No evidence to support link between violent video games and behaviour
york.ac.uk
york.ac.uk
Convincing the average human to do violence to another takes a _lot_ of effort. Real violence is nothing like games, and has a viscerality that games cannot prepare one for. I would question whether anyone that conflates the two has ever had to inflict injury on another human.
If games made people violent, the military would send people copies of GTA V. Yes, the American army have their own game, but that's a recruitment tool and not a violence-desensitiser.
Games like insurgency and arma actually really helped me with my now under control PTSD, my theory is that I was doing CBT immersion therapy on myself.
"I would question whether anyone that conflates the two has ever had to inflict injury on another human."
Indeed. If you don't mind me asking, what martial art(s) do you train in?
Citation: Dr. David Zendle, Dr. Paul Cairns, Dr. Daniel Kudenko, No Priming in Video Games, Computers in Human Behavior (2017).
Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.021
DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.021
Abstract: Video games depict a variety of different concepts. Models of learning in games like the GLM (General Learning Model) and GAM (General Aggression Model) predict that exposing players to these in-game concepts can lead to important changes in player behaviour.
Priming effects are thought to be key to determining these changes in behaviour. However, recent research has suggested problems with the priming effects that have previously been observed in the video game literature. Indeed, widespread methodological issues with this body of research make it unclear whether priming effects occur at all in video games.
Two experiments (total N = 532) investigated whether priming effects still occurred in video games when known confounds in the literature were accounted for. Priming was observed in neither study. However, in both studies a novel negative priming effect was observed instead, in which exposure to a specific concept inhibited players’ reactions to things that were related to that concept.
These studies support previous research which indicates there may be serious confounding in the video game literature. They also suggest that the priming-related effects of video games may be overestimated. Finally, they highlight the potential existence of negative priming as an effect of video game play.
Highlights:
• Priming is not seen when differences in gameplay between conditions are controlled.
• Popular models of learning in games (GAM, GLM) are challenged.
• Negative priming inconsistently observed: Playing a game sometimes inhibits reactions to in-game concepts.
It is not impossible. But the window for it to be true is made rather narrow if visceral video games aren't capable of "priming"; the window for it to be relevant to the world smaller yet.
It lends yet more credence to the idea that the way the priming papers got published in the first place is in much the same way ESP papers can be peer reviewed and get published... our standard for statistical significance in publishing is too low.
[1]: I contrast this with certain ones that we know work, and the field of marketing considers "engineering" rather than science.
“We also only tested these theories on adults, so more work is needed to understand whether a different effect is evident in children players.”
Given that basic training doesn't involve hyperrealistic lethal violence...yeah, I'd be surprised if the two had similar effects.
[1]http://slideplayer.com/slide/1678667/7/images/65/USMC+Qualif...
I wasn't, though I did do Army ROTC Basic Camp in 1994 before deciding not to contract; around the same time, I spent a lot of time talking to people who went through Army or Marine basic between about 1991 and 1994.
> On the whole, it wasn't very hyperrealistic, but I think that's splitting hairs
It's not splitting hairs if you are trying to use it as a comparator to something that is hyperrealistic is the dimensions basic training is not in order to predict that the psychological effects should be the same.
> if you don't have a real rocket launcher handy, you can still do some very good training with a piece of pipe and your imagination
Sure, but the issue being discussed isn't “can basic training be effective as training without being hyperrealistic” but “does basic training provide a reasonable basis for setting expectations for the psychological effects of hyperrealistic video games”.
The other factor is that basic training involves sleep deprivation, loss of individuality, some ideological brainwashing, socialization in close group of people isolated from rest of society and other such factors. You can't compare the two.
Yes, absolutely. Because there is a difference between images and reality. Not just a theoretical, ivory-tower conceptual difference. Physical difference. An enemy soldier is not 2 inches tall and shown to you flat while you sit on a comfortable couch. The report of a firearm is loud enough to blow out your eardrums. The preparative mindset that you know you might be killed at any moment with no notice is never transferred to a digital fictional character who respawns eternally.
