Kids Exposed To Violent Video Games Retain Aggressive Behavior

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Hang on a second, I could have sworn that last week we heard that sucking at video games was the cause of aggressive behavior?

A recent study by researchers at Iowa State University suggests kids who play violent video games will have more aggressive behavior and keep aggressive thoughts regardless of age, gender or parental involvement.
 
Someone should do a study on how many "studies" about game causing violent behavior based on bullshit it takes to incite violent behavior.

I've played Violent games my entire life and these "studies" make me far angrier than any of those ever did. Personally I am sitting there laughing the entire time I am gaming and usually walk away with the days stress completely gone.
 
I prefer violent video games that show consequences for your action.

Far worse IMO is Tom and Jerry, where they teach you that you can drop an anvil on your friends head and laugh about it. I can see little kids being violent because they think its funny from the cartoon, rather than seeing the real result of violence. ;)
 
Someone should do a study on how many "studies" about game causing violent behavior based on bullshit it takes to incite violent behavior.

I've played Violent games my entire life and these "studies" make me far angrier than any of those ever did. Personally I am sitting there laughing the entire time I am gaming and usually walk away with the days stress completely gone.


Then someone will have to do a study on your study of the studies.
 
Then someone will have to do a study on your study of the studies.

Studies show, that studies on studies show that the study of studies may require more studies to study the effects of subsequent studies.
 
Then someone will have to do a study on your study of the studies.

That's it. Next person I see doing a study I'm punching right in the nuts!!! Unless it's a study on the effects of getting punched in the nuts, then screw them and their study!
 
To me it's obvious that neither firearms nor violent games/films are the direct cause of extreme human behavior.
They do indeed expose young minds to some extreme stuff and games like Postal or GTA, or a violent film will probably mess with a child's mind.
Big whoop though - human history is filled with other horrible life conditions people endured. Children having to grow up between one massive battle and another, seeing their siblings or parents get killed during a military/tribal attack or by wild animals.
Whole villages decimated by hunger or disease. Kids will play soldiers and reenact battles one day and organize a pretend wedding the next.
If we didn't have these two sides, if we weren't capable of killing another person out of love for another, we'd be already extinct.
The only answer I see for humanity is a robust, free education system, spreading knowledge from various areas. Showing children from a very young age how much ideas and possibilities we've achieved, how we're almost always on the verge of some groundbreaking discovery that will help everyone.
The exact form, funding are things I can't obviously design because I too am dumb myself and I can hardly organize my own time.
But creating more teacher positions and properly compensating them so they finally feel secure and confident enough to focus on raising and educating kids would be a start.
We won't get rid of murderers and thieves for sure, but more of them will divert from this destiny if we manage to plant interests and hobbies in their minds early on. Do the best job we can to balance out the evil in us with productive things.
Now we're just shit people raising the next generation of shit people while schools have become a breeding ground for more shitty behaviors because even the teachers are considered poor losers.
So, all in all, wall of text, pretty unicorns and generalisations, but the only cure for humanity I can think of is putting education (technology, art, life skills, psychology and ethics) on steroids. Which is probably impossible now when a slim minority makes all the decisions and they "dun' need no stinkin' school to be no. 1 in my pontiac".
 
A biased study. Since the pioneering work of Bandura and Walters studies have shown that exposure to violent stimuli tends to make less aggressive children less aggressive and more aggressive children more aggressive.

If you are a fascist douche you could screen your sample population for aggressive tendencies and skew your results to show what you want...
 
It sounds like the scientists behind this study define aggressive behavior much differently than I do, It sounds to me like they're mostly defining assertive behavior as aggressive. They're complaining because the kids are thinking for themselves, and not just rolling over and doing what they're told all the time.

On top of that, the study is way too small to have any measurable facts. They only had 3034 kids in the study. On top of that, they didn't compensate for cultural differences, which can be quite vast in Singapore between the Christians and Muslims. Christians in that area of the world are taught to be more giving and forgiving, as was taught in the New Testament from the beginning. (Only recent, European denominations have the aggressive side, and that mostly come from the leaders.) Islam is taught in all areas to be quite aggressive, especially men. Muslim boys in Singapore are taught from very early ages to be aggressive.

Along with that, many religious teachers in that area of the world have hard feelings against computer gaming, or playing or leisure in any form for that matter.

They were paving their way to coming up with their intended results, not any actual scientific study. This is all about pushing against computer gaming.
 
When I play a difficult game, I can get aggressive. I get pissed when I die and have to start over. Put the controller down, and I'm very non-violent and non-aggressive. I'm very chill in real life. But, I play some violent video games.

I've also seen some kids that are messed up. Without video games. If they were my child, I wouldn't let them play violent video games. They talk about killing people all the time, and are the ones you'd point to when asked who is going to be the psycho killer when they get older. These kids are the ones that would be made worse with those games (or better, if they use them as an outlet... I'm not taking a chance, though).

