My Quick Review, Summary & Commentary on Research Related to Violent Video Games and Increased Violence Potential and Behavior
From:
electronics.howstuffworks.com...
Do violent video games lead to real violence?
by Julia Layton
Bo Xian color bold emphases added:
There's some evidence to this effect, including a study reported in the journal "Psychological Science" in 2001. The report is an overall analysis
of 35 individual studies on video game violence. It found several common conclusions, including:
• Children who play violent video games experience an increase in physiological signs of aggression. According to the authors behind the
meta-analysis, when young people are playing a violent video game, [color=6699FF]their blood pressure and heart rate increases, and "fight or
flight" hormones like adrenaline flood the brain. The same thing happens when people are in an actual, physical fight. One study even showed a
difference in physical arousal between a bloody version of "Mortal Kombat" (a fight-to-the-death game) and a version with the blood turned
off.[/color]
•
• .
•
• Children who play violent video games experience an increase in aggressive actions. A 2000 study involving college students yielded interesting
results. The study had two components: a session of video-game play, in which half the students played a violent video game and half played a
non-violent video game, and then a simple reaction-time test that put two of the students in head-to-head competition. Whoever won the reaction-time
test got to punish the loser with an audio blast. [color=6699FF]Of the students who won the reaction-time test, the ones who'd been playing a
violent video game delivered longer, louder audio bursts to their opponents.[/color]
One of the most recent studies, conducted in 2006 at the Indiana University School of Medicine, went right to the source. Researchers scanned the
brains of 44 kids immediately after they played video games. Half of the kids played "Need for Speed: Underground," an action racing game that
doesn't have a violent component. The other half played "Medal of Honor: Frontline," an action game that includes violent first-person shooter
activity (the game revolves around the player's point of view). [color=6699FF]The brain scans of the kids who played the violent game showed
increased activity in the amygdala, which stimulates emotions, and decreased activity in the prefrontal lobe, which regulates inhibition, self-control
and concentration. These activity changes didn't show up on the brain scans of the kids playing "Need for Speed[/color]
These findings are real.
The brain scan findings are emphatic.
A huge factor in acting out or avoiding violence is the brain center having to do with inhibition and self control. WHEN that brain center is
functioning with a healthy focus, tendency, predisposition, habitual self-control and a healthy inhibiting of violent thoughts and urges, violence is
at least less to non-existent.
WHEN that brain center has been moderated to functionally ‘turned down’ or even mostly off by any DIS-inhibiting conditioning, experiences,
training, brainwashing, conditioning—then violent thoughts AND ACTIONS increase.
!!!!DOH!!!!
On page 2 of the above article, David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and Family notes that some normally non-hostile tending children showed
‘REAL WORLD’ acting out GREATER than did their normally more aggressive cohorts.
The article notes that
“The Associated Press reported in March 2008 that video game sales—hardware and software combined—reached $1.33 billion in February [Source:
NYT]. [color=6699FF]That’s for the month, not the quarter, and it’s 34 percent higher than January 2008 sales.
Imho, folks who believe ALL THAT results in NO INCREASE of violence potential and aggressive acting out . . . are just deluding themselves . . . at
best.
= = = = = =
From
kotaku.com...
From Halo To Hot Sauce: What 25 Years Of Violent Video Game Research Looks Like
Jason Schreier
.
. . .
The results of this experiment—conducted by Ohio State University professor Brad Bushman not to measure brightness, as they had told the students,
but to examine the connection between violent video games and aggressive behavior—were conclusive, the researchers said. The people who played
violent video games were more likely to write more aggressive stories and dish out higher, more unpleasant noise. Violent video games, Bushman and his
colleagues concluded, have a direct causal effect on aggression.
.
In other words, playing Call of Duty makes you want to fight.
. . . .
. . . As University of Toledo associate professor of psychology Jeanne Funk told the Los Angeles Times in one 1999 article: "We found signs that
children who enjoy [violent] games can lose the emotional cues that trigger empathy."
. . .
On one side of the argument are Bushman, Anderson, and several other scientists who say there's a definitive causal link between games and aggressive
behavior. Violent video games, this camp would argue, make people more aggressive.
.
"On average, the research shows that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, it increases angry feelings, it increases
physiological arousal such as heart rate and blood pressure, which may explain why it also increases aggressive behavior," Bushman told me in a phone
interview. "It decreases helping behavior and it decreases feelings of empathy for others and the effects occur for males and females regardless of
their age and regardless of where they live in the world."
. . .
"It looks like a pretty clear link," said Doug Gentile, a leading researcher in media violence who spoke to me on the phone last week. "Kids who
play more violent video games—it changes their attitudes and their beliefs about aggression. It does desensitize them. It certainly hypes up
aggressive feeling in the short-term. In the long-term it probably links aggression with fun, which is a really weird idea. Or aggression and
relaxation, another weird idea."
. . .
In 2010, Bushman ran a meta-analysis called "VVG Effects on Aggression, Empathy, and Prosocial Behavior in Western and Eastern Countries: A
Meta-Analytic Review." He and some colleagues studied results from something like 130,000 participants, concluding that there is indeed a link
between violent video games and aggression.
. . .
. . . But we know that there is a link between playing violent video games and more common forms of aggressive behavior—such as getting in
fights."
. . .
. . . We found that playing more hours a day of the two types of competitive games did predict aggression over time," Adachi told me over the
phone
. . .
. . . Later, they were all tested. Polman and her colleagues found that players of the violent game were significantly more aggressive—at least in
the short-term—than people who just watched it.
. . ..
That article gets into the issue of AGGRESSION vs VIOLENCE.
Aggression can be construed to be any hostile behavior, attitude, verbalization etc. while violence tends to be thought of as more narrowly defined as
physical assaults of one sort or another.
{continued next post}
