http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1723
serendip.brynmawr.edu
Grace Shin

There is a huge hype surrounding the launch of every new game system – Game Cube, XBox, and Sony Playstation 2 being just few of the latest. Affecting children age 4 all the way to 45 year-old adults, these video games have called for concern in our society regarding issues such as addiction, depression, and even aggression related to the playing of video games. A recent study of children in their early teens found that almost a third played video games daily, and that 7% played for at least 30 hours a week. (1) What is more, some of these games being played like Mortal Combat, Marvel Vs. Capcom, and Doom are very interactive in the violence of slaughtering the opponent. The video game industries even put signs like “Real-life violence” and “Violence level – not recommended for children under age of 12″ on their box covers, arcade fronts, and even on the game CDs themselves.

In the modern popular game Goldeneye 007 bad guys no longer disappear in a cloud of smoke when killed. Instead they perform an elaborate maneuver when killed. For example, those shot in the neck fall to their knees and then face while clutching at their throats. Other games such as Unreal Tournament and Half-Life are gorier. In these games when characters get shot a large spray of blood covers the walls and floor near the character, and on the occasions when explosives are used, the characters burst into small but recognizable body parts. In spite of the violence, the violent video games are also the more popular games on the market. (2) When video games first came out, indeed they were addictive… however, there seems to be a strong correlation now between the violent nature of games these days and the aggressive tendencies in game players.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold launched an assault on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, murdering 13 and wounding 23 before turning the guns on themselves. Although nothing is for certain as to why these boys did what they did, we do know that Harris and Klebold both enjoyed playing the bloody, shoot-’em-up video game Doom, a game licensed by the U.S. military to train soldiers to effectively kill. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks Internet hate groups, found in its archives a copy of Harris’ web site with a version of Doom. He had customized it so that there were two shooters, each with extra weapons and unlimited ammunition, and the other people in the game could not fight back. For a class project, Harris and Klebold made a videotape that was similar to their customized version of Doom. In the video, Harris and Klebold were dressed in trench coats, carried guns, and killed school athletes. They acted out their videotaped performance in real life less than a year later… (3)

Everyone deals with stress and frustrations differently. However when action is taken upon the frustration and stress, and the action is taken out in anger and aggression, the results may be very harmful to both the aggressor and the person being aggressed against, mentally, emotionally, and even physically. Aggression is action, i.e. attacking someone or a group with an intent to harm someone. It can be a verbal attack–insults, threats, sarcasm, or attributing nasty motives to them–or a physical punishment or restriction. Direct behavioral signs include being overly critical, fault finding, name-calling, accusing someone of having immoral or despicable traits or motives, nagging, whining, sarcasm, prejudice, and/or flashes of temper. (4) The crime and abuse rate in the United States has soared in the past decade. More and more children suffer from and are being treated for anger management than ever before. Now, one can’t help but to wonder if these violent video games are even playing a slight part in the current statistics. I believe they do.

Calvert and Tan (5) compared the effects of playing versus observing violent video games on young adults’ arousal levels, hostile feelings, and aggressive thoughts. Results indicated that college students who had played a violent virtual reality game had a higher heart rate, reported more dizziness and nausea, and exhibited more aggressive thoughts in a posttest than those who had played a nonviolent game do. A study by Irwin and Gross (6) sought to identify effects of playing an “aggressive” versus “nonaggressive” video game on second-grade boys identified as impulsive or reflective. Boys who had played the aggressive game, compared to those who had played the nonaggressive game, displayed more verbal and physical aggression to inanimate objects and playmates during a subsequent free play session. Moreover, these differences were not related to the boys’ impulsive or reflective traits. Thirdly, Kirsh (7) also investigated the effects of playing a violent versus a nonviolent video game. After playing these games, third- and fourth-graders were asked questions about a hypothetical story. On three of six questions, the children who had played the violent game responded more negatively about the harmful actions of a story character than did the other children. These results suggest that playing violent video games may make children more likely to attribute hostile intentions to others.

