The Dilemma Of Playing Violent Video Games

There has been a flurry of studies on the harmful effects of violent video games that have been quite alarming but the implications are confusing. Below is a summary of some of these studies, and then a brief discussion of the implications of these findings.

The Studies:
A recent report on the effects of a violent video game was quite disturbing. The International Journal of Cardiology (April 2009) reported the case of a young, healthy man who developed a life-threatening stress-induced thickening of the heart muscle with rhythm abnormalities of his heart and a blood clot in one of the chambers. Another study by Bushman and colleagues (2009) found that when experiment participants played a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes, those who played the violent game took longer to react to a person in danger than those who did not. This study suggested that when people play violent video games, it makes them numb to the pain of others and as a result, they take longer to react to them soon after playing these games.

A study that added to the complexity of findings measured the emotional reactions of people indirectly. In this study, investigators measured muscle activity that corresponded to different emotions when people played the game "James Bond 007: Nightfire". Ravaja and colleagues (2008) found that instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent may result in high anxiety, especially among those who were less prone to being psychotic. Also, the wounding or death of the player's own character may increase some positive emotion. These findings were somewhat disturbing in implying that virtual self-destruction is pleasing. One could argue that this is a cathartic mechanism, but what if this led to acting out this very behavior in everyday life?

Another group of investigators has asked: can these effects last? A study by Moller and colleagues (2009) looked at adolescents who had played violent games and correlated whether playing violent games had any violence-related consequences 30 months later. They found that if an adolescent played a violent video game, that they were more likely to be physically aggressive because the games appeared to make them perceive the world as being more hostile than those people who played fewer violent video games. However, indirect aggression or aggression in relationships did not increase. Yet another study (Brown 2008) that examined a similar phenomenon in Japan and the US showed that this longer-term effect was not cultural but related to the exposure to violent video games.

People who enjoy violent video games may protest that removing violent content from games would decrease their enjoyment of them. However, a study by Prylzbylski and colleagues (2009) found that removing the violent content of games did not decrease enjoyment. Instead, feeling a sense of mastery and competence was much more important than the violent content itself in making people feel as though they enjoyed the games they were playing. More aggressive people clearly preferred the violent content, even though the violence itself did not contribute to their enjoyment. This suggested that it might be possible to construct enjoyable, motivating games without violent content without compromising the degree of enjoyment people get from playing video games.

The Implications:
The harmful effects of these violent video games are incontrovertible. Blindly allowing them to be played by children (or adults) would clearly place them at risk in even more than all the ways that have been outlined by the studies above.

However, aggression is a fundamental human trait that most people possess. While many people try not to have their children be aggressive, this value seems to create many conflicts as well. Many women, for example, like a man to be "aggressive" and associate this with masculinity. Many men like it when their female partners are aggressive and protective in certain situations too. Many parents also like it when their sons are more physically aggressive then their daughters. They often throw their hands up in the air suggesting, "boys will be boys".

How do we reconcile these needs for protection with having a peaceful society? Can we truly say that we do not want our children to be aggressive while we celebrate aggression as we do? How do we reconcile the obviously harmful effects of violence on children with growing a society that is able to defend itself? If we were on a ship attacked by pirates or an airplane that was hijacked, would we not celebrate being aggressively protected?

I think that aggression has a time and a place: in war, protection and self-defense. Whether we play violent video games or not, this characteristic will still be there. Ideally, war would not need to exist. And it is a worthwhile goal to eliminate the need for it. But what do we do in the meanwhile?

Blindly allowing an excess of violent playing without providing a context seems irresponsible. So perhaps what is missing is an open discussion about the pros and cons of aggression and violence: when it is appropriate and when it is not. Perhaps parental and societal interaction in a more balanced way will remove the excitement of the forbidden fruit.

I have a friend who was raised surrounded by guns. His father was a hunter and a believer in the right to bear arms. When I challenged him about this, pointing to the number of senseless killings that have resulted from guns being around, he countered with: "We were not just brought up with guns. We were brought up with a respect for guns. We were taught never to hold one unless we intended to use it, and to use it only when the situation called for it."

Would you be in favor of violent video games in this context? Can we afford to risk our health while fortifying our country from attack? How can we mitigate this harm? Avoidance or denial will not mitigate the harm. Discussion, education and respect will.

Comments

[FatJoe]

And "incontrovertible science" found that comic books caused to violent juvenile delinquency in the 1950s, leading to a censorious moral panic. It destroyed some of the best comics publishing houses of the time. Among them were publishers of comics by war vets like Harvey Kurtzman whose books did not romanticize war in the least, but exposed its horror effectively.

I think upbringing is an infinitely more important factor in determining sociopathic behavior, while entertainment choices -- comics, movies, music, video games -- are just convenient scapegoats.

[Srinivasan Pillay - Huffpost Blogger]

thanks for the comment. i agree that the causes are multifacto­rial..prob­ably a combination of genes and environment...