When considering videogame violence, why is it always done with such extreme selectivity? Why pick out the fact that red pixels are used and that in reality blood sometimes appears red... but ignore the fact that fictional characters have no capacity to feel pain, no friends, no family, no hopes, no desires, no sentience, can be resurrected in a blink, and basically recreate not even one, not even the smallest, reason that violence is actually morally objectionable.
If violence in the real world worked the way it does in videogames, violence would not be morally wrong. It wouldn't be 'violence', it would be something completely novel. Yet, despite the vast gulf between the two things... somehow people get confused enough that they think pressing a plastic button to make red pixels appear on a little flat projection (the situation will not change one iota when VR gets huge, though I bet people are already preparing their arguments about how 'increased immersion' increases the nonexistent significant effects) of a character will prepare them for squeezing a steel pistol that will kick back against their hand faster than their mind can process, cracking off a shot loud enough to burst their eardrums, potentially ending the life of a human being who their mirror neurons is mapping onto their own self image. I don't see it.
Military training does not seek to desensitize recruits to killing. That has proven ineffective. It seeks to train them to kill without thinking, to kill before their conscious mind has an opportunity to intervene and give them chance to reconsider. It is only through that killing faster than the conscious mind can catch up that the rates of successful engagements increase. Unfortunately, of course, when a conscious mind would have refused to take an action, but has to process already having taken the action, a psychic rending occurs. Identity suffers a cataclysmic blow of the greatest trauma, training having made the soldier do something they would have chosen not to - yet it was themselves who did it, and they have to bear the burden and benefit of that act. This is the source of PTSD. It is a physical structural change in the brain, and it is horrific.
Kids are not doing this to themselves regularly for fun in their moms rec room.
Would we then expect that people with disorders that make it harder for them to distinguish reality from non-reality, would be more affected by video games?
How much do you know about abnormal psychology? There are various degrees of disconnection from reality. People with Borderline Personality Disorder can be highly functional, even highly acclaimed in their field, yet have demonstrable, stark disconnects from reality. There's a lot of room between a nominal psychology and an extreme Schizophrenic.
Whatever Devin Moore had would certainly qualify. However, the waters are muddied by his court case. (The defense's claim is PTSD, but that might have more to do with defense tactics than accuracy of diagnosis.)
People with disorders is incredibly broad, as is the second part of your description.
They are completely unrelated.
Most of all though, a few seconds later they vanish and come back to life. No one is crippled or killed, no one is widowed or orphaned. Video games are not realistic violence, they’re graphic games of tag. If you doubt it, volunteer at a busy city ER for a few months.
Beyond that...
The notion of “priming” is some murky nonsense which it seems, cannot be well replicated. Behavioral studies have been just horrendous, and often poorly constructed, yet their conclusions are almost always fodder for political and media hysteria.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-scien...
It’s sad that a couple of decades of confirming the null hypothesis vis a vis video games is still news.
It would be far too simplistic to say violent video games are causing gamer's to lose their cool and SWAT one another, but it's probably something worth looking into since they are on the rise in several communities and most of the prime suspects have been gamers.
Swatting is just part of the trolling "continuum" that can be traced back to less evil forms like ordering unwanted pizzas to someone's house.
The risk of someone effectively training themself to drive more dangerously seems much more direct than the "priming aggressive thoughts" stuff.
I'm worried about people training themselves, in marginal cases, to accelerate rather than brake to avoid possible conflict, or to go round corners a bit too fast.
Within certain sets of circumstances I can see hammering down and nope-ing out of there being a good default response.
If you're hydroplaning, or if your car is sliding on ice or snow, the last thing you want to do is hit the brakes. The only real course of action is to try and ride it out, especially in a rear wheel drive vehicle.
Consider, the normal case with driving is nothing bad happens until you get desensitized. Regularly losing control in a video game makes that possibility far more visceral. I don't play racing games much, but I found my reaction was to both pay more attention and drive slower after the fact.
When I say I think it would be valuable to research this I really do mean it. The results might be interesting. More interesting than this priming stuff anyway.
In game, I'm the only one on the road, I'm pushing the car to its handling limits, and I'm taking risks because I know I won't actually get hurt.