In another study by Karen E. Dill, Ph.D. & Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., violent video games were considered to be more harmful in increasing aggression than violent movies or television shows due to their interactive and engrossing nature. (8) The two studies showed that aggressive young men were especially vulnerable to violent games and that even brief exposure to violent games can temporarily increase aggressive behavior in all types of participants.
The first study was conducted with 227 college students with aggressive behavior records in the past and who completed a measure of trait aggressiveness. They were also reported to have habits of playing video games. It was found that students, who reported playing more violent video games in junior and high school, engaged in more aggressive behavior. In addition, the time spent playing video games in the past were associated with lower academic grades in college, which is a source of frustration for many students, a potential cause for anger and aggression as discussed in the previous paragraph.

In the second study, 210 college students were allowed to play Wolfenstein 3D, an extremely violent game, or Myst, a nonviolent game. After a short time, it was found that the students who played the violent game punished an opponent for a longer period of time compared to the students who played the non violent game. Dr. Anderson concluded by saying, “Violent video games provide a forum for learning and practicing aggressive solutions to conflict situations. It the short run, playing a violent video game appears to affect aggression by priming aggressive thoughts.” Despite the fact that this study was for a short term effect, longer term effects are likely to be possible as the player learns and practices new aggression-related scripts that can become more and more accessible for the real-life conflict that may arise. (9)

The U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once claimed that arcade and home video games are among the top three causes of family. Although there have been studies that have found video game violence to have little negative effects on their players, there are also many studies that have found a positive correlation between negative behavior, such as aggression, and video and computer game violence. Thus, in order to totally assess the effects of game violence on its users, the limiting conditions under which there are effects must be taken into account, which include age, gender, and class/level of education. (10) However, violent games do affect children, as the studies show, especially early teens, and I feel that there needs to be a stricter regulation regarding the availability of these games to young children.

References

1) BBC News Web site in UK.

2) Game Research Website, covering the art, the business, and the science of computer games.

3) American Psychological Association, Article on the main study discussed in this paper.

4) Mental Help Net, Psychological Self-Help. This site has a lot of interesting links to mental illnesses and just understanding personalities.

5) Calvert, Sandra L., & Tan, Siu-Lan. (1994). Impact of virtual reality on young adults’ physiological arousal and aggressive thoughts: Interaction versus observation. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15(1), 125-139. PS 527 971.

6) Irwin, A. Roland, & Gross, Alan M. (1995). Cognitive tempo, violent video games, and aggressive behavior in young boys. Journal of Family Violence, 10(3), 337-350.

7) Kirsh, Steven J. (1997, April). Seeing the world through “Mortal Kombat” colored glasses: Violent video games and hostile attribution bias. Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC.

SelfhelpMagazine. Article under teen help. It is a great library of various mental disorders and personal growth topics!

9) American Psychological Association.

10) Internet Impact This paper is a collaborative essay consisting of research and policy recommendations on the impact of the Internet in society.

http://www.slate.com/id/2164065/
slate.com
By Amanda Schaffer

On The Daily Show on Thursday, April 26, Jon Stewart made short work of the suggestion that the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, might have been influenced by violent video games. (Cho may or may not have played the popular first-person-shooter game Counter-Strike in high school.) A potential video-game connection has also been dangled after past killings, to the irritation of bloggers. The reports are that shooter Lee Boyd Malvo played the game Halo before his sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., and that Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold loved Doom. Does the link between video games and violence hold up?

Pathological acts of course have multiple, complex causes and are terribly hard to predict. And clearly, millions of people play Counter-Strike, Halo, and Doom and never commit crimes. But the subtler question is whether exposure to video-game violence is one risk factor for increased aggression: Is it associated with shifts in attitudes or responses that may predispose kids to act out? A large body of evidence suggests that this may be so. The studies have their shortcomings, but taken as a whole, they demonstrate that video games have a potent impact on behavior and learning. Sorry, Jon Stewart, but you needn’t be a fuddy-duddy to worry about the virtual worlds your child lives in.

