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

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

#411

Post by seangrogg »

Thorrez wrote: post #349
seangrogg wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take this even further, with the increasing popularity of games, if violent video games were linked to violence itself we should theoretically see pronounced numbers of streaming personalities (at least those involved in competitive games, which trend towards violence as a win condition) engaged in violent acts. Gaming communities such as Twitch, competitive game conferences such as Evo, events such as Riot's worl…

> And while they may get heated their debates about PlayStation vs XBox are about as likely to result in fatalities as the programming community's vim vs emacs or tabs vs spaces debates. I can think of 2 incidents in the gaming community off the top of my head which led to fatalities. The SWATing of Andrew Finch, and the Jacksonville Landing shooting (that was an NFL game convention though, so it's debatable whether…

I want to preface this with the fact that I do think that the Wichita swatting incident was a heinous crime and that those involved (both the hoaxers and the intended victim) were truly despicable people each in their own way.

That said, at the end of the day, the life was lost not because gamers were being violent due to a violent video game. None of the gamers involved so much as ever saw one another. Instead, an entirely innocent third party individual got erroneously targeted by a known type of hoax and, upon moving his hands wrong, was shot by a law enforcement official.

This was intended to be a case of gamer-on-gamer harassment over something that likely was spurred on by events in a violent video game (which is woefully common, though rarely to this degree). But the only violent act committed was by a police officer. And that's an important distinction.

(I assume we can elide the Jacksonville event as that happened during a Madden tournament; unless we want to make the case that football is more like Grand Theft Auto than it is baseball...)

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

#412

Post by ehsankia »

umvi wrote: post #170
mywittyname wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, part of this is probably also some degree of us intuitively knowing the answer. If you have a friend group of 10 people, 4 of which regularly work out. You will probably notice that those 4 friends have less body fat and are more toned than the other 6. At that point, if a study came out saying that working out had no impact on body physique, you'd reflexively question the results. That might sound ridiculous…

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 be fair we have well defined equations to decide if a sample size is large enough and to calculate the error in our errors.

In the case your examples, we already know that the CFR is lower than 10%, so a sample of 10 definitely is nowhere near enough to tell us anything useful. Now if the CFR was 50% and you had 0/10, maybe it'd be worth looking into it.

I'm curious though, have any of your friends had longer term effects? longer term smell/taste loss, brain fog, heart issues, memory issues, breathing issues, etc? The early reports on long term impact are at ~10-20%, so you may have 1 or 2 in your sample, but again your sample is small enough that you very easily could've had 0 too. Again, it depends heavily on what you're trying to disprove and what the rate of it is.

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

#413

Post by confidantlake »

closeparen wrote: post #289
abfan1127 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I emphasize "work it out" so often with our kids. Funny story. my 4yo was playing with the neighborkids around the same age. the neighbor girl came to me to tattle, saying they weren't sharing. I told her you need to work it out with them, use your words and manners. Clearly not the result she was looking for, she turned and yelled "He said you have to share!" I clarified with the other kids "that's not what I said!…

"Work it out" is a strategy for equals. With major age/size/strength differences it just becomes domination and submission. Parents refusing to provide the "monopoly on violence" just results in kids who are worse at fighting learning to do whatever the bully says, and probably still getting beaten for the fun of it. I mean I do agree that kids need to learn to navigate conflict, but adults should ideally be monitori…

Yup clearly the people saying this have never been the younger kid around an asshole older one.

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

#414

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

giantg2 wrote: post #201
giantg2 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was sort of at the beginning of those policies. I think there were still enough older teachers/administrators that thought it was BS, that many of the minor issues never resulted in anything extreme. I remember one teacher caught me and another kid in a bit of a scuffle (not really a fight) over a prank gone wrong. Basically, we both apologized to each other and discussed the mistake/misunderstanding. We didn…

Haha, I almost forgot this gem. In grade school, I accidentally brought a pocket knife to school since it was left in one of the side pouches of my backpack after a camping trip the previous weekend. I was naive then. I told my teacher about it, which could have ended very badly. His response, "Just don't take it out or tell anyone". Oh, the good old days.

I'm a fairly recent graduate from school- I accidentally carried a pocketknife in the bottom of my bag from grade 6 to 11, never had amy problems with it.

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

#415

Post by confidantlake »

giantg2 wrote: post #193
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are mixing 2 different topics. Ramping authoritarianism and policing is one problem. > "allowed to defend themselves" > "punching my bully" ...and this is what most bullies would say. No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place. Bullying needs to be stopped by the school - and without calling in armed bullies to stop the bullies.

