February 27, 2008 -
Playing violent video games desensitizes players to real-world violence.It's an oft-repeated mantra among video game critics like Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Miami attorney Jack Thompson.
But new research from Finland casts doubt on the desensitization theory. As reported by Shacknews, a team of researchers in Helsinki found that, rather than exulting, gamers became angry and anxious after killing an opposing character in James Bond 007: NightFire. Perhaps even more surprisingly, players had a positive response to their own character's death.
The study, The Psychophysiology of James Bond: Phasic Emotional Responses to Violent Video Game Events tested 36 young adults, monitoring physiological data in synch with game play action. From the report:
From this perspective, the fact that wounding or killing the opponent elicited negative, not positive, emotional responses might be reassuring... Given that the player knows that it is only a game, events that, in the real world, are perceived as threatening may be perceived as positively challenging...
There was no evidence for desensitization of emotional responses as a function of repeated exposures to violent game events...
So, why do players react positively to their own character's demise? The study authors speculate that the character's death represents a respite from the tension of playing. The authors found a similar "tension break" effect in a 2005 study using a non-violent game, Super Monkey Ball 2.
Comments
Re: Finnish Study Suggests Violent Games Do NOT Desensitize ...
To shred more light on the results and why and what they mean I think the scientists would have to be avid gamers. When my character in a game dies it’s usually for a silly reason or in a funny situation. And in most games that involving killing people you are playing the role of a good person fighting back against the bad people who plan to blow up the planet or whatever. It’s no different to what we see in films, if you ban violence in video games you would have to ban violence in movies too. Take away violence in games and we would only have puzzle games, the industry would collapse.
Really hard with the puzzles but really good relief once when you solved them...
What other studies lacked before this was that they never tested any of the player responses with DIFFERENT types of games...ONLY just the violent games.
This study is a first and hopefully be something others take heed to.
If other Psychologists are going to try and convince that playing Violent Videogames are going to make gamers kill others, they should try to focus on A WIDER VARIETY OF GAMES>>>>
Basically the diffrance stress and sensory overload it can fck with the mind.
With gaming you have low amounts of stress from frustration of not compelteling something but its short lived and certainly not as poisonous as what causes PTSD.
@Cytech, it's Jack Thompson, not Johnson. Just a friendly correction on my part, that's all. Not trying to offend you.
Meaningful character death is what gets you or at least toys with your emotions some, with real life death its magnified 100 times, life experience and perspective can lower this sense of horror and dredge but I have found its more life experience and getting use to the reality of life than what fiction can ingrain on you.
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/freedman.html
Also, I've always said that common sense shows that it is silly to think that violent games make you violent. My own personal experience has shown me that this is completely untrue. I have many, many gamer friends and we have been playing violent (and non-violent) games since we were very young. None of us are violent people. That is proof, IMO.
Some people are just violent. Violence in any media around them may trigger them to react badly, however the media did not make them violent in the first place, and this is an important distinction. Anything could set these people off, and you can't blame the game...
and a great way to lead sheeple by fear mongering and stay in business.
I'm sure the size of the screen has some role in it, but that's no worse than sitting in a movie theatre, and no-one is relieved to see the main character die in a movie purely for the relief from looking at the screen.
I don't think the authors of the study believe the distance from the tv screen might be a factor. Although, you do point out an interesting observation.
@ Jabrwock
I don't think the authors had made any mention to subconscious revulsion to violence. However, they referenced to individuals' "deeply ingrained moral code that injuring or killing another human being is wrong" as a mediating factor in eliciting anxiety.
@ Trevor McGee
Although the authors cast doubt on desensitization theory, I'm also casting doubts on their doubts. From this study, it means that desensitization doesn't occur immediately or in the short term. IMO, desensitization is a long process and stands upon many conditions (e.g. high high dose of media violence, high dose of real life violence, basically violence at every moment). So, I wouldn't say desensitization is wrong, just that it's losing supporting evidence.
Oh, wait...
-Flaps
That depends on how you defined game enjoyment. But yes, the participants reported their moods where joy is reported and scored higher than fear, depressed feeling and pleasant relaxation.
Beware about Jonathan Freedman : he's endlessly criticized because his work on media violence was sponsored and financially supported by the MPAA.
I second that.
Are these studies taking kids who play games and then bringing them to a battlefield to look at real killing? Unlikely.
From personal experience, I know that violence in games (not so much movies) doesn't really effect me. It may be that I have seen lots of game violence or that I can't get past the "fakeness" of it all.
However, I have been in some real-life street violence during college (saw a guy get stabbed, too). Despite my extensive videogame exposure, the reality of those times proved to be harrowing to say the least.
If the anti-games folk were right, I would have felt right at home in those situations.
See, what they didn't understand is that when you shoot your opponent in those games, you aren't doing violence. You are only temporarily inconviencing them at most. You know, body and soul, that the computer character will be there again next time. Pretty much the same way that hitting a baseball or kicking a soccer ball doesn't make you more likely to violently hurt someone (WATCHING soccer, on the other hand...).
A few years ago they were marketing that "Banned from TV" video on TV where all sorts of gory things were caught on tape. The ad showed a woman about to step in front of a speeding train. "About to" It didn't show her actually being hit, just a short clip of the few seconds before where you can see her looking the wrong way and the train coming. I can not watch that commercial. I had to turn away every time it came on.
Another commercial at about the same time for child abuse has a little kid, about 3 years old sitting in a darkened stairway. You can hear a drunken man yelling at a woman in the background. Then you hear a slap and the sound startles the kid causing him to jump. I not only couldn't watch that commercial I would have to jump for the mute button.
I can watch people getting blown up, run over by buses, and chopped to pieces in movies and on TV. I can use my 'leet skillz' to do the same to other players in violent games. But when the violence is real I know the difference and react accordingly, so I know I'm not desensitised.
I think that most humans were born with a sense of differating between reality and realism. I watch family guy and the simpsons all the time and see Homer and Peter go through some hellish things. But I know if that happened to me or a family member, I would panic to death.
"There was no evidence for desensitization of emotional responses as a function of repeated exposures to violent game events…"
Barring some sort of mental dealy, why would somebody choose to do something that makes them feel bad?
This is video games, not church ffs.
While this is true, Johnathan Friedman has been critical of media violence studies long before his research was supported by the MPAA.
Now, I'm not refuting your personal reaction, just your claim that one is supposed to not feel any emotion when playing a violent video game. I think it's a bit silly to say that video games don't play on our emotions, at least a bit. Even in real life, we have our cycles of triumphs and failures, despite how trivial the win or loss may have been. Maybe I just sharpened my pencil - I'd feel happy about that, though short-term and very trivially. When playing a videogame, especially a fast-paced one like most violent ones are, the adrenaline rush would be a lot greater and the player would feel something - and more often positive feelings would occur because we're successfully doing what we have to to win.