The Media and the stupid have been blaming Games for violence since the birth of video games. But is this true?
On occasion I have been known to get very frustrated with a game, but not to the point I would like to go an murder someone because I was getting picked on inside a GTA-V server. And this is true for most other gamers too.
There have been countless cases where the Media/News has blamed mass shootings, bombings, road rage, police chases and even a disgruntled cyclist in spandex on violent video games.
Now the Media and News can shut there docile faces, place there heads back up there arses and apologise to the entire Gaming community as Science has apparently proved that violent Games do not make Gamers violent.
There is a theory called ''the Priming Effect'' which is basically being exposed to stimulus (games) will cause you to imitate or not have total control over your actions, in other words, monkey see monkey do. But a study that was published in Computers in Human Behaviour on Journals.Elsevier.com has attempted to disprove that theory with some significant results.
The research was conducted at the University of York (Read the White Paper HERE), using over 3'000 gamers in 2 different experiments to see what effect gaming has on there psyche.
The first study/experiment was to compare reaction times with the priming effect. The gamers had to play a game (surprise) in which they had to drive a car and avoid hitting anything, or another game where they took control of a mouse and had to avoid being seen/caught by a cat. After they had played the game for a set period of time they were shown various images of animals such as cats, dogs frogs, ect and vehicles like cars, boats, plans, buses and so forth. They had to categorise them as either an animal or vehicle. If the gamer was ''Primed'' from being immersed in the game, they would associate the images more quickly from the game they played.
In the Paper published on the university site, the lead researcher, Dr. Zendle said...
Participants who played a car-themed game were no quicker at categorising vehicle images, and indeed in some cases their reaction time was significantly slower.
The second study was to determine if more realistic games, high fidelity, graphically demanding and as close to real as possible, would influence aggression in the gamers. Using the same ''rag doll' mechanics that is found in most modern games, they applied it to there own game so the characters would fall once injured. They also included characteristics that are found in real world soldiers in terms of movements and tactics in an effort to ''prime'' the gamers into aggression. All of this was implemented into a battle scenario game where you had to clear a building by shooting anyone who tried to kill you.
The follow up test to this was almost identical to the first study. The findings were almost identical in that gamers did not get primed by the more realistic game.
At present this represents only short term exposure to gaming, and after reading the papers and the results, they would have more research to do before they could come up with a definitive answer. What about this generation of kids that are being brought up playing violent games, or those people with psychological problems being exposed to games that could potentially make them worse.
For the majority of us, gaming as a whole does not make us violent, if anything, it makes us more apathetic to those who suffer violence. I for one will turn a game off it it starts to annoy me or frustrates me. Rage quit if you will. But there are a select few who do not have this type of control and it is this side of the ''Video Games makes us violent'' argument that needs to be researched, only then will we finally have the answer us gamers deserve and get that apology from the Media.
Thanks for reading.
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Stu @TechMojo
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