Violent Video Games Cause an Increase in Aggression Long After the Game Has Been Turned Off
Brad J. Bushman
Bryan Gibson
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA and VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Abstract
Experimental studies show that violent video games cause people to behave more aggressively, but how long does the effect last? In most experiments, aggression is measured immediately after gameplay. The present experiment is the first to test the long-term causal effects of violent video games on aggression. By the flip of a coin, participants played a violent or nonviolent game for 20 min. Within each group, half ruminated about the game. The next day, participants competed with an ostensible opponent on a competitive task in which the winner could punish the loser with painful noise blasts through headphones. Results showed that violent video games increased aggression 24 hr later, but only among men who ruminated about the game. Rumination keeps aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavioral tendencies active. If players ruminate about the violence in a game, the aggression-stimulating effects of the game persist long after it has been turned off.
I’m torn on this topic, as it has been said over, and over.
Same with second hand smoke, that it causes cancer.
On the one hand I think its bunk. But if the person is impressionable, such as, not able to base experience in real life as a means of reality, then I think it could happen.
The only video game I have really played is football manager and not since they,to my mind, made big changes(I couldn’t cope with them). However have seen a lot of articles on research on " violent" video games. It seems to be very contradictory, sometimes arguing for a violence effect sometimes against.
I used to be competitive in video games, third person shooters- not major league gaming, but I played on elite servers with other elite ranked players, namely Gears of War. I played some first person shooters as well. I was obsessed. The scary thing was that I was as in shape as the characters, have experience with firearms, and was trained and experienced in hand to hand combat (mostly Krav Maga, Israeli military science of how to neutralize threats, not art). Gears of War, Halo, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Mass effect, ect, mostly somewhat realistic shooters like Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Gears of War. I had insane skills at those games, especially Ghost Recon advanced warfighter and future soldier or whatever the latest is called. Also Rainbow Six. Mostly realistic Tom Clancy games and tons of Gears of War. Gears is insane. Halo was fun but far from realistic.
I would wake up in the summers, eat a ton, then hydrate while playing shooters before training. Now training was hours of exercise a day. I was in killer shape (still am? Muscle bound like hell but my cardio is half of what it used to be, which was ridiculous, practically pro level cardio back then, resting heart rate of 53bpm now its 74
I’m with sociologists Stuart Ewen and Eric Hoffer on this: I think the media is so addicted to money from advertisers that it does their bidding (whether consciously or not & whether cynically or not): It whips up the existential fears of the barely conscious and then provides them with (supposed) palliatives like the now directly advertised anti-Ps and anti-D’s, as well as vacations in Cancun, homes people cannot really afford, and BMWs.
Pros probably tend to have autonomic nervous systems that operate at very low baseline levels of emotionality and triggerability vs. very high levels of baseline stimulus threshold. The great golfers are like that, for sure. And most really successful criminals.
I would say , if a person has a MI then they should thread carefully as to what games they play. But it really does not stack up , many people love horror for example just because its exciting and they recognise its just a kind of weird escapism. Call of duty , far cry and all the rest are blockbusters , they sell millions and millions of copies , but I see no real evidence that they are implicated in any aggressive behaviour. Maybe for a select few but again these are persons that shouldn’t be playing them because of their fragile mental state.
In a college critical thinking class, those would (at least by the end of the semester) be quickly identified as irrelevant to the original premise. I will suggest going back to the boldfaced italics at the end of the original post to see why.
I will suggest going back to the boldfaced italics at the end of the original post to see why.