Reddit reviews Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong
We found 7 Reddit comments about Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
BENBELLA
Hijacking top comment to make an important point:
While I think the debate of video games causing mass shootings is stupid, and while my anecdotal evidence agrees with your viewpoint of catharsis in video games, it's extremely important to not ignore legitimate scientific research in such things to avoid inadvertently creating an echo chamber for ourselves.
Upon looking for an academic paper supporting the 80% claim by Patrick Markey, I did not find anything other than a reference to his pop-science book Moral Combat, which I couldn't read because of the paywall. /e: /u/DrKakistocracy dove a little deeper into trying to find the source for the claim and couldn't find it either.
What I did find, however, is this 2015 APA report on a large meta-study that discusses the link between increases in aggression/decreases in prosocial behavior and playing violent video games. Here's a verbatim quote from above linked news piece (my emphasis):
>“The research demonstrates a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy and sensitivity to aggression,” says the report of the APA Task Force on Violent Media.
For the full report, click here
So as it seems, the consensus in the field of psychology seems to be that violent video games aren't as innocent as us gamers might think.
Note, of course, that this is still very, very far away from making the bogus and sensationalized claim that violent video games cause mass shootings. Nevertheless, it is important to not take a one-sided stance on a complex issue, just because we are of different opinions.
/e:
It's also important to note that this meta-study stresses how there are still many important issues "that were not adequately addressed" (p. 02 in the report), such as the role of game characteristics (difference between games with plot like Assassin's Creed or games without plot like CS:GO), how the games is played, degrees of exposure, the role of other risk factors for aggression, and gender differences. As such, there's still a lot of differentiation work to be done.
/e²:
If you want to read a random study, here's one I found on the length of the short-term effects of violent video games, published in Aggressive Behavior, which says the following in its abstract (my emphasis):
>First, results indicated that aggressive feelings, aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior, and heart rate initially increased after violent video game play. Second, results of the delay condition revealed that the increase in aggressive feelings and aggressive thoughts lasted less than 4 min, whereas heart rate and aggressive behavior lasted 4–9 min.
/e³: Random further article of a conceptual analysis of violent video games as "exemplary teachers" of aggression. After testing two hypotheses on a total of about 2,500 people (children, young adults and adults), they came to this conclusion (my emphasis):
>The first hypothesis is based on the principle that curricula that teach the same underlying concepts across contexts should have the highest transfer. Therefore, students who play multiple violent video games should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play fewer. The second hypothesis is based on the principle that long-term learning is improved the more practice is distributed across time. Therefore, students who play violent video games more frequently across time should be more likely to learn aggressive cognitions and behaviors than those who play the same types of games for equivalent amounts of time but less frequently. Both hypotheses were supported.
They don't talk a lot about methodology in the abstract, and there's a paywall. I'm trying to get access to the paper and read into it a bit more.
Here's also a journalistic article about this study, which offers a bit more insight than the abstract. This makes it sound like the methodology was self-assessment as well as peer-assessment.
>Among elementary students, playing multiple violent video games increased their risk of being highly aggressive -- as rated by peers and teachers -- by 73 percent, when compared to those who played a mix of violent and non-violent games, and by 263 percent compared to those who played only non-violent games.
For this particular study, it is important to keep in mind that correlation is not causation. Nevertheless, the correlation is still interesting.
/e^3.1\: Okay, got access to the article, here's a little more about its methodology:
>Participants completed three confidential surveys, and teachers completed one survey for each participating child
(described below). Each participant (including teachers) completed each of these surveys at two points in time during the school year [note: these were 5 months apart].
Here are two tables of their results
And here are the authors' explanations of the tables (my emphasis):
>Distributed practice significantly predicted hostile attribution bias for the high violence gaming group, but not for the low violence gaming group, even controlling for sex, grade, and race (see Table 2). Distributed practice also significantly predicted arguments with teachers for both the high and low violence gaming groups, after controlling for sex, grade, and race. There were trends toward distributed practice predicting trait hostility and physical fights for the high violence gaming group, but they were non-significant.
and
>Distributed practice significantly predicted trait anger, proactive physical aggression, reactive physical aggression, and general physical aggression for the high violence gaming group, but not for the low violence gaming group, even controlling for sex and race (see Table 3). There was a trend toward distributed practice predicting trait hostility (b = .14, p = .12) for the high violence gaming group, but it was non-significant.
/e^4: Here's a paper on video games and crime which correlates crime statistics of various countries with the number of game stores. This paper finds that crimes go down as video games become more prevalent in a country. He finds the following (my emphasis):
>The basic regression results shows that most crimes decrease in a county as the number of game stores increases. Similar measures for sporting good stores and movie theaters yield smaller estimated effects that are more often not significantly different from zero. This pattern is also observed with mortality outcomes. These results withstand various robustness checks. First, the magnitude tends to increase over time as video gaming has become more popular. Second, the effects are stronger when video game stores are interacted with the prevalence of youths in the county. Third, most of the results are still apparent when county-specific trends are included. Fourth, the results still emerge with lag values of video game stores.
