http://www.kitv.com/video/25435403/detail.html Video report 2mins. A new study just came out in the Oxford Journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Teenage boys were given MRI's while they watched violent videos. Researchers could actually see their brains becoming desensitized. Along the lines of desensitized teens, games desensitization capablitys pale into insignificance in comparason to the horride viral sites which blast people with "adult" material then graphic morbid material, then "adult" then worse of the same, that has a very serious impact on a persons mental state Im sure, some what like a clock work orange ? I am sure if viewers of sites such as the ync had an MRI scan it would show a lot deep desensitization. I agree that teens should not play for too long in computer games which play out acts of war but then who said desensitation is a such bad thing any way? Maybe some one needs a certain amount of it? Maybe that is a piss poor counter argument but life is about experience and sitting in a room with a 20watt light bulb reading the bible is not the answer to lifes ills. Life desensitize us, rejection desensitize us, drinking boss desensitize us. Maybe even day dreaming desensitize us, does escapism equal desensitization. Will there be a rating of desensitization and all future products have a desensitization rating? I dont know what im talking about
This old chestnut. Typical media hysteria. I'd think the reason people become desensitised to this sort of thing is because it's not real. I'm not going to recoil in horror when shooting a terrorist in MW2, but I'm sure I'd totally freak if I saw that IRL. I'm incredibly sceptical regarding any link between video games/violent films/music and violent behavior in mature, balanced individuals. The media seem to cite any anecdotal examples of supposed links between games/music/films and violent behavior as de facto... it's sloppy, biased reporting that IMHO just doesn't reflect reality.
Video games don't make me a bad person, but if I see just one more terrible article on videogames and violence, I will go undercover in a Russian sleeper cell and hurt a lot of innocent people. Your move, journalists.
agree with both of the above. this topic gets beaten to death every year or so. if violent video games and TV shows cause people to turn out evil, then by that logic i should be attempting to drop pianos on peoples heads (looney toons), murdering people in their dreams (nightmare on elm street), running over strippers so i can steal their cash (GTA series), beating people to death for giving me bad coupons (family guy), and beating people to death for the sake of beating people to death (mortal combat). but i dont. yet.
im seventeen,i've played video games since i was...7? 9? i couldn't shoot a dog,nevermind a human so how am i desensitized? I've had area 51,grand theft auto3 vice city ect,half life 2 and so on,i was on GTA 2 and half life one for hours when i started out,sure im abit slow but still...i don't put that down to video games,i put that down to my bio dad lol
Watching violent videos will desensitize anyone, although personally I feel that video-games are the medium which has the least effect on me (although I could already be desensitized to videogame violence). Perhaps they should run a study to see what effect browsing 4chan has.
I doubt how effective measuring someone's brain activity is as a way of determining long-term desensitization. As the brain becomes used to any stimulus it response diminishes, this has been a known fact since the very early days of the understanding of the brain. In other words, if they took these kids to see their favourite band play in concert, their brains would show a spike in various 'happy' hormones before they dropped back down to a level approaching normal after a time. Headline: Listening to music nullifies your enjoyment of it, stop listening to your favourite tracks now! Secondly, whilst this has been published in SCAN, the research appears to have been conducted by Dr Barry Carlton, University of Hawaii and not by Oxford themselves. I don't say this to discredit the good doctor or the university, just that the media often protray anything published by the Oxford Press as being from Oxford. Almost as if they think that something published by Oxford carries more weight with the public than an ex-poly or something. Sadly, it probably does. I don't normally read SCAN but I do have access to it, the latest edition can be found here, I don't see any papers that appear to contain that research, do you? Methinks it is a small footnote buried in a larger paper or it hasn't been bound up yet. In which case we'll see it online shortly. Lastly, where in anywhere does it say that 'people might actually react in real life the same way they do while playing a video game' or 'electronic games stimulate structures in the brain that encourage aggression'? Bull bull bull bull. Since they're being anecdotal, I will be too. I am a fooshin' monster on CoD MW2. But I'm 100% more timid when paintballing, I bet I'd break down in tears and cower in the corner when faced with a real 'kill or be killed' situation.
Providing people can distinguish between reality and virtual reality it's fine. There's only a few freak incidents where kids go beserk and attack people/steal cars because they thought it was acceptable. You're allowed to join the Army and go shoot people when you're 16 and they're worried about teenagers getting a bad impression from video games?
