Just like every other study. And then there are the statistical trends: as video games trended up, violence has trended down.
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.