Submited by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
We’ve known for years that exposure to violence makes humans more likely to commit violence themselves. TV violence is especially pernicious and can have effects lasting decades. Now that applies to participatory virtual violence as well.
Mark Bradford, a 46-year-old resident of Plymouth, England attacked a 13-year-old boy who had just “killed” his virtual fighter in the wildly successful computer game, Call of Duty:Black Ops. The two were playing the game over the Internet when Bradford’s character was shot during a battle scene. The enraged father of two promptly raced over to the boy’s nearby home and grabbed the young man by the throat using both hands. The child’s mother fought him off and called police.
Bradford bravely claims he was motivated because the child also called him a name after the virtual fatal shot was taken. “It wasn’t malice. I just grabbed him. I’ve seen him since and apologized. The injuries weren’t that bad but I do regret it,” Bradford told the Court. Seems virtual violence leads to real lying ,too. The Court was not impressed and scheduled a sentencing hearing this month.
The child’s mother is not buying either. “It’s pathetic that a grown man would attack a defenseless child like this. If you can’t handle losing to a child then you shouldn’t be playing games.” Amen
The case raises the question about whether games glorifying virtual violence and mayhem are suitable for anyone.
Source: MSNBC
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
As far as longitudinal studies, it has been done and replicated. Here is a link to the abstract on one of Huesmann’s research articles in the Journal of Professional Psychology.
http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/dev/20/6/1120/
I don’t think it raises a question of whether violent games are suitable at all. I’ve seen people snap and do the same because they lost a basketball game. Or because their lover broke up with them. Hell, I’ve been the victim of ALMOST THE EXACT SAME TYPE OF ATTACK by someone that had NEVER ONCE played a violent video game and didn’t like violent movies… All because I broke up with her.
People are shitty and they snap, we need to stop blaming entertainment for it.
Expanding on the comment above by Elaine, here are some of Dr. Huesmann’s published works on the subject. Nothing like going straight to the source.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=LR+Huesmann&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C43
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Btw, my name is Mark Gisleson, and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota. These comments are posting as “Wege” because Turley uses the same blogging software as I did. Normally I post under my own name, but when the comment software uses Wege, I just go along with it.
I would encourage Mespo to google “Mark Gisleson” and then share his/her findings with whoever he/she likes. Good luck finding my conservative streak and do try to remember that however right some of your points may be, you shredded your credibility by leading with a personal attack.
There are an incredible number of possible sources of violence. Add to that the probability that several sources can be factors at the same time in contributing to acts of violence.
The case of the Texas Tower Mass Murderer is a case in point.
He was the typical everyday American, boy scout, Marine, engineering student, very high IQ (top 1%), and he was self-aware.
He began to notice something wrong within himself concerning notions of violence that seemed quite alien to him. He kept a diary or journal of what he considered alien thoughts.
He sought psychiatric help to no avail.
He killed his wife and mother, then wrote down that he could not figure out why. Then he took a gun to a tower on the university campus he was attending, and killed 32 people.
In his journal or diary he requested that his brain be examined upon his death.
It was, and a tumor was found to be pressing on his Amygdala, a brain area associated with fear and reactions to fear, among other things.
There are moral, non-moral, and personal development issues in play.
Violent games, movies, and associations with violent people can all come into play.
That is how endless wars start after all. Obama and Bush were what we could call normal Americans in many ways, yet they have participated in the killing of more innocents than the Texas Tower mass murdered did.
Strange Days.
Check out the CBS News story that Mespo provided a link to. I’d like to find out if more studies like this have been conducted–especially long-term studies on children who play violent video games.
Study: TV Violence Begets Violence
By Lloyd de Vries
February 11, 2009
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/10/national/main543333.shtml
Excerpt:
CBS) Watching violence on television can encourage a child to act more aggressively even 15 years later, according to one of the few TV violence studies to follow children into adulthood.
The effect appeared in both sexes and regardless of how aggressive a person was as a child, University of Michigan researchers found.
The study linked violent TV viewing at ages 6 to 9 to such outcomes as spouse abuse and criminal convictions in a person’s early 20s. The findings cut across all income and family groups.
“It didn’t matter on income group, it didn’t matter on ethnicity, it didn’t matter on single parent versus dual parent families,” said Jeff McIntyre of the American Psychological Association.
Nor was type of violence important.
“It was actually when they identified with the perpetrator of the violence, if the perpetrator was rewarded for that violence,” he said.
Experts said the results are no surprise, but added that the study is important because it used a wide range of measures, included many participants and showed the effect in females as well as males.
The work is presented in the March issue of the journal Developmental Psychology by psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann and colleagues at the University’s Institute for Social Research.
