New Study Says Games Desensitize Players to Violence
A group of researchers at Iowa State University have conducted a test which they believe proves violent video games desensitize players to real life violence. They had 257 college students play a 20 minute session of certain video games, and afterwards showed them footage of real world violence.
The group tested the participants' heart rate and Galvanic Skin Response (a measure of the conductivity of the skin that varies when a person experiences feelings, such as fear or anxiety) before 20-minute gameplay sessions and while they watched a 10-minute video tape of real-life violence afterward.The games in question were Carmageddon, Duke Nukem (presumably one of the first-person shooter installments and not the original platformer), Mortal Kombat, and Future Cop on the violent side, and Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, 3D Munch Man, and Tetra Madness as nonviolent titles. The footage shown to participants consisted of courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings, and prison fights. Their research showed that those who played violent games experienced less dramatic reactions to the violent footage than those who played nonviolent games.
They refer to the implications of their research as "frightening", but make an odd attempt at positive spin by saying violent games could be helpful in densitizing soldiers and surgeons to gruesome situations. That'll look good on the box. "Makes you more at ease in war zones!"
My problem with these studies is that they don't seem to eliminate enough factors. There can be a number of reasons for different reactions to various stimuli, ranging from the people chosen to what they were given to do. I know that if I was playing pinball and a fight suddenly broke out in front of me, I'd have a much stronger reaction than if I had been in a tense game and already had my adrenaline pumping anyway. That doesn't mean I was desensitized to the guy getting his face punched in.
Furthermore, even if we accept their findings as is, you still have to draw a connection between having no reaction to video of real life violence and actual violence. Exchanging one violent two dimensional image for another and seeing no change doesn't indicate that the same thing would necessarily happen when the subject was confronted with an actual event in their proximity. I've shot more virtual people than I could ever possibly count, but I still feel a little uneasy when someone's got a gun near me in the real world.
Like I said. Too many variables, too vague a method of reading response. But I'm sure it won't stop politicians from jumping all over this.
Source: Gamespot
Comments
Maybe they were just traumatized due to being forced into playing Carmageddon.
Posted by: Justin | July 27, 2006 3:34 PM
The main thing to note in any of these things is the word "desensitize". You can be desensitized to anything, but does that conclusively mean you're any more likely to go out and actually do it yourself?
According to studies on such things, the answer to that is simply "no". And really, that's the missing link in every single one of these studies. It's probably the most important correlation.
The doctor portion is interesting because I would imagine most doctors would be even more desensitized to such "violent" imagery. Yet, they're (usually) saving lives, not running around and hitting people with gun mounted cars.
Posted by: Tony | July 27, 2006 5:59 PM
Furthermore, even if we accept their findings as is, you still have to draw a connection between having no reaction to video of real life violence and actual violence. Exchanging one violent two dimensional image for another and seeing no change doesn't indicate that the same thing would necessarily happen when the subject was confronted with an actual event in their proximity.
This argument kind of implies that gamers cannot tell the difference between fantasy (a game of someone getting shot) and reality (news footage of someone getting shot). Do you really believe this?
Posted by: webber | July 28, 2006 12:14 AM
Well, I said "if we accept their findings as is", meaning I was speaking from the perspective of the study, not my opinion. They're basically suggesting that you get numb to virtual violence, and that transfers to being numb to real violence. But even that doesn't exactly imply that the viewer can't consciously tell the difference, only that their involuntary physical reaction doesn't change.
Posted by: Ermac | July 28, 2006 12:49 AM