In real life, I'm not pushing the car anywhere near its handling limits, and my main concern is keeping track of everything I share the road with: pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, traffic lights, road signs, and most of all other cars.
Maybe if I'm driving through snow and have traction problems, the in-game reflexes I've built up around counter-steering and shifting the car's weight might kick in? But that's such a corner case.
This of course ignores the fact that 98% of cars made after the early 2000s have electric throttles and other controls, and often non-direct responses to control inputs
If not, why would you think video game racers are likely to make bad drivers?
Personally, I would expect faster reactions and improved machine control to both be correlated with superior driving ability (by whatever metric you choose to measure it).
The kind of game that I think is most likely to cause problems isn't the one that's simulating Formula-1 style racing or rally driving. I saw a game once (I don't know what it was called, but I expect it's a whole genre) where the players were choosing normal-people cars and racing through normal-people streets, with an emphasis on realism.
That's when I thought « If the people complaining about video games damaging people's brains were serious, they should be concerned about this much more than pretend warfare. ».
Anecdata: I'll admit to having the experience of, after playing Burnout: Revenge for many hours, continuing to view streets and traffic on my way to work through the lens of traffic-checking and drifting for extra points/boost. I hasten to add that I never felt the urge to -act- on that view; so much of driving is subconscious and/or automatic that I suspect we have something of a built-in buffer working in favor of normalcy here. But it was pretty surreal.
Maybe they make for better drivers in their prime, but as they age they would tend to have the negatives outweigh the positives. Maybe my assumptions are all wrong.
Do you know of any studies on this issue? It really does seem intriguing...
Violent media establishes the first part of James 1:14-15 descent into sin and death:
14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
Sure, we have self control. But, you combine media priming + chemically reduced inhibition, and you get violence, rape, etc. That's why the Taliban would get all drugged up before facing almost certain death attacking a US base in Afghanistan. Perhaps also why these mass killers in the US have mental conditions, which reduced their natural inhibition against acting out their fantasies.
My conclusion, having watched a lot of this sort of confusion over the years in researchers, philosophers, and thinkers of all sorts, is that there is a connection, but the mode of operation is very subtle, and what it's operating on is very, very complex.
It's like an alien researcher from a planet without computers even remotely resembling ours is trying to figure out human software, notes that '=' seems to be associated with the 'assignment' operation, then gets confused when injecting a whole bunch of '=' randomly into a codebase causes the program to stop, effectively suppressing most of the 'assignment.'
We're only beginning to scratch the surface on the human psyche and its interaction with culture.
Advertising can have no direct persuasive effects whatsoever and still be cost-effective.
Imagine that a new bank opens, promising exceptionally high interest rates on savings accounts because of their much lower operating costs. Their branches are converted shipping containers on vacant lots, furnished with cheap patio furniture. Their staff are dressed in jeans and t-shirts. They don't have a website, just a Facebook page. No sane person would deposit their money with such a bank. Why? Because this bank has made no long-term commitment. You have no reason to believe that they won't just run off with your money.
Until relatively recently, bank branches were usually lavishly furnished stone buildings with marble flooring, exotic wood panelling and opulent chandeliers. The immense cost of their furnishing acted as a costly signal that's difficult to fake - we spent all of this money on our bank branch, so you can believe that we're not a fly-by-night operation. Even to a perfectly rational customer, it's a strong Bayesian signal. Engagement rings serve a similar purpose - they're pointless and expensive, which is exactly why they're a meaningful symbol.
Expensive advertising has the same signalling value as opulent bank branches and engagement rings. If a company has saturated the TV with their commercials and sponsored a football stadium, they have a lot to lose if their reputation is damaged by scandal. They've spent a huge amount of money to make themselves a household name, so they have a strong incentive to ensure that they deliver a quality product. When you're in the supermarket, it's perfectly logical to buy the brands that you recognise.
General advertising works because it's a total waste of money.
I think the medium and experience is different enough - is anyone aware of research in this area?
