Study Suggests Violent Video Games May Make Teens Less Violent 120
barlevg writes "A new paper is out in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence which shows no positive correlation between playing violent video games and acts of aggression. The study of 377 children with attention deficit and depressive symptoms in fact showed a slight negative correlation between video game-playing and aggressive behavior such as bullying, which the researchers posit is due to the games awarding some measure of catharsis. The full paper is available online (PDF)."
No relationship, not negative relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
The stats in the study show no significant relationship, not a negative relationship. The regression coefficient happens to be negative, but the coefficient isn't significantly related to the dependent variable (bullying). You should change your headline.
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No significant relationship also bolsters the current position that catharsis is bullshit. If you're going to shoot someone in the face, you're going to do it whether you have taken your aggression out on a paper target or not.
Re:No relationship, not negative relationship (Score:5, Insightful)
No significant relationship also bolsters the current position that catharsis is bullshit.
Catharsis is only one hypothesis for why video games reduce crime. A more plausible one is the "sucking up time" hypothesis. Every hour that kids spend playing games, is one less hour they are out on the street. When "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was released, there was a noticeable drop in real world crime for several weeks. The most plausible explanation was that the potential criminals were at home playing.
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When "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was released, there was a noticeable drop in real world crime for several weeks. The most plausible explanation was that the potential criminals were at home playing.
Followed by several weeks of elevated crime, as the potential criminals finished the game and were now inspired to shoot seagulls, dine and dash, rob hookers, then pimp them, then drive them across town at break neck speeds in stolen cars, and spray painting graffitti, all the while dealing with that annoyin
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When "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was released, there was a noticeable drop in real world crime for several weeks.
A quick google finds no mention of this theory. I'd like to see what you are basing that statement on.
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That's not a drone flying overhead, that's the joke that went so high up you missed the "WHOOSH!" sound
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> Woooosh!
Doubt it, the "sucking up time" hypothesis is well known. My issue is with there being such a narrowly defined example of it in action.
Training (Score:2, Troll)
The most plausible explanation was that the potential criminals were at home playing.
I think the word you are looking for is training, not playing. ;-)
After school programs ... (Score:2)
A more plausible one is the "sucking up time" hypothesis. Every hour that kids spend playing games, is one less hour they are out on the street.
There is probably some long term studies and or data regarding this hypothesis from the after school and summer recreation programs that various communities have offered over the years. Its not video game related but that seems to be your point.
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Idle hands are the devils work.
This expression has been in existence in one form or another since before Shakespeare.
Maybe this is why vacation resort complexes ... (Score:1)
A more plausible one is the "sucking up time" hypothesis. Every hour that kids spend playing games, is one less hour they are out on the street.
A strange thought ....
I recently stayed at one of those mega-resort complexes in Hawaii. Not my sort of place but I was there for a wedding and the rest of the family was staying there. During checkin I was surprised when they told me about the PS3 in the room and the movie and video game "rental" boxes near the elevators. There was no rental charge, swipe this card and you get a movie/game, you can't get a second one until you return the first. It was fully automated, insert the first disc and now you a
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Seriously? Have you never had a four hour Halo/CoD/pick-your-pleasure "OMGWTFBBQPWNED HEADSHOT BITCH TEABAG TEABAG YOUR MAWM SUCKS MY BALLS LOLWUT ORLY YOU STUPID NOOB I JUST KILLED YOU" marathon and THEN tried to go perpetrate real world violence?
You're just too tired.
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Good point.
We wouldn't want the truth to get in the way of a good story though!
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I can't parse this sentence. The authors badly needed an editor.
"Finally, with the sample once again of children with clinically elevated attention decit symptoms and with regards to bullying behavior only trait aggression (b = .41) was predictive of bullying behaviors along with the interaction between trait aggression and exposure to violent games did approach signicance (b = -.22) suggesting that highly trait aggressive children who also played violent video games were less likely to engage in bullying b
An outlet (Score:5, Interesting)
Games are a good outlet for stress and frustration. I'd argue a game is a constructive activity as there are things you can learn from video games.
Of course they make people less violent.
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If it were not for violent video games several people would have died, and I would be in prison right now. Thank you to all the video game writers out there.
Re:An outlet (Score:5, Funny)
Games are a good outlet for stress and frustration. I'd argue a game is a constructive activity as there are things you can learn from video games.
Of course they make people less violent.
?
I found many games to increase my stress level to the point I can actually hear red corpuscles whistling through the capillaries in my cranium.
and once I finished getting them unpackaged, installed and running my stress level went even higher
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Then having your 12YO whip you soundly at the game.... luckily ps3 controllers are pretty tough.
