Michigan Professor: "Games and Violence Like Smoking and Cancer"

Remove all ads!

Yet another wild stab in the dark for games as a professor from the University of Michigan declares that violence from computer gaming "go together like smoking and lung cancer". The war against computer games has been going on for years, but not often does a supposedly learned man make such over-arching claims, but feel free to make your own judgement. Here's a snip:

In a review of existing research titled "The Impact of Electronic Media Violence: Scientific Theory and Research," Huesmann presented findings from a variety of scientific papers published over the last 44 years (many of them his own). Ultimately, he concluded that there is compelling evidence to suggest exposure to violent TV programs, films, and video games increases the likelihood of a person acting violently, both in the short term and the long term.

One cited study tracked nearly 400 boys between the ages of 7 and 9 while they played floor hockey. Those who were shown a violent film beforehand committed more physical attacks (penalties) than those who were shown a nonviolent film.

Well, confronted with evidence like that, what more can we say?

 

Die dead horse!

 

Violence in video games has an effect on RL violence. It really does. Its a miniscule effect, but its there. Not enough to screw with the current system of gaming though. Mainly thru desensitization.

The biggest part of it would be Family life, which includes upbringing, lifestyle, socio-economic status, etc. Then you have the circle of friends. Then you have life experiences. Those three make up about 99% of one's world view and how they react to situations.


As for the hockey study, it probably had to do with adrenaline levels. If you watch Batman Begins you will be more "pumped" up than if you had watched the Little Mermaid. They were also probably confusing viloent plays for aggressive plays.

The teacher in Transformers summed it up perfectly: "People, responsibility."

 

These sort of research findings are incredibly misleading, and may not have an actual grain of truth in them.

I recently read the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he talks about how our brains can be sort of "programmed" or "primed" before performing any sort of activities.

One example he cited was: A researcher had a group of college students take a test, by themselves, seperately. The test involved say, 10 multiple choice questions. Each question consisted of 5 words, and the objective was to pick out the word that did not logically belong to the group.

After the test, each student was asked to bring his/her answer sheet to another researcher, in another room. Now, at this point, a third researcher would be ready to start talking to the researcher whom the student was supposed to hand his answers to, and basically keep the student waiting.

The findings were pretty astonishing: students whose list of correct answers included "impatience", "hurry", "late", etc, almost on cue, interrupted the researchers before a minute or so had passed. However, those students whose list of correct answers included "patience", "calm", etc.. actually stood there and waited for the researchers to finish talking. Apparently there was one case where a student stood there for almost half an hour with a peaceful smile on his face, and the researchers believed he would have actually stood there for longer if they hadn't stopped and talked to him.

So, in a nutshell, what BucMan55 says is right to a degree. Those kids that watched a violent film were "primed" to behave more aggressively than those who watched the non-violent film.

Of course, there's more to how the brain and our thought processes work than that, but to claim that violence in games and violence in real life is inextricably linked from one such study is clearly misleading at best. All it proves is that we can be "primed" somehow, psyched up, etc.