Violent video games and movies are conditioning people "Pavlov style" to massacre and murder as

reply to post by grandmakdw


You're still trying to make the connection that people who get rewards out of video games from killing people will translate that to the real world. I disagree.

Originally posted by Ghost375
You're wrong.
Prove it.

Hes anything BUT wrong..

He also most likely has enough sense to know that to "prove it" would be a complete waste of his time AND yours.

SOME of us are more interested in the truth than in being "right" all the time.

"Ever since people began to see Pac-Man eating all those dots they just blindly do exactly the same."

Pac-Man linked to childhood obesity

Originally posted by johngalt722

If you find this reasoning extreme and ridiculous, I find your reasoning ridiculous and extreme as well. How many people play video games and then think its okay to act them out in real life. Some? Sure, but not enough to justify that video games cause precognitive loading.

Again, this shows poor reasoning.

It matters not how many people play the game and don't commit mass murder. What matters is that people are conditioned through constantly viewing these acts.

If you put someone who is exposed to people's heads being blown off daily from playing a video game, against someone who doesn't have this same exposure..a non goreaholic-video gamer, and you place them in front of a screen which shows someone's head getting blown up, and registers their level of brain activity in regions which show emotional processing, such as the amygdala, I guarantee you the guy who wasn't exposed will show signs of trauma, or extreme emotional distress vs the video gamer.

What does that mean for most people? Not much. They have an intact "conscience", or decent reasoning to back up life experiences filled with ways to properly emotionally process situations.

We're talking about groups of many people, not any one individual. When we're dealing with millions, some will be "defunct". Some will not only become conditioned to not respond so strongly, emotionally, to such a stimuli, but will erroneously start bizarrely reasoning their way into believing that this is okay, or acceptable, or just reality, or whatever that is utterly stupid. It's not to them. Maybe slightly autistic, I dunno. Plenty of abnormalities where this exposure could really screw with someone's head.

That it doesn't happen to the majority of us, doesn't matter. It still screws some people up hardcore. I bet it still messes with us all to an extent that we simply don't accept. You know why? Because we're all sharing this same collective view of what "norm" is, and we don't know any other reality.


*UPDATE*

I'm not at all suggesting that violent games should be banned. Love to civilly bash some people in a game from time to time... but I do think it would be wise for us to explore all possibilities regarding this as a potential vector for idiot-psycho acts.

I think it may be wise to do simple psychological testing after we truly figure out WTH is going on with the human mind... maybe 10-30 years down the line. From there, we can figure out if these individuals should be put in positions of power, or if they should be kept in society, or have exposure to certain stimuli, etc... but we're no where close to doing something like this right now without it leading to tyranny. It's just something to think on here in 2013.

People are violent because it's their choice to do so. Yes games and movies are violent and so are.cartoons and action figures. How about we ban TOY GUNS AND AIRSOFTS hmm? Theirs the preconditioning there.

If people uses video games as an excuse then that's just sad period.

The truth is that some parents can't parenting themselves or their children. Parents if you know your kids may have some sort of disabilities then seek them help, we can't blame the system for everything that we have some control over.

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
Sure, some people play violent video games all day and don't act out in violence - but many people DO act out violently as a result of their lifelong exposure to the glamorization of violence.

Let's not start being dishonest here. You've got the above backwards. I'll fix it for ya:

Most people who play violent video games all day every day don't act out in violence. A very few people DO act out in violence as a result of their exposure to violence in video games.

Those people who do act out have mental issues in one form or another. But you're not going to sit there and falsely protest that out of the millions upon millions of people who play shooters like Call of Duty, or criminalistic games like Grand Theft Auto, that many of them act out in violence because of their "exposure", and that only "some" of them don't act out. That is absolutely inaccurate and absurd.

reply to post by grandmakdw


Come on, the problem isn't video games and movies or music.....

IF it is a problem then you have people who can't distinguish fantasy from reality.

People are idiots and when you put 300 million idiots in one area there are bound to be problems.

Factor that in with the fact that nobody wants to accept personal responsibility for their actions...

Factor in that most people have a entitlement attitude where they believe they are owed everything without working for it....

Too many people are just selfish, lazy idiots.............period.

It's the society we live in.

