Scientific study confirms once again no link between violent video games and real life violence

[qubit]

Us gamers know this already, but it's great to have it confirmed again by another credible source, Hannover Medical School. This will help to further reduce the stigma of our favourite pastime. For me, I'm seriously into Rainbow Six Siege at the moment - and there's a whole lotta killin' in that!

If you’re a gamer, chances are you’ve dealt at some point with the stigma that the society still bears down on games, particularly violent ones. We’ve all heard the argument that violent games may lead to increased aggression and/or decreased empathy towards other humans, and each time some madman decides to go on a murder spree our favorite entertainment medium finds itself once again under scrutiny.

Is there any scientifical merit to this theory, though? Not really, as it turns out.

http://wccftech.com/videogames-vvg-dont-increase-aggression

 

[the54thvoid]

You know what though? With politics the way it is and 'scientific' studies being sidelined, nothing will change.
The big T leads the charge with a whole electorate getting behind 'feelings' not facts. The UK is run by Etonian elite that seek every excuse to blame violence on anything but their own policy failures.

Games will still be blamed by parents for the acts of children they were too lazy to control or bring up properly.

Meh...

 

[infrared]

Society in general is what fuels violence/aggression and reduces empathy. Everything is about Political power and Money.

 

[natr0n]

 

[Frag_Maniac]

So, that means it's alright if I buy more shooters Uncle Sam?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I really wish these "studies" would go deeper because this short term aggression could easily be caused by adrenaline. Anything that causes a similar adrenaline rush should also cause a similar rise in short-term aggression. This study curated people that are more or less immune to game-triggered aggression responses:

A group of German researchers conducted an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) study on a group of fifteen male violent videogames (VVG) users, with the inclusion requirement being having played first-person shooter titles like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty and Battlefield for at least four years and for at least two hours per day on average.

If you take someone that's never played a violent game before, an adrenaline rush is a natural response. Get over that hump, it's just entertainment like any other.

Stress plays a factor too, if not more so than adrenaline. They looked at people that have logged almost 3000 hours in these types of games. These games are generally not stressful nor adrenaline rush inducing to these players anymore. There's only rare situations (which they likely didn't reproduce in the study) where stress and adrenaline would surge (a really close match and the pressure is on).

You put a VR headset on anyone and inject them into a horror game, pretty much everyone should be classified as a mass murderer. 10 hours later: nothing to see here, move along.

TL;DR: Hannover appears to be taking the philological response to entertainment seriously where most other studies are just trying to make one side or the other look bad.


Example: MGSV, I've been fairly chillaxed so far...until I did the Emmerich mission spending half an hour trying to evade a mech. If I was being monitored by medical equipment, they'd probably think I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Once I finished it, back the normal, I was. Games, because they touch so many senses, tend to impact people more strongly than watching something on a TV or reading a book featuring the same content. These responses are normal given the circumstances. VR, especially, is capable of evoking reactions in people all other mediums are incapable of invoking (e.g. feeling of freefalling even though you're not moving).

 

[johnspack]

Sure hope mario bros are in there too. What a bunch of bs. I've played computer games for 20 years, I should be a mass murderer. Even pong, my first game, was about destroying the other pong....

 

[Xzibit]

I'm awaiting the forum aggression behavior studies.

 

[Vya Domus]

I really wish these "studies" would go deeper because this short term aggression could easily be caused by adrenaline. Anything that causes a similar adrenaline rush should also cause a similar rise in short-term aggression. This study curated people that are more or less immune to game-triggered aggression responses:

If you take someone that's never played a violent game before, an adrenaline rush is a natural response. Get over that hump, it's just entertainment like any other.

Stress plays a factor too, if not more so than adrenaline. They looked at people that have logged almost 3000 hours in these types of games. These games are generally not stressful nor adrenaline rush inducing to these players anymore. There's only rare situations (which they likely didn't reproduce in the study) where stress and adrenaline would surge (a really close match and the pressure is on).

You put a VR headset on anyone and inject them into a horror game, pretty much everyone should be classified as a mass murderer. 10 hours later: nothing to see here, move along.

TL;DR: Hannover appears to be taking the philological response to entertainment seriously where most other studies are just trying to make one side or the other look bad.


