[Xenon481]

You are completely mis-interpreting the data from those studies.

The studies said that the soldiers were less likely to hesitate. It did not say that they would shoot involuntarily at targets, but that they did not have to deal with the psychological implications of taking the shot because they have already dealt with them.

The more realistic training caused those soldiers to think more clearly, and not just react to the emotions of the situation which could get them and their unit killed.

[sparkydragon]

Sorry, going to have to agree with Xenon here. Only I would also have mentioned that HamiltonJay state that they were less likely to hesitate in combat. Besides that, the article states that games let out aggression. I would suggest that military training and games are not quite the same. One is engaged in for the purpose of entertainment. The other is engaged in knowing that the purpose is to learn how to kill quickly and accurately. Also, one might gather that the more similar the weapons one trained with were to the weapons they would be using, the less likely one was to hesitate in combat. Mouselook and WASD will not help you if you are in a life threatening situation.

[HamiltonJay]

, but that they did not have to deal with the psychological implications of taking the shot because they have already dealt with them.

That is absolutely false, nowhere in any study, to my knowledge, did it suggest or conclude that those using more relistic targets had already "dealt with the psychological implications" of shooting another human. It did conclusively show they were more likely to shoot without hesitation in real combat if trained with more life like targets, but nowhere did it draw the conclusions you suggest.