Three kinds of research link violent video games to increased aggression. First, there are studies that look for correlations between exposure to these games and real-world aggression. This work suggests that kids who are more immersed in violent video games may be more likely to get into physical fights, argue with teachers, or display anger and hostility. Second, there is longitudinal research (measuring behavior over time) that assesses gaming habits and belligerence in a group of children. One example: A study of 430 third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders, published this year by psychologists Craig Anderson, Douglas Gentile, and Katherine Buckley, found that the kids who played more violent video games “changed over the school year to become more verbally aggressive, more physically aggressive,” and less helpful to others.

Finally, experimental studies randomly assign subjects to play a violent or a nonviolent game, and then compare their levels of aggression. In work published in 2000, Anderson and Karen Dill randomly assigned 210 undergraduates to play Wolfenstein 3-D, a first-person-shooter game, or Myst, an adventure game in which players explore mazes and puzzles. Anderson and Dill found that when the students went on to play a second game, the Wolfenstein 3-D players were more likely to behave aggressively toward losing opponents. Given the chance to punish with blasts of noise, they chose to inflict significantly louder and longer blasts than the Myst kids did. Other recent work randomly assigned students to play violent or nonviolent games, and then analyzed differences in brain activation patterns using fMRI scans, but the research is so far difficult to assess.

Each of these approaches has its flaws. The first kind of correlational study can never prove that video-game playing causes physical aggression. Maybe aggressive people are simply more apt to play violent games in the first place. Meanwhile, the randomized trials, like Anderson and Dill’s, which do imply causation, necessarily depend on lab-based measures of aggression, such as whether subjects blast each other with noise. This is a respected measure, but obviously not the same as seeing whether real people hit or shoot each other. The longitudinal work, like this year’s elementary-school study, is a useful middle ground: It shows that across the board, playing more-violent video games predicts higher levels of verbal and physical aggression later on. It doesn’t matter why the kids started playing violent games or whether they were already more aggressive than their peers; the point is that a year of game-playing likely contributes to making them more aggressive than they were when they started. If we had only one of the three kinds of studies, the findings wouldn’t mean much. But taken together, the body of research suggests a real connection.

The connection between violent games and real violence is also fairly intuitive. In playing the games, kids are likely to become desensitized to gory images, which could make them less disturbing and perhaps easier to deal with in real life. The games may also encourage kids (and adults) to rehearse aggressive solutions to conflict, meaning that these thought processes may become more available to them when real-life conflicts arise, Anderson says. Video games also offer immediate feedback and constant small rewards—in the form of points, or access to new levels or weapons. And they tend to tailor tasks to a player’s skill level, starting easy and getting harder. That makes them “phenomenal teachers,” says Anderson, though “what they teach very much depends on content.”

Critics counter that some kids may “use games to vent anger or distract themselves from problems,” as psychiatry professor Cheryl Olson writes. This can be “functional” rather than unhealthy, depending on the kid’s mental state and the extent of his game playing. But other studies suggest that venting anger doesn’t reduce later aggressive behavior, so this thesis doesn’t have the most solid support.

When video games aren’t about violence, their capacity to teach can be a good thing. For patients suffering from arachnophobia, fear of flying, or post-traumatic stress disorder, therapists are beginning to use virtual realities as a desensitization tool. And despite the rap that they’re a waste of time, video games may also teach visual attention and spatial skills. (Recently, a study showed that having played three or more hours of video games a week was a better predictor of a laparoscopic surgeon’s skills than his or her level of surgical training.) The games also work for conveying information to kids that they will remember. Video games that teach diabetic kids how to take better care of themselves, for instance, were shown to decrease their diabetes-related urgent and emergency visits by 77 percent after six months.