Example: MGSV, I've been fairly chillaxed so far...until I did the Emmerich mission spending half an hour trying to evade a mech. If I was being monitored by medical equipment, they'd probably think I was a paranoid schizophrenic. Once I finished it, back the normal, I was. Games, because they touch so many senses, tend to impact people more strongly than watching something on a TV or reading a book featuring the same content. These responses are normal given the circumstances. VR, especially, is capable of evoking reactions in people all other mediums are incapable of invoking (e.g. feeling of freefalling even though you're not moving).

And those are normal responses to similar actions , not just playing games. Hell you can get the same reaction even from listening to music. That's the problem that I have , the media points the finger just to this one thing.

 

[Octopuss]

Reading the title, I immediatelly remembered my c*nt of a mother's argument when she pissed me off for the 454623436th time babbling some crap about games and I just lost it and started yelling at her: "SEE?? You're playing all these games and they make you aggressive!!"

 

[qubit]

Reading the title, I immediatelly remembered my c*nt of a mother's argument when she pissed me off for the 454623436th time babbling some crap about games and I just lost it and started yelling at her: "SEE?? You're playing all these games and they make you aggressive!!"

Like she doesn't know she just induced you to rage at her. That's a really mean thing to do.

 

[R00kie]

Reading the title, I immediatelly remembered my c*nt of a mother's argument when she pissed me off for the 454623436th time babbling some crap about games and I just lost it and started yelling at her: "SEE?? You're playing all these games and they make you aggressive!!"

Oh, how I remember this shit every single day in my childhood, this pissed me off to the point I was about to burst into flames...
Point is, they made me a lot less aggressive in life, just because I had a something that I could vent into.

 

[Octopuss]

The "funny" thing is when they finally manage to get you lose your shit, it's a proof of their argument for them.

No, I really do not like my mother much. This was just a part of her winning personality. FFS.
Now I have a wife who is actually happy I play games (unless I smash the keyboard, throw €400 monitors across the room and yell profanities that break the glass in windows... ), because she has time for her stuff or work, and sometimes even brings me food to the PC when I forget about everything Win win.

 

[Cvrk]

I blame it all on World of Warcraft!
Crazy kids with knives running around thinking their night elfs trying to lvl-up on other people

 

[Vayra86]

Yeah, great study, you can wake me up again when we have actual fact-based governance though, unfortunately governance on the basis of emotions and hear-say seems to win the day.

I wonder though what the outcome would have been if people had placed CS:GO as the centerpiece of the study

 

[Liviu Cojocaru]

Society in general is what fuels violence/aggression and reduces empathy. Everything is about Political power and Money.

People used to be like that from the beginning, this was happening before money and politics...it is in our genes to be like this. I have to admit that with money and politics this gets aggravated

 

[Deleted member 67555]

Wow a group of 15 people!
Now that is a good measure of society.
LoL...
Now I'm going to have to do some Google work here because I just read an article that explains why constantly seeing food commercials are making people fat by constantly making them think of food.
Now I don't think that would correlate to video games and violence....
I don't believe video games make people violent I think it desensitizes people towards violence.
There is a difference.

 

[yogurt_21]

Wow a group of 15 people!
Now that is a good measure of society.
LoL...
Now I'm going to have to do some Google work here because I just read an article that explains why constantly seeing food commercials are making people fat by constantly making them think of food.
Now I don't think that would correlate to video games and violence....
I don't believe video games make people violent I think it desensitizes people towards violence.
There is a difference.

I'm pretty sure college professors won't even let you use a sample size that small for a study. 100 min usually.

 

[Vario]

I have seen people smash controllers, keyboards, headsets, etc. Is that real life violence?

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Regular players of action games have less grey matter in their hippocampus, a major part of the brain. And the more depleted the hippocampus becomes, the more a person is at risk of developing brain illnesses.



Researchers at the University of Montreal got around 100 people to play a range of popular 'shooter' games such as Call Of Duty, Killzone and Borderlands 2 for a total of 90 hours.

They also gave them copies of non-violent games from the Super Mario series.

By the end of the study, they found that people who habitually played action games had fewer neurons in their hippocampus, a key memory center in the brain.

However, those who played non-violent games ended the study with more essential gray matter in their brains.

The discovery challenges previous findings that all video games have the capacity to enhance some aspects of mental processing and boost short-term memory.



http://www.hindustantimes.com/more-...alzheimer-s/story-Pm2WurijdZ8PazQoS5BpON.html

 

[Capitan Harlock]

I'm playing videogames from when i was in elementary school and if games where an influence at this point i should have killed a lot of people.
From my personal experience what makes people angry is other people and how they behave with you and not a game that is made for entertain people.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Regular players of action games have less grey matter in their hippocampus, a major part of the brain. And the more depleted the hippocampus becomes, the more a person is at risk of developing brain illnesses.