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and once I finished getting them unpackaged
I sincerely hope you never meet a clamshell package.
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Or they take away motivation.
So Are teens who play video games more likely to get a job, more likely to not get a job even when its a detriment, no change.v
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Or they take away motivation.
So Are teens who play video games more likely to get a job, more likely to not get a job even when its a detriment, no change.v
Perhaps leave teens mentally exhausted unable to dream up ways of getting in trouble. Won't last - the amoral behaviour so necessary in playing many violent video games is training these people, establishing thought patterns. Curious how they will rationalize things when they get into their 30's and 40's.
i need a red sports car for my mid-life crisis -- so I can run people over with it
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They also take male teens off the streets and put them in their parent's living room, they take their money that could be used for drugs, and they assure them that they have a reduced chance of meeting females who they otherwise may fight over. That's like a quadruple win.
Depends, and it depends (Score:2)
The first "Depends" is that if parents are supervising, and teaching morals I agree. If nobody is around to teach morals, then I believe that games can have a desensitizing effect on more natural morals.
After reading what I just wrote, I think it important that I point out that the majority of the responsibility of raising the child is with the parents and not a video game maker. The video games play a role, but are not of course the ultimate issue.
The second "depends" is that games are not designed for l
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Hmm, which leisure-time activity is more constructive for an unsupervised teen: (a) playing violent video games without "s.petry-approved moral instruction" - the horrors, or (b) boosting a car for quick cash for meth, then unprotected sex with the girlfriend.
People who say that games are violent have no experience with real violence. People who say that games are addictive have no experience with real addiction.
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Hmm, which leisure-time activity is more constructive for an unsupervised teen: (a) playing violent video games without "s.petry-approved moral instruction" - the horrors, or (b) boosting a car for quick cash for meth, then unprotected sex with the girlfriend.
False analogy. It's not like a person only has those two choices, so picking two extremes is an irrational method of attempting to prove your point.
People who say that games are violent have no experience with real violence. People who say that games are addictive have no experience with real addiction..
Yet another fallacy based on a false assumption. You have no idea what my experiences are, and I have no desire to expand on them since they are irrelevant to the points I made. Further you have no idea what anyone else' experiences are, regarding violence, who make similar claims to myself. I will give you a hint however, which is that many of us are milita
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Well, clearly any further arguments would commit the inescapable fallacy of "argumentum against s.petry", much as you define morality as "actions approved by s.petry" making your argument against video games a tautology. I certainly can't argue against logic like that.
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Fallacy is not "inescapable". In the post you first responded to, I never claimed the person was "wrong" or "correct". I stated that in my opinion there are too many variables to make a factual claim. Your response was to attack that opinion as well as claim that a piece of science to back that position was wrong simply because. Yes, I defend my opinions just as anyone should.
To avoid fallacy, provide facts for someone to consider that counters their current belief. Attempt to use sound arguments that
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If nobody is around to teach morals, then I believe that games can have a desensitizing effect on more natural morals.
I highly doubt that that happens in more than a minuscule number of cases, if at all.
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Never agreed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Never agreed that violent video games make a person more violent. I've been playing FPS since I was a child with my first being Wolfenstein 3D right when it came out. I also listen to heavy metal. For me it's actually relaxing. Nothing I like more after a stressful day than sitting down and shooting someone in the face.
Re:Never agreed... (Score:5, Interesting)
People react differently to different things. This shouldn't come as a surprise. For some people violent video games increase stress, for some they lower it. Some people find driving stressful, others find it relaxing. Applying the video game debate to driving: because some drivers have had road rage and have caused accidents as a result some of which led to fatalities, we should ban driving in favor of catching carts driven by those who want to ban violent video games. Any volunteers? (We'd also be contributing to fixing the obesity plague)
Re:Never agreed... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I do the same thing.
I think it's a matter of putting your situation into perspective like "yeah things suck but they could be worse" or "hey there's someone out there that feels like I do".
I've been toying around with making an alarm clock that uses the same idea.
It cusses you out Full Metal Jacket R Lee Ermey style (hitting the snooze button only intensifies the cursing) instead of the usual chimes.
This way there is a good possibility your day will only get better!
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Indeed. Playing something like BF4 and getting ganked five times a minute by some foul-mouthed little bastard who insists on insulting both one's skills and parentage isn't going to do much for reducing stress levels...
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I agree. FPS are not my favourite genre, but sometimes I just have to shoot someone in the face, repeatedly.
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Never agreed that violent video games make a person more violent. I've been playing FPS since I was a child with my first being Wolfenstein 3D right when it came out. I also listen to heavy metal.