'Violence' in videogames bears no resemblance to actual violence. Not in visual appearance, sound, consequence, destructive potential, irreversibility, nothing. Other than using the word 'violence' to describe what occurs in a game, there isn't another similarity. On top of that, the idea that the author of a medium can remote-control the behavior of the audience is typically relegated to the insane ramblings of schizo-affective disorders. It suggests a total disassociation from reality.
Does re-using some terminology really have such a tremendous ability to trick, mislead, and concern people? Just because we call a collection of pixels a "person" or "character", and because humans are good at telling stories... we jump to the conclusion that these figments must feel pain, wish not to die, etc?
Then you have the mirror neurons. They do fire when seeing even crude depictions of human beings on a screen -- after extensive training of the viewer. We know from encounters with pre-literate tribes and other un-exposed peoples that interpretation of images is a skill which must be learned. And the brain is not stupid. It knows when it is processing an image and interpreting it versus perceiving it directly. But, perceiving and understanding the fictional situations depicted actually does include stimulation of some similar parts of the brain. Some, not all, and not at an extremity of degree necessary to ever cause any sort of damage. Enough that some studies will get to say "oh look, amygdala activity" and radically conjecture that to lead to rampant murder or whatnot.
Overall, I think we should hang in every school and public place a print of 'The Treachery of Images'. That's the painting with the pipe that says 'This is not a pipe' in French under it. Perhaps if enough people stare at it long enough they will realize just how amazingly stupid they've been for so long attributing so much weight to just... images.
I'm currently 80 hours into "Zelda Breath of the Wild". It's a beautiful game, and the heart of the story is basically a typical "save the princess" dynamic.
But I've killed hundreds of dragons and other beasts in order to save Zelda... with the full expectation that my character (link) will be getting laid at the end of the game. Princess Zelda has no agency in my ideal game. And worse.... I don't want her to.
If I found out the end of the game resulted in me requesting a relationship from Zelda and it only potentially happening, I would be so beyond upset. But shouldn't Zelda have a choice? I would like to be a person who was at least OK with her having one.
Is this game conditioning me to be rapist? Or at least the type of man who thinks he should receive sexual reciprocation for purchasing dinner & drinks on a date?
Maybe I'm just overly invested in this game's story line. But games do contain meaningful experiences that you can remember for a lifetime. I think it's good to think about how those stories effect you.
We know video games aren't turning kids into mindless zombies, but the narratives in this games can become part of the lenses we see the world by. Some video games may even make you think differently not just about the outer world, but how you see own your place in it.
EDIT: I've got a lot of good responses here. The consensus is that these thoughts say more about me, than the video game, which I think is a fair assessment.
I'm a 'sort-of-bad' person who would like to 'become-a-better' person, and I also really love video games. So I think about the evolution of my moral character in the context of the games I play.
Maybe I think too much about it like you guys are saying, but don't put me in the camp of blaming video games for societies problems. I'm just saying video games are fun, but they can also get in your head and be more than that. They can open up dialogues and make you think about things in new ways.
[1] http://www.cracked.com/article_21462_6-bizarrely-sexual-east..., scroll to #1 (last)
Is this game conditioning me to be rapist?
Why, honestly, do you presume the gender of these characters? Link wears very tight clothing for much of the game and it is crystal clear that either he has no penis or else he is horrifically mutilated. Perhaps a future game will explain how he was emasculated by Gannon or something. Oh, hey, what about Gannon? He's kind-of male right? Why not map him onto all men and start fearing your dad is going to morph into a demon horse-thing?
When it comes right down to it, most people who seek to "analyze" videogames fall flat on their face. They pick and choose only the barest threads of concepts out of a game, refuse to follow any of them to any serious degree, and extrapolate ludicrous conclusions without ever addressing why those conclusions are any less valid than extrapolating out the other details of the world in exactly the same way.
That said, in the Zelda games, I was always reading the story more about doing it for the sake of making the world better. Not due to Zelda at all. I actually don't remember the story of the original one, just that there was a bad guy that you use the triforce to defeat.
Every member of the group of heroes in the story is a realized character with their own motivations (borne out more in the DLC), and all of them, if you are looking for a relationship - notice _you_ not the game, would be potentially interested in the player character.