Researchers at the University of Montreal got around 100 people to play a range of popular 'shooter' games such as Call Of Duty, Killzone and Borderlands 2 for a total of 90 hours.

They also gave them copies of non-violent games from the Super Mario series.

By the end of the study, they found that people who habitually played action games had fewer neurons in their hippocampus, a key memory center in the brain.

However, those who played non-violent games ended the study with more essential gray matter in their brains.

The discovery challenges previous findings that all video games have the capacity to enhance some aspects of mental processing and boost short-term memory.



http://www.hindustantimes.com/more-...alzheimer-s/story-Pm2WurijdZ8PazQoS5BpON.html

Seems to me this study doesn't take into account whether the gamers they tested live balanced lives. It almost appears they intentionally took game-aholics that don't spend regular time also driving or (other forms of real world navigation) to balance out both parts of the brain. Anything that requires intense focus like mt biking, skiing, snow boarding, or any sport or hobby that requires lots of hand-eye coordination, would also strengthen the striatum.

This seems like the kind of biased BS some politicians have tried to spoon feed the public. Being as this was conducted in India, it's even more suspect. You DO realize parents in India are some of the most strict and biased against modern socializing don't you? Old world traditionalists have no business telling people how to recreate in the modern world.

Bottom line, this study isn't about ALL gamers, it's specifically about people whom are easily addicted to gaming and spend most of their time doing it. We have all known for some time that the most damaging games are the subscription ones that end up getting some gamers so entranced they end up getting divorced, losing their families, jobs, etc, and most of those are RPGs, not action games.

This is the kind of psychobabble BS that results when people whom know nothing about the subject matter conduct the "study". It's what happens when enough cynical people get together and funding is set in motion to try to put a new spin on a common form of recreation.

I'll end by saying I saw Dr Oz do an episode on Alzheimer's prevention, and not one word spoke of action video games being a cause. I would take this so called study with a very large grain of salt. The fact is you can zone out on a lot of things and cause this kind of problem in the brain, yet they make it sound like it's only action video games. It makes it obvious it's the same old blatant targeting of violent video games causing violence in the real world, expect now they're using brain damage as the scape goat.

 

[Vario]

I believe it. I think there are some games that make people smarter and others that make them dumber. Starcraft 2, Sim City, Space Engineers and other competitive rts/management/strategy/engineering games probably make you smarter. They are slightly closer in similarity to the types of challenges you might face in an office environment. Call of Duty probably not. If you only play Call of Duty and have no life and no job and never leave your room, you will probably end up an imbecile after a few years.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

If you only play Call of Duty and have no life and no job and never leave your room, you will probably end up an imbecile after a few years.

This only proves my point. It's not just action games, it's the obsessiveness, and lack of other activities to balance. Plus I'm guessing they're mostly talking about mp play, where it's pretty much the same tasks over and over and over, with no creative aspect (story) to follow. Plus most sp action game campaigns have pacing, there are times you stop to explore, navigate, solve puzzles, etc. So they're saying action games in general is very (intentionally I think) misleading.

I also don't see how office work in general is a point. It completely depends on what kind of business it is, and what the office tasks are. Some office tasks in simpler businesses are quite mundane and repetitive.

I think the real people behind this study happening are hoping the obsessiveness part will get glossed over and that most will fixate on action games being evil, and we all know they really mean violent games, not just "action" games. I mean really, this is so obviously another censor ploy, declaring that violent games make people violent. They're just disguising it with terms like "action" and "brain damage". Again, that kind of damage can happen with almost any obsessive activity, including watching action movies too much.

In their own words, games with lots of exploration don't cause this, yet there are plenty games with lots of exploration that also have lots of action. Their making it look black and white, like there's no in between, makes it obvious they went into the study planning on targeting games with lots of violence. Well guess what, Tomb Raider has lots of violence AND exploration, so what does it make you, schizophrenic?

 

[R-T-B]

If you only play Call of Duty and have no life and no job and never leave your room, you will probably end up an imbecile after a few years.

On the other hand, there are ways to basically never leave your room and not end up an imbecile. Read scholarly things on the web, maybe read some news. Boring, but it keeps the brain working.

In addition to action games, I enjoy strategy, planning and thinking games quite a bit.

I know, because I'm one of them. Those guys that never go outside. That won't turn you into an imbecile. You might become a frog, though.