Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

gamesage.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 593 posts

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#271

Post by belorn »

yazboo wrote: post #80

I have noticed that many social science articles posted on Hacker News bring out critical comments about study design, doubts about the strength of the study's conclusions, that kind of thing. This submission, on the other hand, is a link to some kind of gaming news website, which links to an abstract for an article in a Cyberpsychology (?) journal which costs $60 to access, and there is widespread and uncritical agr…

There has historically been fairly consistent and repeated claims that teens and young adults are influenced by fictional media into anti-social behavior, despite the lack of strong evidence. There has also been consistently a strong need to explain divergent and deviant behavior, and a desire to stamp it down.

So since we have learned that violent song lyrics does not cause anti-social behavior in teens, nor that of violent movies, it seems as a good default stance that neither does violent video games. I would also default the same stance to porn consumption, based on the same logic.

I would prefer if we got a final study that gave a definitive answer if consumption of fiction causes anti-social behavior. It seems to me that fiction is simply an medium for which people can safely explore cultural norms, but in terms of causing anti-social behavior we would need to look at social environment and biochemical triggers for social behavior.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#273

Post by rgblambda »

abfan1127 wrote: post #164
rgblambda wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids. If someone breaks into my house and tries to beat me to death, I'm not going to try to reason it out with them, I'm calling the police.

uhh. if someone is in your house with intent to harm you, the police will not arrive in time to prevent it. Police response times are measured in minutes. You're much better off running away or defending yourself with a weapon, the ultimate equalizer being a firearm.

>>the ultimate equalizer being a firearm.

Not if you live in a country where firearms are strictly regulated and self defence isn't a justifiable reason for a firearm permit.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#274

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #224
Avamander wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all very clearly know that there are exceptions where you do need to ask for external help.

For people not institutionalized with a jailer or nurse in close proximity there is no "external help" that has a useful SLA if you unexpectedly find yourself in a situation where bodily harm is imminent. You either need to prevent the situation from happening yourself or deal with it yourself.

[deleted]

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#276

Post by sonthonax »

nchase wrote: post #5

This reminds me of when I was at grad student in that area. It was really frustrating to read all of the studies from e.g. Anderson and Bushman asserting the links between violent media and aggression. These publications were headline-grabbing, but some of the study design was laughable. The whole state of affairs led me to leave the discipline (which led me to a career as a software engineer). I'm glad that I did, b…

I think psychologists frequently struggle to delineate cultural criticism and science: from its inception those two modes of thinking have been uncomfortably intertwined; no one reads Jung or Feud as a serious scientists anymore (and if you do you'll see it's mostly highly caveated platitudes about human nature based on anecdotal experiences). But there is value in connecting cultural trends to personal behavior, it's just not always scientific.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#277

Post by ajuc »

aidenn0 wrote: post #194
umvi wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some truth here, but it's important not to use anecdotes too much to guide intuition because the sample size is often too small and too biased. For example, I have a group of 10 friends. All 10 of them (including myself) got covid, and we all agree it is no worse than the flu. I mean, yeah, we couldn't smell or taste for a few days, but we all recovered within a week. Therefore... I should reflexively questio…

To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation. In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reaso…

How about the fact that gaming grew by every metric by orders of magnitude between 80s and now and violent crime dropped by half of more everywhere in the world.

If the effect was even 0.01 with growth by 10000% we would have noticed.

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#278

Post by phdelightful »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #107
topkai22 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP, but for me the answer is "cars." And child services coming after me for being neglectful. And rattlesnakes. But mostly cars. Even with statistics about danger being down across the board, in still pretty worried about my kids getting hit by an automobile. The raw statistics are even one area where danger is rising- fatality numbers are back over the mid 90s.

^ this. You can show someone who’s afraid of flying that it’s the safest form of travel all you want, but you’re not going to convince them. Anxiety usually isn’t rational, so rational means of convincing don’t work.

I disagree, I think the main purpose of reason is to overcome negative irrational behavior. Doesn't mean it's easy or automatic though :)

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#279

Post by skrebbel »

tomp wrote: post #230
aidenn0 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it a different way, the people who grew up to be violent individuals are probably not posting on HN, nor working at companies with people who post on HN, so the fact that everybody on HN isn't violent, despite playing violent video games is only weak evidence against there being a correlation. In fact, I would be surprised for there to be zero correlation (even assuming there is no causation), as it is a reaso…

> as it is a reasonable assumption that naturally violent people are more likely to play violent video games. It's also a reasonable assumption that people who naturally want to avoid actual violence play violent video games instead. This paranoia against violent video games was obviously fake from the start, and such a typically American thing - in line with the American puritan view that blowing up people in films…

> a typically American thing

Not only. Eg in Germany there's long been an enormous stigma against violent video games. I haven't talked with German gamedevs for some years so maybe this loosened up since. But basically, if you worked in gamedev you preferred to tell your neighbours and acquaintances that you work "in IT". If they would find out you work on video games they'd pretty much fully cut you out of their lives.

(Note, to my anecdotal experience this is a purely German thing. I don't know other European countries where the same stigma exists)

Re: Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior

#280

Post by giantg2 »

GrinningFool wrote: post #261
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims As someone who has punched multiple bullies into the face, I can tell you it does stop it quite efficiently. Two of them basically instantly switched to never again daring to acknowledge that I even exist, for the remaining >5 years of being on the same school. The remainder wasn't smart enough to stop instantly and thus got multiple beatings. There's always the one kid…

This method works for the people who are able to do it (ability, personality, temperament). But it tends to reinforce the idea that those who can't take these steps somehow deserve to be bullied.

Maybe to a slight degree. There are some of those people with the abilities who are willing to stand up for others. Of course, the no tolerance (punish everyone) policies can promote bystanders to remain only bystanders.
Post reply on HN