The bit about heavy metal is hilarious to me. It hearkens back to the PMRC (Al Gore's wife) and Twisted Sister, grilling the guy from the band about the song "Under the Blade". OOOH, SPOOKY right? The song is about having surgery.
A grieving father sued Ozzie Ozbourne for for his son's suicide because one of the son
Re:Yup... (Score:4, Interesting)
For most of the 20th century, every new form of entertainment/recreation/young people hangout was blamed for the ills of society by the older generation.
I bet the same people blaming violent video games for today's problems probably grew up in an era where their parents and grandparents were rallying against Rock Music and Pinball Parlors and such.
Re:Yup... (Score:5, Interesting)
To steal a quote from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] about my favorite Moral Panic:
In the 1771 German novel Geschichte des Frauleins von Sternheim by Sophie von La Roche, a high-minded character complains about the newly introduced waltz among aristocrats thus: "But when he put his arm around her, pressed her to his breast, cavorted with her in the shameless, indecent whirling-dance of the Germans and engaged in a familiarity that broke all the bounds of good breeding - then my silent misery turned into burning rage."
.
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So true. Anyone with a brain has known for years that there is at worst no connection at all between violent games and actual acts of violence.
Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Who would have thought that giving kids a safe environment to get their aggression out would have beneficial side effects? The said thing is that this study ever had to be conducted in the first place.
I remember when D&D was blamed for suicides, goths were blamed for school shootings, movies were blamed for just about everything and so on. At some point the idiot brigade needs to quit blaming everyone else and go back to being parents instead of outsourcing the job to the media. /rant off
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The said thing is that this study ever had to be conducted in the first place.
I wouldn't call it sad. There's a lot of "common knowledge" that has turned out to be bullshit.
I think it's a good thing that this study was conducted. It shows that someone was willing to approach the problem from a scientific perspective rather than to either blame or sanctify video games based on an emotional response. This isn't the first study to suggest that video games do not result in violent behavior, but part of science is also replicating results.
To make that study outcome (Score:1)
the researchers were set upon and beaten with an inch of their lives by video game company executives, reviewers, players and given severe noogies and wedgies by Gabe and Tycho.
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Why is that not as important? This is a non-problem; only a minuscule amount of people, if anyone, die due to some rabid, crazy video game player.
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See, you'd think that, but then look at some of the fire arm stats: http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/ [factcheck.org]
Basicly it shows that firearm sales went up and the number of firearm related murders, assaults and robberies went down.
Then look at the number of deaths in other categories such as drunk driving or just driving in general: http://danieljmitchell.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/causes-of-death-cartoon.jpg [wordpress.com]
Long story short (too late), people like to focus on the little things and blow t
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Your rhetoric is flawed because it only includes gun crimes, not total gun deaths, and the idiotic cartoon associates drunk driving deaths to gun deaths, which is not correct because nearly every drunk driving death is an accident and he doesn't include accidental gun deaths.
To put it in perspective, the US has the highest per-capita gun ownership in the world, and is #11 as far as gun deaths. I certainly wouldn't want to move to any of the countries beating us in that race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li [wikipedia.org]
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Dead is dead. Who care about "gun" deaths? The question should be whether or not increased firearms ownership causes more deaths in general.
After having done a fair bit of academic reading on the subject, my overall impression of the research is that gun ownership is not correlated with homicide to a statistically significant degree, positive or negative. Other factors strongly correlate with homicide rate, like income inequality, and entirely explain why the US has crime rates closer to countries like B
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The question should be whether or not increased firearms ownership causes more deaths in general.
I don't understand how correlating firearm ownership with other types of deaths is significant at all.
I agree that socioeconomic factors are a far, far bigger factor in violent crime in general. I was merely pointing out the flawed logic of using homicide statistics to support the "more guns == less crime" argument.
Its called blowing off steam (Score:1)
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Its called blowing off steam and it can be accomplished mush better by going outside and playing with other kids. Thats how i did it all i see are kids playing video games or watch cartoons which in my day was saturday mornings. But blowing off mental stress killing zombies is fun its just not enough in my book.
You, sir, are a veritable fossil, much as myself - get out on that bike, ski, run around in the woods, get into a boat and paddle like mad, swat at 12,507 mosquitoes at summer camp, catch a few 15 lb carp, go sledding, swipe pumpkins, chase girls, etc. Don't wake up at 40 to find half your hair gone along with most of your life in empty pursuit of points and levels.