Given all of this, it makes sense to be specific about which games may be linked to harmful effects and which to neutral or good ones. Better research is also needed to understand whether some kids are more vulnerable to video-game violence, and how exposure interacts with other risk factors for aggression like poverty, psychological disorders, and a history of abuse. Meanwhile, how about a game in which kids, shrinks, and late-night comics size up all these factors and help save the world?

http://mises.org/story/3528
mises.org
by Art Carden

How do our choices of amusements affect our behavior and, therefore, society? Whenever newer, more violent video games are released, some commentators inevitably call for government regulation because of studies linking video games and violence. This became an issue at the beginning of this year when some officials argued for federal labeling guidelines.

Some time ago, I heard part of a radio program in which the host and her guests discussed how music, movies, and video games affect people’s behavior. I didn’t get to listen to the entire program, but there were a couple of things said during the part I listened to that I found interesting.

First, the host asked whether the fact that someone is committing crimes vicariously in video games — for example, taking on the role of a criminal in Grand Theft Auto — impacts their real-world behavior.

Second, one of the guests questioned whether the physical activity people are getting by playing Nintendo Wii is really doing much good for their health. Legislation concerning what children and adults do with their free time is often supported by “expert” analysis along these lines. Thus, attempts to regulate video games will have important implications for our safety and liberty.

The effect of video games on crime is not as obvious as it is often suggested. The same guest mentioned that the perpetrators of the 1999 Columbine school shootings were avid video game players and reported that, according to rumors, one of them had practiced for the raid by creating a mock-up of their school using a map editor from one of their favorite first-person shooters. Statistically, people who play violent video games are also those who are more likely to commit heinous crimes than others, and some experts infer from this correlation that violent video games encourage violence. On its face, the connection seems clear.

However, whether there is a real, causal relationship between video games and violence, or whether that relationship is correlation, is a deeper and more complex issue. For example, another plausible explanation is that the people who are likely to commit crimes are also likely to be attracted to violent video games. Therefore, what we observe is simply correlation, with both phenomena being explained by a common third factor.

The hypothesis that video games cause crime is further complicated by the idea that violent video games might actually serve as a substitute for violent crime — that is, people who are likely to commit violent crimes might be able to get their violence “fix” by playing video games instead of committing crimes. Regulating video games would thus treat a symptom of the disease, but not the disease itself. Moreover, if video games are indeed a substitute for real-life violence, regulating the games might even make violence worse.

Studies of the relationship between pornography and rape suggest that this thesis is more plausible than it might seem at first. Separate empirical studies by Winai Wongsurat and Todd Kendall have shown that increased access to pornography actually leads to reductions in the rates of divorce and rape. Wongsurawat cites the availability of PO boxes, which increase access to pornographic magazines but do not have an independent effect on crime, to identify the effect of pornography on sex crimes and divorce. Kendall looks specifically at the diffusion of internet pornography and shows that access to the internet and (presumably) internet pornography is associated with reductions in sex crime. Kendall’s hypothesis that this is a causal relationship is strengthened by the fact that the effect is strongest for crimes committed by the group whose consumption of pornography is most likely to be affected by access to the internet: young males who live with their parents.

I am not aware of any studies that use similar methods to analyze the effect of video games on crime. However, if people are going to advocate restrictions on liberty, the burden of proof is on them to demonstrate that their hypothesized relationship is real and widespread enough to cause concern. For even if it is shown that violent video games lead to more crime, the case for government intervention is complicated by measurement issues, concerns over personal liberty and personal privacy, and the tendency for regulation to lead to ever more regulation.

Taking an “I-know-it-when-I-see-it” approach to identifying unacceptable video game violence — much like the standards currently used to define pornography — would introduce substantial uncertainty into production decisions, because there are no objective standards that define “acceptable” and “unacceptable.” Politically made rules are also subject to political manipulation and a cat-and-mouse game of regulate-and-evade played by the regulators and the regulated. This will wastefully consume resources and lead to further encroachments on individual freedom as standards are contested.

Attempts to regulate cultural goods like video games may involve far more than considerations of personal liberties alone. Regulations that restrict access to pornography, for example, may actually increase the social problems they are intended to correct. Regulations restricting access to violent video games could do the same.