Huesmann said televised violence suggests to young children that aggression is appropriate in some situations, especially when it’s used by charismatic heroes. It also erodes a natural aversion to violence, he said.
Since I apparently shared too much, let me share a little more with Mespo. I just shut down my blog Norwegianity, at WordPress. If you want to read it, it’s not hard to find. Most lefties who’ve read more of me than Mespo has think I’m to their left. By a considerable margin. I’m a pro-choice socialist and a former labor activist (nine years in a tire factory would make a Marxist out of a Randian). I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. I am an anti-copyright/anti-patent activist. I will publicly defend pornography (assuming it’s consensual and not coerced). I wrote tens of thousands of words in opposition to the Iraq War in 2003 for City Pages, a Village Voice Media property. Etc.
But I like to play Quake, therefore I’m a political neanderthal? I’m anti-intellectual? Granted, I’ve only read 100 books over the last 12 months and I’ve cut back from eight newspapers a day to only three . . . but “anti-intellectual”? I think the mere act of reading Mr. Turley’s blog would be proof to the contrary.
Dr. Ronald Drabman at the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior has done extensive studies on the effect of media and violence in children. Ron’s work goes back three decades. There is a positive correlation between kids watching media violence (even if staged) and their tolerance for violence.
Among other stimulus material on TV he had the kids watch was professional wrestling. Also, anyone who knows anything about behavioral and stimulus response psychology beyond Psych 101 knows about desensitization. Video games desensitize one to violent acts. Real world violence is not a cartoon.
I recall the producers of the original MASH TV program were concerned about making the operating room scenes too bloody; i.e., realistic.
For those interested in reading directly from the source:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22ronald+drabman%22+violence&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C43&as_ylo=&as_vis=0
Mespo:
I understand your point about sporting violence — lord knows we’ve seen enough stories about fights in stadiums — but honestly, no one seriously suggests banning sports.
“Just this month USA Today questioned whether it’s safe or suitable to attend sporting events for parents with young children.”
versus
“The case raises the question about whether games glorifying virtual violence and mayhem are suitable for anyone.”
The difference is “sad state of affairs that a parent can’t even go to a ballgame! Behave you hooligans!” versus “IT”S THE DEVIL!”
James M:
“You don’t hear anyone questioning whether professional sports are “suitable for anyone” when some idiot fans get in a fight over one mocking the other whose team just lost.”
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I can see you don’t like the premise but you’re factually wrong. There are several centers around the globe devoted to studying the phenonenom and nothing is off heh table in reaching a solution. Just this month USA Today questioned whether it’s safe or suitable to attend sporting events for parents with young childrem. The event in LA with the Giant fan speaks for itself. I’ve attended some games recently and I can tell you that fan behavior is at an all-time low, violence is not far off, and to think otherwise is head sanding. Here’s the article:
http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/ccp/recent-fan-violence-questions-safety-at-college-sporting-events
Wege:
“Studies show whatever the people running the study want to prove.”
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You’re conservative anti-intellectualism becomes you. Your proof that because it doesn’t affect you it can’t affect others in spite or peer reviewed studies to the contrary is quite revealing of that reactionary arrogance that only the pious and the certain can muster. That your 58 and play Quake 3 several times a week looks like a studiable issue to me, too. Wege, you have it all.
What a bunch of bullshit. You don’t hear anyone questioning whether professional sports are “suitable for anyone” when some idiot fans get in a fight over one mocking the other whose team just lost.
I’m going to have to agree with Wege. I don’t think the video game had as much to do with this pathetic attack as did some underlying issue. This could have happened over a game of Tetris.
Is it possible that video gaming can aggravate an already broken person into acting out? Sure, why not. But the game didn’t make this guy snap, and if you knew the “rest of his story,” you’d realize what a very small part of it the gaming was.
The studies you reference are about as reliable as the studies that show marijuana is a harmful drug. Studies show whatever the people running the study want to prove. I’m 58 and play Quake III several times a week, yet have never been moved to violence in my entire adult life. A normal person is not that easily goaded, and an abnormal person can have significant events triggered by all manner of input, including video games.
Fwiw, reading leftwing political blogs prompts violent fantasies in me all the time. Games? Seriously? Not even close to once upon a time….
Great scientific stuff, Dredd.
Psychology is going through some radical growing pains following the advent of recent research that has determined the symbiotic relationship we have with microbes. Microbes are the most abundant, as well as the oldest life forms on Earth.
Humans are a symbiont to microbes even to the point that microbes take part in the construction of our brain systems.
Anxiety is one dynamic where microbes are known to be active.
The revolution taking place downstream from such discoveries may add some light to the phenomenon Mark has set forth in this post.
Unreal
Virtual Reality……