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You do realize that today we live under the iron curtain of the 'liberal' oprah-tic soccermom mentality right?
biking is too dangerous.. same thing for sledding/boating/camping and the mosquitoes carry disease! That's why you see kids on bikes with 4000 protection devices...even when the kid's still on training wheels (even training wheels are lame)
Haven't you heard? chasing girls is 'sexual harassment.' Boys are rapists in training!! zomg
and no, this is not a troll. These attitudes are becoming more and m
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Don't wake up at 40 to find half your hair gone along with most of your life in empty pursuit of points and levels.
But what is the difference between virtual life and achievements in a game vs. life and achievements "in real life" (which may well be just as virtual.) Is chasing levels and points somehow worse than chasing money, alcohol and women, and then raising children? Do you even have a scale by which you can measure worth of any of these activities?
It's easy to say that your neighbor probably d
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Yes, exercise reduces stress, this is a proven fact. Kids aren't allowed as much outside today, or want to for that matter due to the internet, and parents fearing pedos. Somewhere I'm sure we can blame the media for this situation and slashdot.
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TL;DR (Score:2)
Can we please go more than month without someone posting an article about how there's little to no relationship between gaming and violent behavior?
Seriously - this was news 8 years ago. Nowadays it's just re-blogger-rent-seeking.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
As is, the point needs to be hammered home as much as possible if we're to keep the medium on an equal footing to all other media.
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OK, fair enough. I suppose my real annoyance is at all the stupid stuff you just mentioned, and thus should register my distaste accordingly, not take it out on those who defend the medium.
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, Jack Thompson's body was found in Florida. Apparently his head had exploded. A copy of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence was found on his desk.
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Perhaps but where are all the jackasses who kept screaming "correlations != causation" when the opposite was found? Isn't this study suffering from the same assumptions? Or do you accept "science" when it fits your model of the world... or at least your vision of the world?
"Correlation is not causation" only applies when a study yields an incorrect result. When the conclusion is correct, then obviously correlation does mean causation.
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"Correlation is not causation" only applies when a study yields an incorrect result. When the conclusion is correct, then obviously correlation does mean causation.
It applies only if you are finding a correlation in data produced by passively monitoring events in a given system. It does not apply if you are actively changing one variable and then watch other variables.
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Yes, a meme can be completely misleading.
Sample size? (Score:3)
Is 377 sufficient? What is an adequate sample size? How do you determine what the sample size should be?
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The sample size needed 960 more players.
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You study statistics.
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where are the graphs? (Score:3)
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Never heard of supporting information?
No. Do you mean supplemental figures? Because there aren't any.
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At first, I thought you were a bit out of line, and it would be easy to include graphs which look meaningful but illuminate nothing, and we should give these researchers some credit for avoiding obvious pitfalls. Then I looked closer.
All they do is mention that one variable looks pretty much normally-distributed, and don't mention anything about outliers, etc. The effect of stress is radically different (having no effect) for the regression for bullying among children with ADD than it is for all others, wit
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You're right, this is garbage.
I agree it's easy to include pointless graphs, but when there are no graphs of the primary effects I don't trust the study. In fact, it makes me think they just looked at the textual output of their stats package and never graphed their own data. It's a cliche, but a graph really is worth a thousand words. If they show the data then you have almost everything you need to make up your own mind. If they show only some numbers in a table then you never know what happened. Was a slope value influenced by an out
We already did this experment with porn (Score:1)
Must supress that article! (Score:1)
But Driving is Worse (Score:2)
Could we correlate unrealistic driving video games with insurance premium increases?
This will never do! (Score:2)
Acknowledgements (Score:1)
Same as online porn (Score:1)
Experts on aggression? (Score:3)
Somehow I doubt the contributors to "Journal of Youth and Adolescence" are focused experts in human aggression. I similarly wouldn't put much confidence in any paper they published regarding how well children are able to code complex database applications.
The US Military has a large body of research they've conducted over the past 60 years in exactly how to cultivate and control aggression in youths, which is why our soldiers are some of the most lethal on the planet. They also have a similarly large body of research on how to inhibit it -- its instructive how relatively few war crimes have been committed by US Soldiers over the past decade in our many myriad wars.
My layman's summary of their research? Video games are excellent training simulators for violence, but don't actually cause aggression. Aggression is cultivated/controlled through supervised training (or lack thereof). Very similar to Milgram's findings in the 60s.
Dave Grossman's books do a pretty good job of explaining this research in an relatively accessible way.
Maybe... (Score:1)
One of these days (Score:2)
Consider solidier's deaths in training (Score:2)
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---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [byline] block not found
I've seen this before when the Enterprise was caught in a time causality loop. The answer is the number 3.
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