It comes down to the person. The individual. If they are going to be violent, they are going to be violent. But, you can make it worse by giving them things to grow that feeling in them. You don't give a psycho access to movies, books, games about murdering people and going into gory details. Same as you don't give an ex-alcoholic a beer or two. They can't handle it.
 
The final outcome measure was aggressive behavior, with aggressive cognitions (normative beliefs about aggression, hostile attribution bias, aggressive fantasizing) and empathy as potential mediators.
  1. Normative Beliefs About Aggression - The acceptance of aggression in social interactions naturally increases with age, but can also increase based on environment in addition to exposure to aggression. This mediator has historically shown that it is controlled more by the parenting and conditions of the household more than exposure to violent media.
  2. Hostile Attribution Bias - This is something that every normal human being does. Whenever we see something that appears aggressive, we will assume the subject has hostile intent. It is in our nature to do so in order to protect ourselves. You can't measure whether exposure to violent stimuli increases this bias or not, because the level of bias is naturally going to be different between people based on a number of other factors.
  3. Aggressive Fantasizing - This is another factor that does not rely on exposure. I'll quote from another study:
    ...we replicated the general finding that aggressive fantasy is positively associated with real-world aggressive behavior. However, we also found that the interaction of aggressive fantasy and exposure to violence related significantly to aggression, as did the relation between aggressive fantasy and dysphoric fantasy. When exposure to violence was low, even high levels of aggressive fantasizing did not predict aggressive behavior, and, when aggressive fantasizing was low, even high levels of exposure to violence did not predict aggressive behavior. Similarly, when dysphoric fantasy was high, the connection between fantasy aggression and real aggression was markedly attenuated.
    In other words, no direct link between aggressive fantasizing and aggressive behavior exists.
  4. Empathy - My belief after 30 years on this Earth is that a person either has empathy or they don't, it's that simple. I know I have been desensitized to violence, but I still appreciate the value of human life and understand real problems people face.
 
It sounds like the scientists behind this study define aggressive behavior much differently than I do, It sounds to me like they're mostly defining assertive behavior as aggressive.

Dude, they definie it differently than any rational person. When you wouldn't be able to discern "violent behavior" without someone answering with frank honesty on a voluntary survey, your definition of violent behavior has gone off the rails. This isn't even behavior in terms of acts perfomred, this is mostly behavior in terms of "I thought about this." It'd be nice to see the survey as if it does something like ask "have you ever thought X" rather than quantify how frequently or number of incidents, it's also total bullshit.
 
  1. Normative Beliefs About Aggression - The acceptance of aggression in social interactions naturally increases with age, but can also increase based on environment in addition to exposure to aggression. This mediator has historically shown that it is controlled more by the parenting and conditions of the household more than exposure to violent media.
  2. Hostile Attribution Bias - This is something that every normal human being does. Whenever we see something that appears aggressive, we will assume the subject has hostile intent. It is in our nature to do so in order to protect ourselves. You can't measure whether exposure to violent stimuli increases this bias or not, because the level of bias is naturally going to be different between people based on a number of other factors.
  3. Aggressive Fantasizing - This is another factor that does not rely on exposure. I'll quote from another study:In other words, no direct link between aggressive fantasizing and aggressive behavior exists.
  4. Empathy - My belief after 30 years on this Earth is that a person either has empathy or they don't, it's that simple. I know I have been desensitized to violence, but I still appreciate the value of human life and understand real problems people face.
you don't seem to be interpreting the differences between moderator and mediator variables correctly

moderator variables explain the strength of the relationship between variables and mediator variables explain why a relationship between variables might exist
 
Not surprising, but even with evidence, it's not gonna change parents who don't want to pay attention to their kids from giving them a computer or a console so they'll go away. Also, with it being so hard to get really good birth control (like burning your tubes so they'll never let an egg pass by ever again) is hard to do before you have had kids. If you wanna have any fun, you end up with kids you can't take care of or don't want to take care of so you buy them COD, Titanfall, Battlefield or some other game. It's just easier not to have kids so you don't have to be responsible and that means just skipping dating or sex or anything else until we get smarter about letting people who don't want kids just get an operation so they don't have to have them. It's mostly society ideology and business that needs population growth to show economic growth through sales that would get hurt the most by that kinda thing.
 
This isn't even behavior in terms of acts perfomred, this is mostly behavior in terms of "I thought about this." It'd be nice to see the survey as if it does something like ask "have you ever thought X" rather than quantify how frequently or number of incidents, it's also total bullshit.

Reminds me of those shitty Facebook surveys... "You might be an 80's kid if this was the best TV show". Well, I knew of the show, but I didn't care for it, so I guess I'm not an 80's kid.


