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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

#421

Post by jchw »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #365
jchw wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film was scary too at one point. And before that, books. The media became more sophisticated over time, and the moral panics always followed. Yes, this “new” media is interactive and immersive, but there has never been that much compelling evidence that increased immersion actually changes matters that much. I think VR may be an interesting test case in the near future as it is immersive enough to potentially be more…

> Film was scary too at one point. And there have been many film-inspired murders. the mass shooting inspired by the Dark Night. John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Reagan ( inspired by Taxi Driver ). John Lennon’s murder was inspired by The Catcher in the Rye! Here’s a link to some: https://www.newsweek.com/nine-horrible-real-life-crimes-were... And remember, not all such incidents are famous. So doubtless ther…

Here’s my stance: if we can’t show a meaningful and strong correlation, it doesn’t matter. People have a personal responsibility to follow the law. Consumption of such material needs to be so dangerous that it justifies compromising speech rights, and as of now, decades past the original video game violence debates, we’re still not even sure it does anything.

People can be “inspired” by a film or a game to do something illegal, but it’s impossible for us to tell if they were simply likely to do it anyway, so individual cases don’t say very much.

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

#423

Post by zadokshi »

ajuc wrote: post #277
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…

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.

> 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.

Have shootings not gone up? Has no one noticed it.

It’s counter intuitive to think that games that simulate practicing shooting people would have zero influence on people this inclined.

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

#424

Post by taurath »

abfan1127 wrote: post #124
ryanjshaw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approaching an adult for guidance isn't "tattling". Maybe I'm biased, but I grew to resent that word because I grew up in an environment where it was used more often than not by parents and teachers to excuse themselves from dealing with children in their care who were bullying others.

approaching an adult for guidance isn't tattling. Approaching an adult to use leverage to get what you want is tattling, especially when its over "sharing a toy that isn't hers". Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.

> Approaching an adult to use leverage to get what you want is tattling, especially when its over "sharing a toy that isn't hers"

Very good qualifier that the toy is not hers. Maybe mention that and that you don't have any authority over their toy.

> Learning to become dependent on external intervention for all conflict is not a life skill I want to teach my kids.

That is a good thing to have. My knee jerk reaction as having had absolutely no guidance on how to resolve social conflicts where I was say getting bullied to this comment initially was it might be an overuse of "just deal with it", but I realize that was not your intention :)

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

#425

Post by troupe »

Mary-Jane wrote: post #403
troupe wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that provides the statistical proof it appears to. Assume there were 1,000,000 violent incidents in 1980 and they were all caused by lead in the water. Violent video games caused no violence at a level that would even show up. If today we had 500,000 violent incidents and none of them were caused by lead but all 500k were caused by the prevalence of violent video games. (I'm not trying to say that violen…

So you're saying if there were multiple causes and one of them was corrected, his numbers wouldn't catch it, right?

Yes. Total violence going down doesn't prove that violence from video games isn't going up.

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

#426

Post by dleslie »

friendlybus wrote: post #252
mc32 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a test: Design this game with negative stereotypes and see how many people suddenly flip on how they think about the influence of the in-game social and anti-social aspects.

Hatred came out in 2015, and was effectively banned in some regions. A true test on this topic will never happen in the public, Adults Only rated-games only get so far. "Mike Splechta of GameZone questioned the game's timing and how it could become the "next scapegoat" in a climate that already held video games responsible for school shootings and other violence." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatred_(video_game)#Rec…

The thing with Hatred is that it isn't all that good of a game; so it doesn't make for compelling critical analysis of social response. It has detractors but lacks many supporters, and so it was easily swept aside.

Presently we are seeing significant alarm raised by media over the content, not bugs, within Cyberpunk 2077; accusations have been raised by major outlets that it includes bias in support of law enforcement, a transphobic setting, and bog standard sexism.

But despite its severe bugs and missing features, it's enjoyed three solid weeks as a top seller on Steam and easily made back its expenses through PC pre-orders. For all the flak it gets, the game has an enormous and happy fanbase.

What I see happening is a bifurcation in game players: those who reject the gamer label and reject moral terpitudes, and those who embrace the gamer label and tolerate or enjoy moral terpitude.

I expect that in ten years we'll see an industry with healthy diversity in players and content; divided into their separate groups and with stores that have adapted to cater to specific groups.

A hundred years ago there was the Bay and Sears, and now those have been superseded by a large variety of clothing vendors. I don't expect to buy a cardigan and leather bdsm mask in the same store, right?

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

#427

Post by stjohnswarts »

I have no doubt that people with violent tendencies are attracted to violent games, I believe that's probably the only correlation. I think regular people can separate fantasy from video games so these games are fine for them. It's a like enjoys like problem not X causes Y. I always tried to explain this to people but parents rarely seem to get it when they complain to me about their kids playing COD and headshotting people.

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

#428

Post by mulmen »

aidenn0 wrote: post #284
ajuc wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's actually great evidence! Much better than "I and many of my friends who are currently successful played violent games and we are just fine." The latter is about as convincing as "My grandfather lived to be 90 and he smoked like a chimney."

Correlation does not imply causation.

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

#429

Post by stjohnswarts »

Ensorceled wrote: post #24
Waterluvian wrote: post #14

Somewhat Tangential: Without any instruction my 2 and 4 year olds know how to turn things into weapons to beat each other with. Like puppies they seem to be testing limits to rough play. What surprised me is what happened when I didn't intervene: a few times the older one completely dominated and got his way. But more often than not the older one displayed empathy and tried to apologize and give kisses and give the y…

> I think kids have more ability to self regulate than we typically treat them as having. This "kids need adult supervision" is a relatively new thing, we used to be sent out to play as kids for HOURS (be home by dinner) and ran the woods and parks or played murderball (soccer with tackling) and other forms of roughhousing, all without serious mayhem. Parents would let us "work it out" if there was a fight.

Yep I sniped a lot of people with my wooden gun when growing up playing military games in the woods. I've never so much as been in a fist fight and have talked others out of it on a few occasions (mostly in college). These video games cause violent people is the same sort of ludditery we saw when novels became popular, when comic books became popular, when rated R movies became a regular thing, and on down through the annals of history.

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

#430

Post by topkai22 »

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.

Any chance you'd like to take a stab at convincing me I shouldn't worry about my (young) kids getting hit by cars? I feel like it's an unfortunately rational anxiety.
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