Violence in Video Games Debate Continues to Rage 411
ubermiester writes "The Washington Post is reporting on a newly released study by the American Psychological Association, claiming that 'exposure to violence in video games increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.' This partly contradicts another study released a week before by a University of Illinois Professor claiming that 'game violence does not prompt players to project violent tendencies into real life.'"
GTA and driving. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now this is a small example of how you can train or untrain yourself to certain stimulus, but I never beat anyone with a bat, or rigged a bomb to anyone's car. Perhaps because no one was offering me the jobs.
We are obviously affected by what we see and hear. We learn from our environment and observations what is acceptable and what isn't.
Movies, books, conversations, music and games are all ways that ideas get past from person to person. The message can sometimes get confused by the messenger. How many people have refused to read Lolita because they think other people would think they were pedophile?
As a parent, it's your job to isolate your children from input that might alter their psyche. You don't show 3 year olds Faces of Death.
Should the industry have some part in that? Yes. They should certainly give a relatively detailed list of the content. But should games be MORE responsible than other industries, like Movie Makers and the Book Industry? No.
There are far too many busybodies in this world... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a line from Latin Quarter's "America for beginners" that's more in reference to right-wing politics, but it fits pretty well here -
I've been playing role-playing games since I was 11 (D&D, AD&D, Runequest, MERP, Traveller, etc..). I can't say I've ever tried to translate those fantasies into reality. Because these are social games, I know a *lot* of other people who play them. Not any one of those people has turned out to be a non-productive member of society... Some now work for the M.O.D, some for NASA, some in government, some in companies, some are lawyers, the list goes on... I would say I know (personally) well over 70 people who role-play. All of them are model citizens.
Perhaps the vigilantes ought to choose a different fight... For every perceived problem ("violence in games"), there is a solution ("ban them") that is simple, obvious and wrong. (With apologies to whomever's quote I've just mangled).
Simon
Guess what? Games press did some research... (Score:3, Interesting)
Check it out here [bolt.com].
Of course, you can use statistics to say anything you want... unless the figures are as obvious as they are here. Difficult to tweak for that daily anti-GTA propaganda : /
And yet..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GTA and driving. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sports=Death? (Score:4, Interesting)
More Post Hoc BS (Score:5, Interesting)
A common fallacy in many, many arenas, not just this one.
Studies such as these forget to examine other factors, such as "are violent kids more likely to play violent games?", and "are there violent kids who get their aggressions out through video games?", and "what in the kids upbringing or social situation could contribute to their violent behaviour?", and "do calm and non violent kids get violent or aggressive after playing the games?", and most importantly "what is the responsibility of the parents in each situation?"
I grew up watching violent movies. Did it make me a violent person? No, quite the opposite. I detest violence. Why? Because I had a mother who actually gave a shit. She cared about what I was watching, and always made a point to tell me that it wasn't real, that it was make-believe, and that there was always someone behind the camera. She also made a point of telling me that violence didn't solve any problems, and she even made me watch movies that showed the effect of war and violence on people, such as In Cold Blood and The Deer Hunter.
If violence in video games and movies was the real cause, we should be able to compare the amount of violence in the US with that of another country and see a direct correlation with the rate of violent crimes. In Japan, movies and games are far more violent than they are here in the US. Yet the rate of violent crime is dramatically lower, and gun violence is only a tiny fraction of what it is here.
Anyone who points to video games and movies and says 'this is the cause' has not only failed to do their homework, they've completely lost sight of the issue and are just looking for an easy scape-goat.
Just because you... (Score:1, Interesting)
Not to troll, as there are people who are just more prone to freak out (read: take M16 to schoolcamp) on minor things.
This could be inspired by videogames, but could also be inspired by the sadness of a family loss (a soldier, perhaps?), an article in the newspaper, or something on TV.
Is it just to protect a minority of people (that do this kind of thing) against a minority of possible causes (videogames) that the industry should be involved in this ?? Then we better censor ourselves in the brains not to talk about violence, stop making guns, etc. etc.
Not hoping that we don't, but realistically: have another cookie.
Re:With every study they do (Score:3, Interesting)
It is like alchohol. If the family drinks, and the child is going to be around people who drink, allowing that first drink to occur as some middle school party is probably counter productive. if the family has a histry of drug abuse, then the child should probably be taught strategies to overcome the situation. Some of it genetics.