The way questions are asked is a big one.
 
That's it. Next person I see doing a study I'm punching right in the nuts!!! Unless it's a study on the effects of getting punched in the nuts, then screw them and their study!

RealityPunch :D
 
Video games are a training simulator for the violent world they will face later on in their life.
 
Not surprising, but even with evidence, it's not gonna change parents who don't want to pay attention to their kids from giving them a computer or a console so they'll go away. Also, with it being so hard to get really good birth control (like burning your tubes so they'll never let an egg pass by ever again) is hard to do before you have had kids. If you wanna have any fun, you end up with kids you can't take care of or don't want to take care of so you buy them COD, Titanfall, Battlefield or some other game. It's just easier not to have kids so you don't have to be responsible and that means just skipping dating or sex or anything else until we get smarter about letting people who don't want kids just get an operation so they don't have to have them. It's mostly society ideology and business that needs population growth to show economic growth through sales that would get hurt the most by that kinda thing.

The biggest problem for us with this problem mentality is that many of these people don't want to put in the effort to raise their kinds right, so they push the government to do it for them. (After all, the government is doing so much else for them.) That creates significant inconveniences for the rest of us: the cost of government regulation, having products we like being banned because kids can't handle them, and putting more people out of work. All this because of this constant push by the media for people to be selfish and lazy.

Wanna know how to stop it? Stop watching those idiotic "reality" shows and sitcoms.
 
The biggest problem for us with this problem mentality is that many of these people don't want to put in the effort to raise their kinds right, so they push the government to do it for them. (After all, the government is doing so much else for them.) That creates significant inconveniences for the rest of us: the cost of government regulation, having products we like being banned because kids can't handle them, and putting more people out of work. All this because of this constant push by the media for people to be selfish and lazy.

Wanna know how to stop it? Stop watching those idiotic "reality" shows and sitcoms.

I don't know of many parents that watch a lot of TV. That's mostly a last gen hobby. Video games though...they play a lot of video games which are, I think, basically about the same.
 
How can they tell that inherently violent kids are not drawn to violent games?
 
How can they tell that inherently violent kids are not drawn to violent games?

That's another really good point. Boys are usually a lot more violence focused and unable to control their emotions and they tend to play violent games so you might really be onto something.
 
Those researchers better take that back or I'll beat 'em senseless....
 
I don't know of many parents that watch a lot of TV. That's mostly a last gen hobby. Video games though...they play a lot of video games which are, I think, basically about the same.

Ah, but people who are parents today grew up on "reality" shows like Survivor and sitcoms like Malcolm in the Middle and Arrested Development, all of which show dramatically how selfishness wins, which is not true in real life.

The shows I grew up with like MacGuyver and Knight Rider showed people who gave their time and effort to help other people. The sitcoms I grew up with like Doctor Doctor, The Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show, and Family Ties, even The Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, taught a lot of lessons about how being selfish is a bad thing and brings bad results. Most of these types of shows have faded into nothing.

I mostly quit watching TV during that time. I watch some on Hulu, like Supernatural, Agents of Shield, Almost Human, and Castle, but I watch barely 1/5 of the viewing habits of most Americans today. (I watch 5-6 hours per week, depending on which shows are available, while the US average is 34 hours per week. That's almost 5 hours per day!) I spend most of the rest of the time playing cooperative MMO games like WoW or STO.

Most current shows I've seen, just to see if there is anything else worth watching once in a while, have been lessons on selfishness. Big Bang Theory, as many people have told me I would love, and How I Met Your Mother are two examples of constant lessons on selfishness and irresponsibility, not to mention that Big Bang Theory is a horribly prejudiced show against people like me. (That poor guy that still lives with his mother and constantly has her yelling at him. I feel his pain far more than finding it funny.) I just avoid the major networks most of the time these days. It's just not worth watching.
 
kids who play violent video games will have more aggressive behavior and keep aggressive thoughts regardless of age, gender or parental involvement.

I think I solved the problem.
 
you don't seem to be interpreting the differences between moderator and mediator variables correctly

moderator variables explain the strength of the relationship between variables and mediator variables explain why a relationship between variables might exist
A mediator explains the relationship, so my breakdown is still applicable. The moderators in this case are the gender and age group of the sample and how strongly they relate to exposure to violent video games and psychological aggression. The mediators explain the relationship between these two, and I explained why I think the ones they explicitly list in the summary cannot effectively explain the relationship in the context of this study.

"Whereas moderator variables specify when certain effects will hold, mediators speak to how or why such effects occur."
 
Your interpretation of the study you relied upon for point number three seems to be incorrect
 
Duh. Problem is that its not all on age, its more of a maturity factor and younger kids are more likely to be less mature than adults (unless they're from my family).
That's why people should have to take a maturity test before buying M games or getting in to see R rated movies.
 
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