"No, bullying cannot be solved by the victims, otherwise it would not be a problem in the first place." How do you think that works if zero tolerance policies punish the aggressor and victim equally, essentially preventing the victim from defending themself? And by your reasoning, then bullying shouldn't exist today because the school policies should prevent it, yet it's more rampant than ever. I was bullied once. Ev…

I agree with you that zero tolerance is stupid and that victims should be able t fight back. But is there any evidence that bullying is more rampant than ever? All statistics I have seen point to kids being more well behaved, less violence, less drugs, fewer teen pregnancies ect.

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

#417

Post by read_if_gay_ »

Miner49er wrote: post #335

A lot of the comments here are replacing "aggression" in the title with violence. Yeah, maybe people aren't more likely to be aggressive on an individual level from violent video games. A much better (but harder to answer question) is do violent video games cause society overall to be more violent? Is someone who played COD more likely to support military action? Or vote for a violent politician? Or join the military…

Careful. Did they play CoD because they support military action or the other way around?

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

#418

Post by mleonhard »

nearbuy wrote: post #388
fogihujy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is nothing different this day and age except awareness And the fact that crime has dropped like a rock, with a ~20 year lag, after leaded fuel was phased out.

This New Zealand study [1] attempted to look at the crime-lead relation in a place where it wasn't confounded by childhood socioeconomic status, and "failed to support a dose-response association between BLL (blood lead level) and consequential criminal offending". I'm not trying to say the theory is wrong; just that correlations are really tricky to study, it's hard to control for all confounding variables, and it's…

> Blood lead level measured at age 11 years.

The harm by lead occurs in the first 3 years of life. High blood lead in early childhood is not detected later in childhood [0]. The New Zealand study uses blood tests performed ten years too late. This flaw makes the study almost useless.

Additionally, only 30 of the children in the study had low blood lead, [0] Caito, S., & Aschner, M. (2017). Developmental Neurotoxicity of Lead. Neurotoxicity of Metals, 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-60189-2_1

[1] Nevin, R. (2000). How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, 83(1), 1–22. doi:10.1006/enrs.1999.4045

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

#419

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

lostlogin wrote: post #192
fogihujy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is nothing different this day and age except awareness And the fact that crime has dropped like a rock, with a ~20 year lag, after leaded fuel was phased out.

If someone hasn’t seen the Drum article, here it is. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

Thanks, hadn't read that before, and now I know more than I did. That's a kinda heavy article to read esp. considering what we might be doing that'll have unknown effects in 20 years

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

#420

Post by nearbuy »

afandian wrote: post #117

I'm one of those people who is entirely bemused by violent videogames and films (I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be bemused by my pastimes too). I'm not trying to argue to stop anyone doing it, but I would really like to understand it better. Many video games are essentially simulators of things that we're prevented from doing in reality, because of the laws of nature or society. Whether that's dropping…

I'll add my observation that action movies and games try to evoke a particular feeling (that feeling that causes you to exclaim, "that's so cool!"), and that feeling isn't just from violence. For me, watching an awesome, well-choreographed dance routine evokes a very similar feeling. (And you could probably argue a good kung-fu fight scene is essentially a well-choreographed dance.) If you ever watch a James Bond movie, they're essentially packed with stuff intended to evoke this feeling of coolness, including, but not limited to violence. You'll see parkour, extreme skiing, sky-diving, etc.

I'll also note that most mainstream action movies and games tend to de-emphasize the goriness and injuries from violence (although gore-flicks also exist, especially in the horror genre). Compare a James Bond movie to a more realistic depiction like Saving Private Ryan. When James Bond shoots unnamed bad guys, they neatly fall over with minimal blood. When he blows people up, you don't usually see any blood or dismemberment. They just get thrown by the explosion and lie dead (but intact) on the ground.

My guess is they do this because the audience isn't watching for the injury aspect of violence, and gore can turn off some viewers. I think the violence in action movies (and games) is more about the protagonist winning. It's the competitive aspect we like. The power fantasy. The protagonist showing incredible skill.

As for graphical realism in games, I don't really know of any that specifically focused on making the killing more realistic (I'm sure some exist, I just don't know them). I've seen games advertise realistic lighting, shadows, reflection, environments, water, faces, gun models, etc. When they make everything more realistic, the violence may get more realistic along with it, but it doesn't seem to be the main focus.

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