Negative Effects of Violent Video Games May Build Over Time (first long tern study)

Psych Central ^ | 12/11/12 | By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor

[drewh]

A new study suggests a dose-response relationship among playing violent video games and aggressive and hostile behavior, with negative effects accumulating over time.

Investigators discovered people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. They also found that those who played nonviolent games showed no meaningful changes in aggression or hostile expectations over that period.

Although other experimental studies have shown that a single session of playing a violent video game increased short-term aggression, this is the first study to show long-term effects from playing violent video games, said psychologist Dr. Brad Bushman, co-author of the study.

“It’s important to know the long-term causal effects of violent video games, because so many young people regularly play these games,” Bushman said.

“Playing video games could be compared to smoking cigarettes. A single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk. In the same way, repeated exposure to violent video games may have a cumulative effect on aggression.”

Study results are published online in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and will appear in a future print edition.

[seacapn]

I don’t think it has much of an effect, and here’s why - the Japanese play video games every bit as violent as anywhere else in the world, but their murder rate these days is minuscule. If video games caused violence, how could that possibly be the case?

[Travis McGee]

[gotribe]

I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me from playing MW3!

[phormer phrog phlyer]

I was mobilized to go to Iraq in 06(USNR), and I was in my late 40’s at the time. One day we were doing shoot-house training and I talked to a Sargeant First Class recently returned from Iraq about the youth of today. He said while our generation may have trepidation about pulling the trigger for the first time to kill someone. The younger generation had no such issue, they had practiced 10’s of thousands of times.

[RetiredTexasVet]

My observation about most of the recent shooters is that they all display characteristics of anti-social attitude and behavior, depression, immaturity, narcissism, detachment from reality, escapism, and other attributes of stunted mental and emotional growth. Also, look at the ages ... all seem to be in the 20 - 30 age group. Not from poor households, but middle class or better. Additionally, my guess, from Blue states and probably from Obama voter families.

[RetiredTexasVet]

My observation about most of the recent shooters is that they all display characteristics of anti-social attitude and behavior, depression, immaturity, narcissism, detachment from reality, escapism, and other attributes of stunted mental and emotional growth. Also, look at the ages ... all seem to be in the 20 - 30 age group. Not from poor households, but middle class or better. Additionally, my guess, from Blue states and probably from Obama voter families.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Oops .... bad mouse finger .... bad, bad

[Gunslingr3]

"Most soldiers are unknowingly conscientious objectors. They try to avoid taking a human life. This is not a bad thing. Rather, it is a reflection of a strong moral upbringing. Getting most soldiers to pull the trigger on another human being requires great effort. In World War II, General S.L.A. Marshall studied infantry unit firing ratios and concluded that only 15 to 25 percent of infantrymen ever fired their weapons in combat. In general, those on specialty and crew-served weapons were firers, while the nonfirers were almost exclusively riflemen. In On Killing, David Grossman points out that there are three things that make soldiers kill: conditioning, recent experience and temperament."

"Soldiers can be conditioned individually and collectively to pull the trigger. Individual conditioning includes gunnery and rifle ranges where pop-up human shaped targets are rapidly engaged without thought. The trigger-pull response becomes automatic. Close supervision also affects firing rates. Men pull the trigger more frequently under supervision or in groups, hence a higher ratio of firing among key weapons. Artillery, the greatest killer on the battlefield, has always killed in teams. We indirectly condition soldiers to kill by training them as killing teams. Recognizing that men had to be conditioned to fire, the Army changed its training programs after World War II, and firing rates during the Korean War rose to 55 percent. This figure reached 95 percent during the Vietnam War.5 Soldiers can be taught to pull the trigger, but that does not guarantee that the bullet will find the target."

Natural Killers —Turning the Tide of Battle by Major David S. Pierson, US Army

[VideoDoctor]

What prescribed psychotropic medications was Lanza taking?

I've always found, quite often, that drugs and alcohol ONLY uncover what's ALREADY there.. and that they FAIL to mask, or correct the problem, of what's already there.

[generally]

These studies should be cited whenever the gun control advocates start trying to restrict our rights. In their minds, it is always the guns that are to blame, never the shooters.

If the anti-gun crowd were really concerned about saving lives, they would focus on Hollywood and advertising. In addition, they would be clamoring for swimming pool control and automobile control, since they kill far more people than guns do.

[exDemMom]

I think it is deeper than that. I’ve known some kids who were perfectly normal till they matured. Then something happened.
One man hanged himself in a barn. Years later, at the same age his son hanged himself in the same barn.

That pattern sounds somewhat like schizophrenia, which most often manifests in young adulthood. It is genetic. Many of the symptoms can be controlled by drugs, although they probably cannot bring a schizophrenic to fully normal function.

[exDemMom]

I don’t buy it at all. When people commit violent acts, it isn’t because of video games. It’s because something isn’t right in their heads.

If video games could cause people to become violent, then we should be suffering an epidemic of violence, with roving gangs armed to the teeth, wandering the countryside and shooting anyone they see. World of Warcraft, with millions of players, is based on what can only be called extreme anti-social behavior. Quests often involve killing and removing items from the corpses; the “dungeons” are designed around a group of players who go into the cave homes of the non-player characters, kill them, and steal all their belongings. Etc. I haven’t seen any evidence that people playing World of Warcraft or other games are any more prone to violent criminality than anyone else.

There have always been attempts to equate violent entertainment with causing violent behavior. I think that’s because people want simple answers to complex problems: it’s easier to control an external factor than it is to study a problem and determine why it is actually happening.