Backstory. I have played games since I was about 4 years old, and I am now 20. I first played Grand Theft Auto when I was about 7. I played Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Carmageddon. GTA 2. GTA 3. Tekken. Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 and 3. Counter-Strike. Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. COD 4. I could go on. Between the ages of about 13 and now, I have browsed the internet extensively, and this has exposed me to the worst and best that 4chan and the like has to offer. I honestly don't think I am desensitized or warped. In fact, I'd say I'm probably the most balanced person I know, and I know quite a lot of people. Maybe I'm the odd one out, but reports like this are the typical media bull trying to scaremonger parents into stopping kids playing video games. My two small units of currency.
There are two obvious flaws with this "evidence" that video games cause violence. The first, and most obvious point to make is that violent images caused desensitisation to violent images, not to violence itself. Watching something and experiencing something first hand are two very different things. A personal example I can use is that of dissection or surgery. I'm sure many people have watched those on television. Being there is a very different phenomenon. You can't watch the smell of formaldehyde, the heaat of the dissection room etc. which are as much a part of the experience as the sights. Secondly, desensitisation to violence does not make you more likely to be the one commiting such acts (except in cases where such acts would be ingrained to be the norm, such as abused children being more likely to abuse children etc.). I'd guess that those living in warzones become desensitised to violence to a certain degree. I'd guess they have to in order to function on any level (I guess desensitisation isn't always a bad thing). But I doubt that makes them significantly more violent in itself. And on a lighter note, Marcus Brigstocke is clearly wrong. Anyone been clubbing lately?
^^^ THIS. ^^^ Linky to the full article here. It makes interesting reading. For a start, the experimental group is small: 22 male subjects. This does not rule out regression towards the mean if you increase the sample size. Second: there is no control group. This is important because as ShakeyJake says, you may well observe the same extinction effect if you get them to watch videos of their favorite band in concert (in fact, we psychologists have a word for that phenomenon: "Boredom"). Based on that glaring omission alone (that not even a first-year research student would make) the whole study is worthless. It gets better: Can anyone follow that? I have a neuropsychology background, and I can't follow it. Luckily the experimenters explain: So fMRI data, which is open to interpretation, from areas of the brain, the functions and associations of which are also open to interpretation (I mean, they are talking about a big area of the brain), is interpreted to mean that subjects become not only emotionally blunted but that this may have direct consequences for aggressive attitudes and behaviour. HmmmyeahOK. Except if the observed 'desensitisation' is in fact boredom, in which case you'd expect a reduction in interest in aggressive material and associated behaviour. And that is just the Abstract. On reading the introduction I already want to spray my coffee all over the keyboard as my eyes hit the second sentence: Since when do scientists quote media coverage as reputable scientific sources?!? But it's the same old chessnut. Violent video games are turning our kids into school shooters. It is not the ridiculously easy access and ubiquitousness of guns (I mean, 62% of all school shootings worldwide are committed in the US), it is not the alienation of large schools, it is not the treatment by adults of adolescents as if they were an alien species, and it really, honestly, wasn't the hugely dysfunctional family backgrounds that school shooters came from. That would be, like, far-fetched, no? to give them their due, the experimenters do admit that such factors may play a role: So what are we studying? Right: the very rough, generalised overview of brain activity of still poorly understood brain regions. Because, you know, that is more relevant to aggressive behaviour than how our kids are raised.
Since media coverage is now fair game for reputable sources, I'd say most aggressive behavior in males around 22 comes from being abused during childhood, but maybe I've just been reading the wrong tabloids
I predict a high correlation between aggressive behaviour in male adolescents and having a Catholic religious upbringing.
I think they should do a study of how angry programmers/developers get when dealing with people. Edit: Something spazzed out and submitted my post too soon, I shall continue... ... I could play 10 hours of TF2 and be getting my ass handed to me. I would come away less angry and annoyed than spending 10 minutes talking someone through the system/cms page I have just made them to their exact specs and hearing them say "why does that do that?", "well that is what you asked, I have it in writing just here", "Oh yes, well I don't want that, can you redesign the entire thing and have to change about 6 database tables and several stored procedures just because I don't quite like how that works even though I asked for it and to be honest it would be perfectly acceptable, I just want to feel that I have control over you". Dealing with this sort of thing is slowly numbing my brain into a state of constant stress and anger, yet I bet the media do not give a rats rear end about that. But would rather run a story than I played TF2 for 10 hours and then got snappy with someone because they were being retarded.