So the parent not only has to make a decision about exposure, which must be made on broader terms than personal belief, but must use appropriate intervention strategies. It is really too much to expect of the average parent, which is why it is in societies interest to streamline the process.
This is not "new" research - (Score:2, Interesting)
If you take a look you will see that much of the research cited was related to aggressive behavior and Television.
To summarize:
Link between agressive behavior and television (not video games)
Link between child development and media (not video games or electronic media except Singer 2005 - it's mostly television)
Link between aggressive thoughts and violent media (half Television and half Video Games - but Anderson's research is not new)
Lack of "Punishment" for violent actions in media (Television only)
Link between video games and agressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, decreased helpful behavior, and increased physio arousal (Anderson - not new and *only* Anderson et. al. studies cited)
The cited studies of video gaming sexualized violence are video game specific
The other citations are to support general learning theory / repetition arguments - but not citing specific experimental findings unless arleady noted above.
Their last point (before resolving that video games are teh evil) is that "studies on media literacy demonstrate when children are taught to view television critically... there is a reduction of television viewing... a clearer understanding of messages... children feel less frightened... can learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality... and can identify less with aggressive characters"
Questions: Since this isn't new research (just a new resolution from the APA)...
1) Why didn't they make the same resolutions for all violent media (including television)?
Is it because the rating system is failing in terms of video games? Would that fix it? Is the APA making a public policy recommendation because there is some need (current policy is broken for this specific media)? That is, the media is no worse, it's just that the safeguards in place don't work as well as others (TV, Movies)?
2) Why make this resolution now?
If there is no new research and much of the research relates to television? Could some recent events be behind it?
Re:GTA and driving. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Save our Children" (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course the stats are WAY down on the victorian era where child prostitution was common and violence against children and by children was an everyday occurence.
You might as well say that all this new information is leading to less world wars.
Are you a Wumpa Lumpa? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Statistics tell us exactly what they want them (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently there is a pretty good correlation between the stock market and how high womens skirts hemlines are. The higher the hemlines, the better the market.
No one is stating that that one causes the other, but it is thought that the emotions behind a lower stockmarket cause more conservative wear to be worn.
Re:Sports=Death? (Score:4, Interesting)
That probably wouldn't have been my first idea had I been in his case, but people started cheering for him, and everyone stopped fighting to see what was going on. So his plan worked. What made it more interesting, however, was that someone in the stands didn't approve, and called the cops. And the cops arrested him for indecent exposure, and took him to jail.
I'm not anti-sport, or even anti-violent sports like hockey and football, but I think that it's amazing that in the midst of all that fighting, the guy that goes to jail is the pacifist who felt like taking his clothes off. It wasn't really lewd or sexual(unlike the infamous superbowl incident). He caused a fight to stop. He stopped people from trying to hurt each other. And someone found that offensive enough to call the cops. That just, to me, says something very strange about our culture.
as opposed to... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Save our Children" (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in the inner city in London in one of the poorest areas in the UK, we have drugs, celibrity murders, the lot. This is not severe poverty. These people are housed, they have food and get medical treatment if they need it. Goodle for London poverty int he 1800s especially around spitalfields in London, thats real poverty.
Ok , I f I accept that then ... (Score:2, Interesting)
'exposure to violence in politics increases aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior and angry feelings among youth.'
Junk science (Score:3, Interesting)
1) No proper control. Games are exciting. So if you are looking for a specific effect of games, you need to control for nonspecific effects of general excitement. It is fairly obvious how to do this--you need another stimulus, perhaps a film of a sporting even that is equally exciting, and you have to verify that the control stimulus is indeed equally exciting, say by measuring change in pulse rate.
2) Conflating aggression with violence. Violence is often associated with aggression, but aggression is not violence. One can be verbally aggressive, for example. In circumstances--a sporting event for example, or a lawyer making a case--a certain amount of properly channeled aggression is appropriate and advantageous. So studies that measure aggression rather than violence are meaningless. It is crucial to verify that the method of evaluation is able to distinguish between aggression and violence.
3) Confusing rough play with violence. Fantasy play may involve miming of violent actions, but it can be distinguished from real violence in that serious injuries are rare. A common error is to characterize play as violent, even when there is no clear intent to cause harm. Scoring of actions as "violent" must be carried out by observers who are "blind" as to whether the subjects were exposed to the video game stimulus or the control stimulus (see #1).