Originally posted by forgetmenot
I don't think video games, tv, and movies are the problem; I do think obsession with them is a problem in our society. Entertainment can be just that: entertaining. But when you close out everything but that entertainment you're bound to be affected by it. That's not to say, however, that it leads to violence.

If anything I think it leads to impatience; Try making a hardcore gamer wait for anything besides a release date

edit on 3-1-2013 by forgetmenot because: (no reason given)

Ok, let's work on your assumption. Gamers learn impatience.
Doesn't poor impulse control combined with impatience lead to violence?

Impatience itself is a form of poor impulse control, poor self control, so according to your reasoning, the violent games and media lead to poor self control, which leads to being easily angered, which in turn can lead to a conditioned response to anger. Voile! Violent aggression against those who thwart the gamers
"wants and needs".

Originally posted by _BoneZ_

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
Sure, some people play violent video games all day and don't act out in violence - but many people DO act out violently as a result of their lifelong exposure to the glamorization of violence.

Let's not start being dishonest here. You've got the above backwards. I'll fix it for ya:

Most people who play violent video games all day every day don't act out in violence. A very few people DO act out in violence as a result of their exposure to violence in video games.

Those people who do act out have mental issues in one form or another. But you're not going to sit there and falsely protest that out of the millions upon millions of people who play shooters like Call of Duty, or criminalistic games like Grand Theft Auto, that many of them act out in violence because of their "exposure", and that only "some" of them don't act out. That is absolutely inaccurate and absurd.

Well, I'll let the real researchers do the work for me - just watch the documentary and read my link about Cultivation Theory.

You don't need to start tossing insults because I had something negative to say about one of your favorite pass times.

And if we're going to talk about banning guns in this country, we need to look behind that tool that is being used at the reasons people would consider going on a killing spree in the first place. Cultivation Theory pretty concretely shows that people with exposure to violence in various forms of media react differently when seeing violence than people who are NOT exposed. Your hobby is dulling your conscious - I'm not insulting you, I'm just telling you what the research says.

Have a nice day!

I agree with the OP on this. At least I agree it's conditioning and desensitizing. It's NOT cause and effect ... but it's making the acts being committed easier I believe.

Like others here, I'm a gamer too. Not so much the last couple years but I was an absolute menace to snipers in Team Fortress (Half Life for those non gamers) for years. Nothing better than a nice head shot when the idiot is off looking another direction. Awww.. I swear I could almost hear the scream of frustration sometimes.

I think the difference today is that during MY formative years when values and the definition of what is truly disturbing and wrong vs. what can be seen in shades of gray and rationalized came when "violent" games consisted of near stick figures in Castle Wolfenstein on the Apple IIc and Police Quest games. I was well out of those age ranges when video game violence with a near true to life levels of detail and graphic level became commonplace.

I can't say how I may have come to see things if I'd been "committing" simulated acts of murder, assassination and beating innocent people to death for score (Grand Theft Auto Series... Postal, Saints Row series .. etc) from single digit ages onward. It *HAS* to do something to make those concepts and visuals carry less impact when seen and DONE that young, day in and day out for years. Most GOOD gamers I know now and have ever known put hundreds upon hundreds upon HUNDREDS of hours into a good game before it goes on the shelf for the next one. 10's of thousands of "frags" or kills ..over those literal weeks of clock hours combined.

I think we'd be foolish to think it has no impact whatsoever. Although to blame them as a CAUSE ...is also too simple an approach, in my view.

To support what some others have posted...here's an article written a little over a year ago...

History and the Decline of Human Violence

In a magisterial new book, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argues that humanity's "better angels" are triumphing

By Gareth Cook

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, is the author of the best-selling books, “How the Mind Works,” and “The Blank Slate.” But he is also a public intellectual, devoted to bringing the ideas of academia to questions of broad public interest. His latest work is an ambitious attempt to understand the origins, history—and perhaps the future—of human violence. The book is called “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” and it combines science with history to conclude that, by many measures, we live in the best of times, not the worst.

To the best of my knowledge, books have been around for sometime. Some I would posit contained violent themes that would pale in comparison to anything video games offer today. In essence, books affect the mind in the same way, even more as the visuals created within the constructs of the readers mind are subjective to the reader.

I (being quite partial as it is) would have to respectfully disagree with this theory of yours OP!

