Violent Games Credited With Reducing Crime Levels 209
maroberts writes "According to a research paper produced from a collaboration between the University of Texas and the Centre for European Economic Research, violent video games may induce aggressive behavior, but the incapacitation effect outweighs this and produces a genuine reduction in violent crime. This paper was referenced in a BBC news story giving reasons why the US crime rates are falling (at least outside the prisons!)"
There's less crime because they don't go outside. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not the cause. (Score:3, Interesting)
The actual cause is not merely that it servers as an outlet for aggression, but that it also serves to dilute the overall effect of social anger. That is, you give enough sparkly lights and distractions and toys to even the most frustrated person and they will largely stop doing bad things.
In other words, your kids are learning to play video games instead of doing things like camping and hunting and so on - so even if they wanted to do anything, they largely would lack the tools and knowledge to do so. And with their pre-programmed miserably short attention spans, it's too much work to, say, figure out how to make a weapon. They just give up after five minutes and decide to vent their anger by shooting zombies.
But I do fear that our kids won't have those same skills that are possibly going to be necessary at some point in the future. Basic skills like camping, hunting, doing repairs, electronics, basic chemistry, and so on led to the last couple of generations that were much more prepared for anything that the world threw at them. Then we hit the current kids... And you can just see the acres of vapid drones on any college campus. For all of that anger that was displaced, it seems that much of the ambition, drive, and self-sufficiency was also taken away with it.
Panem et circenses... (Score:2, Interesting)
Caesar had it all right, with the violent circus games.
We can now achieve this catharsis without spilling blood, thanks to video games!
Clockwork Orange (Score:2, Interesting)
It sounds like Clockwork Orange psychology.
You are not violent if you are vomiting all the time so you cannot fight back.
Re:Fuck you guys, someone has to say it (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Birth Control is far more commonly used now then in the previous generation. Perhaps there are less unwanted kids and more planned children who are better cared for so they don't become criminals.
Actually access to abortion, not just birth control, has been singled out _in the US_ as the main cause (and not just correlation) in the drop of violence in the last 20 or so years. The causation has been determined thanks to the delay between access to abortion in a community and the time it takes for the unwanted kids to grow up into criminals. Choice quote: "Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime". More [wikimedia.org]
Re:Fuck you guys, someone has to say it (Score:4, Interesting)
2. Revival in religion. Yea I know this is Slashdot and a lot of the readers here are Atheists or against religion in one form or an other, but there has been a resurgence in religious people. Which teaches at least to stop people from doing unorganized violence.
Unfortunately, there's at least one study that strongly suggests that atheists are less likely to commit crime than religious adherents [creighton.edu].
4. Improved conditions for the poor. Sure the gap between the rich and the poor is growing however the poor now have a better standard of life then they did in the past.
The poor in the US have an income that's basically identical in real dollars to the income of the poor in 1970. For instance, this graph [wikipedia.org] from data from the US census.