None of this is rocket science--just obvious, minimal criteria for a valid study. Amazingly, most of the studies that I have read do not meet even these minimum standards.
Big Fucking Deal... (Score:3, Interesting)
And who the fuck are the Who the Fuck are the American Psychological Assosiation? Who do they represent? Who funded the study? My friends and I can call each other the "American Patriotic Institute of violent and Aggressive Studies" and then i can release some bullshit statement as well.
Lets save the world a whole lot of money and lay it out for everyone to see...
Football is aggressive.
Skateboarding is aggressive
Inline Skating is aggressive
Baseball is aggressive
Basketball is aggressive
Driving is aggressive
Swiming is aggressive
Racing is aggressive
Playing poker is aggressive
Hockey is aggressive
Tennis is aggressive
GOLF is aggressive, YES EVEN FUCKING GOLF.
Politics is aggressive
Argueing is aggressive
Fighting is aggressive
Excersizing is aggressive
Rugby is aggressive
Soccer is aggressive
Field hockey is aggressive
Boat racing is aggressive
Flying planes is aggressive
RC cars are aggressive
Guns are aggressive
Music is aggressive
BEING A FUCKING MALE is aggressive
BOO FUCKING HOO world... Aggressiveness is a part of life. It's what fucking formed capitalism along with greed.
It's what GOT US TO TEH FUCKING MOON.
ITS WHAT FUELS OUR EXISTANCE AS HUMANS. We strive to better ourselves than we currently are, and to do so... we must be aggressive. That is the nature of a GAME. The nature of a game is to strive to out perform the opponent, that means to better yourself.
Yes... it takes aggressiveness.
Dam bible thumpers and the uptight mothers of the world. We're men, we play hard, we build buildings that reach the sky, and we build space ships that go to fucking Mars.
And yes... we play videogames and any of the other many aggressive activities... AND THAT INCLUDES FUCKING OUR UPTIGHT WIFES!
Study this!
Re:More Post Hoc BS (Score:3, Interesting)
Our entire society is built on the threat of violence.
The power of government is based in having a monopoly on violence. If you don't follow the rules, we have governmental agencies that exist to kidnap you and lock you away. If you don't play along, you'll be shot.
Ok, so let's see the study then (Score:3, Interesting)
--Were the control and experimental groups properly established? By that I mean did they measure a basline for the children's behaviour, then have some of them play games and see how their behaviour differed? If not, there's no evidence of causation, it might be that naturally more violent kids like games like that, and they have no effect on their behaviour.
--Provide context on the "physical altercations" and "arguments". Did the kids actively seek out violent encounters, or are they simply more assertive, and unwilling to let other trample on them? Many children are bullied and simply meekly accept it.
--What kind of home life do these kids live? That they play violent video games may imply parents with poor parenting skills, as most games of that type are rated for 17 and up. Was any testing done to control for or examine the effect of home life?
The point is that one study does not prove a theory, it doesn't even come close. I'll bet you if I had a copy of the study, I could point out severe flaws in their methodology. They managed to find a correlation, how strong of one who knows, that doesn't mean anything. The person that stred this little subthread was pointing out that there is a very large negative correlation, that of youth violent crime and the rise of video game popularity.
You seem to be commiting the common fallacy of finding a study that supports your view, and assuming that proves it true. That's not at all the case. In science we don't prove thing true, we show that they are very likely not false through a long series of tests. We test alternate hypothesis, and each time we falsify one, we become more certian our hypothesis is true.
To find a simple correlation is only the very first step. That just lets us know that there might be something worth looking at, that our theory isn't mere speculation. Once we've found that, it's a long road of testing to ensure that our hypothesis really is the correct explanation of what is happening.
Re:With every study they do (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, it may not even be possible. Parents don't have as much control over their kids as most would like to believe. You can go on and on about how you need to instill good values in them, but then there's American Pop Culture coming at them from every angle, every day that probably has a much stronger influence than anything the parent's can dream up. Parents have been teemed up against by a slew of advertising and pop media that are constantly putting out the message that life is all about money, sex and power. And perhaps fearing that germs might reside in your toilet.
So no, no one said it was going to be easy to be a parent. They also never said the deck would be stacked against you either.
Re:How about a study on the parents? (Score:3, Interesting)
That is basically true (or suspected) across many boundaries. Hell, I've always known deep down that if people tell you they don't care about you and what you do - you'll never care about them either. And isn't that were violence happens? I had to do a report on school violence and found that as more was done to "lock down" a school the more violent the kids became. When given an old grandmother type to be a "security guard" the kids acted more respectfully and were more likely to discuss their problems instead of using violence.