You'd expect more game stores to be a sign of a more developed country, and therefore to come with a decrease in crimes. But the fact that the same can't be said for sporting good stores and movie theaters makes this pretty surprising to me.
Note, however, that this is not about violent video games, but video games in general. /e: /u/von_nov makes a good point in attempting to explain these results in his comment
/e^5\: upon popular request:
TL;DR:
Could not find the study mentioned in this post and find it questionable. Did research and found a large meta-study by the APA which does find a consistent correlation between violent video games and increases in aggressive behavior, a. cognition, a. affect, and decreases in prosocial behavior and empathy. While this is still a long shot away from the sensationalized and bogus claim that video games breed mass shooters, it still is an important piece of scientific research that shouldn't be ignored because it's uncomfortable for us as gamers.
>The official report on the shooting released by law enforcement confirmed that Lanza did indeed have a video game obsession. By analyzing data from a GPS device on his car, police found that in the months before the shooting Lanza went to a theater arcade near his home “most every Friday through Sunday and played the game for four to ten hours.”
>
>The game was Dance Dance Revolution...
Of course it was Dance Dance Revolution.
>… The narrative that violent video games contribute to real gun violence remains widely believed, including among the nation’s senior lawmakers…
People who probably have never touched a gaming console or played with a PC.
>… Studies have found a surprisingly clear link between violent media and real-world violence. But it’s not the link most people expect — for whatever reason, more people playing violent video games is consistently tied to fewer violent acts.
>
>“What we find is pretty much no matter which way you cut it, there always ends up being this inverse relationship where when people are playing these violent video games or at least consuming them, we actually see dips in homicides and aggravated assaults,” said Villanova University professor Patrick Markey.
Gotta pass the levels, how else will I get to level up... gotta grind for hours, no time for anything else, thanks EA.
>In their book Moral Combat: Why the War on Video Games is Wrong, Markey and co-author Christopher Ferguson lay out how researchers have approached this question from different angles.
>
>What happens in the period after a hugely popular violent video game, such as a new Grand Theft Auto game is released? The rates of violent crime drop from what would be otherwise expected.
Can confirm, have spent a lot of time playing GTA V, get aggravated, and am normal afterwards... who knew??
>… One of the more striking research findings outlined in Markey’s book is that school shooters are less likely to play violent video games than their peers, not more…
No, shit.
>… There is also the fact that violent video games are a worldwide phenomenon, yet gun violence and mass shootings in particular, occur in America a staggeringly high rates not seen in the rest of the world.
Yeah, everyone around the world plays the same games, but It only occurs in America, odd?!?
Buy his book. Seriously - it's really good.
https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Combat-Violent-Video-Games/dp/1942952988/
>I did not find anything other than a reference to his pop-science book Moral Combat, which I couldn't read because of the paywall.
Haha, yeah I didn’t get that Ferrari the other day too because of that damn “paywall”. Only a gamer..... facepalm..... I’m fairly certain “paywall” only refers to sections or features of something you’ve already purchased or own that requires an additional purchase to access. Otherwise, it’s just something you didn’t want to or couldn’t afford to buy in the first place. Please don’t delegitimize he term “paywall” by referring to anything that costs money, just to feel or appear somewhat justified in not wanting to pay for it (if that is the case). Sorry, this irks me.
But seriously, thanks for the post and keep up the good work.
Archives for the links in comments:
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My key takeaway from this is that there's a psychologist named Patrick M. Markey who has done plenty of research into violent video games and their effects on the people who play them.
He has a book called Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong, and some articles published on the Psychology of Popular Media Culture journal such as Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence:
Rhetoric Versus Data and Vulnerability to Violent Video Games: A Review and Integration of
Personality Research
.
This bit hooked me tho:
>In contrast to the Dartmouth study, as we document in our book Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games Is Wrong, when people are playing or consuming violent video games acts of real-world aggression – aggravated assault, homicides, and school shootings – have been found to decrease...Months when people are playing violent video games are safer than month people are not at home playing video games. Even when violent video games like Grand Theft Auto are released there are observable decreases in homicides and assaults. Such findings have been replicated by criminologists, psychologists, and economists at different universities while taking into account numerous potential other variables.
Wouldn't this seem to indicate the ones committing crime are too busy playing violent video games to commit those crimes...meaning that people who play violent video games are a measurable percentage of the people committing violent crimes...?
Maybe it's negligible percentage that doesn't affect the outcome either way...too lazy to click the links. :p