Originally posted by grandmakdw
Are TPTB encouraging violent movies, tv and video games to reduce the surplus population?

That would be pretty pointless when all they have to do is put harmful chemicals in our food, drug us up, and withhold cures for multiple ailments from us while watching us die off. Random shootings pale in comparison to the stuff TPTB are actually up to.

Originally posted by randomtangentsrme

Quote attributed to Socrates here: www.bartleby.com...

Every generation will claim something new to be what's wrong with today.
When in reality, people are still the same.

There you have it!

Maybe it works the other way!
maybe people exorcise their aggression through violent games etc, read about the second world war and the eastern front. Violence and aggression are an integral part of the human race, if you study history we are living in less violent times than ever before, most people are so far removed from death nowadays that we are shocked when it visits us personally. Throughout the past violence and death were much more a part of daily life than now. Death has been isolated, we rarely kill our own food and infant mortality is a fraction of what it once was, public executions are no longer the day out that they once were.

To reply to the OP I'd say that violence in games and movies are actually absorbing the inherent violence in humans and are dissipating them harmlessly.
A certain percentage will always carry out their aggression in real life but to be fair I don't think that virtual violence increases the occurrence of real violence.

reply to post by johngalt722


Yes, I am translating it to that.

I think that violent video games should be regulated like alcohol. For adults only, ID required and perhaps with the requirement to register as one does when buying a gun to purchase.

I think Hollywood should take a long look at the damage they have done to society by making "justified" massacre, fun, funny and lacking any emotional or "real" consequences. Movies or TV channels rated with V should be locked down so that only those with ID to prove they are adults can attend or access. Right now R rated movies frequently have children in them with their parents, that should be ended and only people with proper ID and above 18 should be allowed to attend.

Why is it so impossible for our society to learn from the recent massacres by gamers? We learned about the dangers of not using restraints in autos. We learned that the drinking age needed to be raised to 21 and only adults have access. Why can't we learn from gamer massacres and restrict the purchase to over 21 only?

Originally posted by sconner755

Originally posted by syrinx high priest
if its operant conditioning, what is the reward given for the desired behavior ?

You get points for shooting and killing.

Classic conditioning.

Why do you think ATS uses stars and flags? It's the gamification of violence. 100% pure variable response conditioning.

no I mean killing people in the real world. operant conditioning is when you are rewarded for the desired behavior to reinforce the behavior and to repeat it

the only reward would be notoriety or fame, but you don't get that from the game, do you ?

reply to post by UberL33t


On that note, how many violent criminals do you think read "The Catcher in the Rye", that never played a video game?

Damn guys... Go read a history book. If anything, we're far less accepting of violence. The problem now is the fact mass media throws every bit that happens in our face to make a buck.

Guillotine

That # used to be entertainment. Really, next time you have company, try and pull out a real chicken, then cut its head off before preparing it. People will freak. Crap like that used to just be part of every day life.

Violence in video games would only effect the already sick, who most likely would be fantasizing about it anyway. This is BS.

Originally posted by grandmakdw
reply to post by johngalt722

 

I think that violent video games should be regulated like alcohol. For adults only, ID required and perhaps with the requirement to register as one does when buying a gun to purchase.

A number of great mass murderers were inspired by historical epics and mythical figures. They were generals, and kings and all the rest of it but still ...

Next we will have to fill out a PY32 Form - Application to Read a Book or Watch a Play with Violent Content. It's very 1984.

And what will the license and ID do apart from justify some people's fears that a human being can be turned into a mindless killing machine by watching a movie or game? It would just be like the Committee of unAmerican Affairs.

I think a lot of games are immature and I find gory movies uncomfortable ... Stigmatizing movie goers and gamers like a group of lepers addicted to crack isn't a way to deal with it though.

reply to post by grandmakdw


Games are regulated, just not like alcohol. The ESRB determines what the ratings on games should be.

Originally posted by TinkerHaus
Your hobby is dulling your conscious

No, it's not. I've played every Call of Duty. I haven't went out and murdered anybody. I've played every Grand Theft Auto since the game first appeared 16 years ago., I don't have any urges to go out and steal a car, or run over people, or any of the criminal activities portrayed in those games.

You can rationalize or theorize about it however you like. But only those who have mental instabilities will be the ones acting out violence because they can't distinguish video game from reality, right from wrong, etc.