gamers more permissive, less likely to force their views on other people".
Either the study itself is politically funded crap, or the spin being put on it is.
Atari Adventure (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, just like.... (Score:5, Informative)
In that case (Score:5, Insightful)
If this also works on older men, I'd be willing to give my copy of GTA3 to a Senator or Representative in the hopes that it would change their minds about smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol, to make it legally acceptable.
wtf? (Score:3)
What the hell? Are they saying it isn't?? What else am I supposed to with my evenings?
Control? Baseline? Researchers? (Score:3, Insightful)
The abstract makes me think this was a poorly conducted study. Where's the control group that played no games? What if playing games reduces these thoughts in a way that varies based on the game? You could also have gotten this result by baselining the attitudes of the subjects before the experiment, but then you also might have lost all the interesting quotes like "Media violence exposure may play a role in the development of negative attitudes and behaviors related to health."
They did find that blood pressure tends to go up while playing games. In addition, those with exposure to home and community violence had a more sigificant blood pressure change with the violent game than with the other game. I think they might have just verified post-traumatic stress disorder.
I'm so sick of the underdog getting picked on (Score:5, Insightful)
I would bet my next paycheck that a good, solid study could find a correlation that watching daytime soaps and prime-time drama leads people in their 20's and 30's to getting the idea that infidelity is normal and then proceeding to emulate their TV drama stars and be unfaithful themselves. Gee -- there's a shocker.
Yet, do you see the Family Values people lobbying daytime television producers to clean up their shows? It probably would help imrpove the state of the American family if we weren't bombarded by perfectly beautiful, young, cheating couples on 95% of the programs being shown. But mo, they'd never attack an entrenched mainstream form of entertainmens. Ditto movies (except if it's wildly successful and has gay cowboys, then they'll attack it). Or how about the violence of professional sports? Isn't Superbowl Sunday reportedly one of the worst days of the year when it comes to wife abuse?
Such double standards.
I think regulation of expression is a last-resort option. People are free to take their own actions, for better or for worse. I however think that we should address all forms of entertainment with a similar statndard. Well, except for porn -- that's a slightly different can of worms.
Violent games make you a libertarian? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me rewrite this: "playing violent videogames can lead young men to believe that the government does not have the right to forbid you from consuming mild mind-altering substances, as long as your actions do not harm others' lives."
Sounds pretty good to me.
Re:Other way around? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Other way around? (Score:4, Funny)
So did scientists provide the booze and pot aftwards?
Or did the test subjects have to fend for themselves?
Parent
Re:Other way around? (Score:3, Funny)
Apologies to dave attell
Duke Nukem Forever (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it bears repeating (Score:5, Insightful)
A valuable thing to remember, but completely irrelevant here.
The "correlation != causation" caution applies when it is possible for there to a third, unexplained phenomenon which causes both the supposed cause and the supposed effect. For instance, ice cream consumption and heart attacks both increase in the summer -- but the actual cause of both increases is the summer heat.
That sort of relationship isn't possible here. The "cause" in this case is whether or not the students were assigned to the experimental group -- students in the experimental group had a different experience than students in the control group. Given that the students were (presumably) properly randomly assigned, no factor can possibly have influenced whether or not they were in the control group, and therefore the only possible causes for the differences in the experimental group are the experiment itself or randomness. The latter can be largely controlled by increasing the size of the trial to increase our confidence that we are seeing a real effect.
Think about it this way: imagine the experiment were to decide the effects of gunshot wounds to the head. You divide the students into two groups, and shoot all of the experimental group students in the head. They all die. None of the control group students die. Now, say "but correlation doesn't equal causation!" and realize that it doesn't make any sense. There just isn't any way for some unexplained effect to have altered both which group the students were assigned to and whether or not they died.
Parent
Re:it bears repeating (Score:3, Interesting)
Did they ask them whether they thought it was ok for gays to marry? or whether pre marital sex is an ok choice?
i dont see why not since they seem to be linking all sorts of random shit together. this whole article is sensationalist nothing trying to be meaningful something. Its like asking people to play a game of basketball and then getting their opinion on the italian election. These things are so far removed from having any
Re:it bears repeating (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A pre-test to compare each persons responces before gaming (they probably did this)
2. A physical activity control group.
As we all know playing these games do cause temporary aldrinaline and testotarone (spellling???) increases. These test were preformed immediently after playing and as such the results could have been related. Would have enjoyed seeing a group sent out to play football, or even just run track. I bet you would see similar responces..
Re:it bears repeating (Score:3, Insightful)
This study still does not address long-term changes, at least based on the little bits available.
Re:Also bears repeating: RTFA. (Score:3, Insightful)