I'd say that using video games (TV, movies, drugs) to placate your children makes them realize you don't care.
I shudder when I see how kids are being raised today (and I'm only 25!). How much has changed over the past 15-20 years? My mother would have never used TV or video games to keep me "entertained" even though we both enjoyed them together from time to time. I guess that is one reason I'm totally non-violent and never wish my enemies *real* harm (although in jest I've been known to "damn" a few people by name, politicans mostly).
Re:BLAME CANADA!!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Meth? That's "Drugs" - already done that. Rock Music? Never stopped (Elvis, 80s Metal, gangsta rap, Marilyn Manson, Eminem). Dancing? That's so 50s.
Pool Halls and Bowling? Nope, because parents are used to them - they aren't new, and hence scary.
Seriously - every new technology is the focus of loudmouth moralist hysteria. Seriously - the board of Eton college wouldn't let the first robber-baron train magnates lay railway tracks across any Eton-owned property. Not because they didn't want a station near the school, but because they feared (and I quote) "the railway may corrupt the morals of the boys" in some undefinable way. Just worried about those well-known 1800s "Ale 'n' Whores" trains, I guess.
Look at any new technology - popular music, radio, television, the internet, the web - the one thing they all have in common is that they were once new, and they (or the pace of change they implied) scared the shit out of luddites.
And in our molly-coddling society anything that frightens people without real justification has but one battle-cry - "think of t3h kids!!!!11!!1!one".
Notice how worries about the real concerns (war, famine, genetic engineering, the DMCA, economic collapse, the ongoing "difficulties" of the US democratic system) are never framed in terms of children. War is obviously bad - no-one needs to start invoking "the kids" to push buttons and get everyone on-side.
As Bill Hicks famously said, just wave a foetus at people and you can lead them on whatever crusade you like.
In fact, it's getting to the stage where the second a new technology sparks fears which involve kids, I come down bang in favour of it. If it had a real danger the irrational luddites would publicising that - the fact they're relying on ill-supported, zero-evidence emotive bullshit like imagined, potential effects on "the kids" is just evidence there's nothing, in fact, to be worried about.
Re:Yes, they keep saying this. (Score:3, Interesting)
The argument goes "almost every heroine addict started off smoking pot, so smoking pot leads to heroine addiction".
Next time you hear this, try swapping "smoking pot" with "drinking breastmilk", and get them to explain why breastmilk isn't a gateway to heroine addiction, homosexuality, violent crime and paedophilia.
When did we have that one about the parents? (Score:4, Interesting)
Your ironic turnaround would make so much more sense if that initial debate about "whether or not parents should take some responsibility" was really taking place.
And I mean a real debate about, for example, the effects of an economy that essentially requires two working parents on our children. I'm no "social conservative" and it seems to me the only people who're bringing that up just now are the fundies, who obviously have their own ideological axes to grind and who are more interested in manipulating people's anxieties than in allaying them.
If Americans are especially conscious of how parenting has changed in just my lifetime, I think they're trying not to admit it to themselves. If anything they're pushing their anxieties about the changes into red herrings like "video games are responsible for all our problems."
Re:RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
The researchers reviewed several different studies, some of which were experimental, some of which were correlational. Since we had been talking about correlations, I quoted the correlational one. Your quote refers to one of the experimental ones.
Here we go:
Most of your criticisms result from switching the results of the experimental study with the correlational one.
If you look at what they measured, it's not even measuring one variable, it's lumping together such disparate issues as being an aggressor, being a _victim_, and questioning authority.
Obviously they did not measure these things as one variable. If they did you would have seen the clue word "or". As in, "had more arguments with authority figures OR were more likely to be involved in physical altercations." They probably measured a dozen variables, some of which correlated significantly and some of which didn't.
It's not something that's become the One Truth, to be carved in stone, and that noone should dare question.
I'd like to introduce you to my friend, the Straw Man. Perhaps you'd like to attack him?
I'd be interested by whom. The tobacco companies "there's no correlation between smoking and lung diseases" studies, or the oil companies' "there is no global warming" studies are also peer-reviewed... inside the same organization.
The American Psychological Association is putting it's credibility behind this. If the APA can be bought like a Washington DC think tank, then we're all in serious trouble.