November 12, 2008 • 22 mins
Despite numerous studies, the jury's still out on violence in video games: do they make gamers more likely to commit violent acts, or function as a means of catharsis? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about violence and video games.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, everyone,
Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polatt. I'm
an editor here at How Stuff Works, and as usual,
(00:20):
I have the always tough senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
I was trying to adopt a tough video game voice
like this big you know, super muscular world. Yeah, actually
we miss you Fontane. Anyway, we wanted to talk today
(00:40):
about violence and video games, violence in video games, and
violence outside of video games that may have been caused
by the violence that you find in video games. Now
I want to shoot you. Well, my work here is done.
So there's been a lot of talk of pretty much
since video games really started turning pretty violent in the
early nineties. I guess about whether or not the violence
(01:03):
you find in these games has any correlation or causation
for violence in in everyday life. And um, we wanted
to kind of address this and talk about it because
it's it's a it's you know, it's definitely one of
those hot button topics. And uh, I don't think it's
been resolved one way or the other. Um, despite numerous studies. Yes,
(01:27):
I would say so. Actually I was doing research on
the on the podcast, and uh went to the library
online and there were literally, you know, at least a
hundred articles you know about both sides, you know, um,
scholarly journals even so, I mean they're people, people's opinions
(01:48):
are are mixed, even among the experts. It's um something
that yeah, it becomes a question of who do you
want to believe rather than you know, who has the
right answer, because as the jury, I guess is still out.
But before we get too far into this, we should
talk a little bit about, you know, kind of the
reasoning behind this. Um. You know, video games when they
(02:10):
first came out there, the biggest concern was they would
wrought your brain because you'd be sitting there for hours
playing them, uh instead of doing things like reading or
going outside, at least according to my parents outside. Yeah,
apparently there is something that exists with you know, outside
of the realm of your living room where you was. Um.
(02:32):
So yeah, that was the big concern for a while.
But then once video games started reaching a certain level
of sophistication, and I mean that in a sense of
graphics and sound and and and user interface not necessarily
in content. Once it reached that sophistication, people began to think, hey,
this stuff might actually have an effect beyond just being
a time waster. So we're talking about games like Mortal Kombat.
(02:55):
That was one of the big ones that got a
lot of people upset because they had way over the violence. Uh.
I wouldn't call it realistic because I've never seen a
ninja shoot ice out of his hands for real. Um,
you haven't. You haven't lived until you had. I gotta
say I haven't lived then. Um, But yeah, Mortal Kombat
got a lot of people upset, and uh are a
(03:17):
lot of parents anyway, we're concerned about it because it
was over the top violence. And of course these are
kids who are engaging in these games off and especially
back in the arcade days, back when you could still
go to an arcade and play against all these other kids.
And you just watch a group playing around one of
these games, and yeah, it seems like they get kind
of not necessarily physically aggressive toward one another, but they
(03:37):
definitely adopt a much more you know, aggressive kind of personality.
And and there's a lot of smack talking and a
lot of that kind of piling around. And then the
game's continued to get more sophisticated and you got into
things like the first person shooters, which really started to
concern some people, especially when you had it tie into
(03:58):
other real, actual, real life horrible events like the Columbine shooting. UM.
There was a connection between the people who who the
students who committed that act and and the first person
shooters that they enjoyed playing. UM. And then people began
to think, well, hey, could there possibly be something that is,
(04:19):
you know, something about these games that's inspiring these kids
to do these kind of things. And that's really where
this this avalanche began. Yeah. M. According to David Walsh,
who has a child psychologist and I still want of
yours UM, he said that the National Institutes of Health
had done some some research into it, and uh. He
(04:44):
co authored a study that connected the the playing of
violent video games to physical aggression UM. But he cited
that that information from the National Institutes of Health, and
it basically said the teenage brain is not fully developed,
so uh, you know, it's kids aren't ready for handling
(05:04):
violence like this that can actually form an impression on
them and you know, make a a normally docile kid
into a killing machine. And um, you know, there there
have been some incidents like in June seven, two thousand three,
Um Devon Moore in a town called Fayette, Alabama, killed
(05:26):
two police officers in a dispatcher. Um he had been
picked up for allegedly trying to steal a car, and uh,
you know, at the police station, he jumped up. According
according the information I read on CBS News, he uh
jumped up and grabbed the gun and shot the police
(05:47):
officer who had him in the head. Then when another
police officer come came to find what was going on, Uh,
he shot More shot him too and in the head.
And then a police dispatcher was at the end of
the hall and More shot him in the head and
grab the keys to a police cruiser and took off.
(06:08):
Now they caught him. He was tried and convicted and
sentenced to the death penalty. Um. But um, a very
famous attorney named Jack Thompson picked up this case and
uh he wanted to sue the publishers of the game,
which was Grand Theft Auto UM because apparently he uh
(06:30):
evidence suggested that More played a lot of grand theft
auto and which a lot of people. Basically, when the
deal is you steal cars and you shoot people, you
you commit mons and tons of crimes, yeah, among other things,
and can run people over and yeah. So uh so
Jack Thompson said, you know this was obviously because the
(06:51):
violent video game. Uh. And he sued Take two Interactive,
the publishers, and rock Star Studios, the studio that creates
the game. Um. And uh, you know, trying to bring
him down for the for the obvious effects. You know
that he claimed the game had on on Devin Moore. Sure, so, hey,
(07:11):
what's what's the up to these days? Uh, Jack Thompson,
he's cooling his heels. Um. Apparently. Well, for one thing,
he was a Florida lawyer and he tried to to
get a waiver to basically a one time permit to
try this case in Alabama. Um. However, the he has
since been disbarred in Florida permanently because, according to the
(07:36):
report on the Florida bar dot org website, UM, he
engaged in a number of unprofessional behaviors in in this case,
he couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well, he's
uh I'll let him suit you for saying. Um. But yeah,
he he is known to the video game industry. If
you search for his name on sites that are known
(07:58):
for gaming or technology, UM, you'll find his name popping
up a lot of places. And he does not It's
clear he does not like violent video games, right. And
he still holds that position even though he's no longer
able to practice law. Yeah, and there, but there are,
like we said, there are definitely uh, medical professional psychologists
(08:20):
who are who also believe in this um, in this
causality or at least correlation between violence and the violence
you find in video games. Craig A. Anderson did a
study and yes, Mr Anderson, actually Dr Anderson does study
and and uh I believe it was two thousand one. Um.
(08:42):
He looked at a lot of other studies. So he
did what is called in the science biz as a
meta analysis, where you take the results of various studies
and you combine those results to kind of get an
overall big picture of whether or not a whether or
not a certain theory holds any water. Um. Here's the
(09:05):
thing about a meta analysis, It's it's tricky to do correctly.
The problem with the meta analysis is that you take
all these different studies and you some of them may
not be very good studies. They may not have they
may have a bad methodology. Um, there may be a
very small sample size, so the the data is not
(09:26):
really reliable. UM. But you just lump it in with
everything else, so you get the good along with the bad.
And there's no real way of necessarily telling how much
of one you have versus the other. And uh So
he's received some criticism for his approach, uh to just
to take all these different different studies and combine them
(09:48):
and and try and draw conclusions from that. Now his conclusions,
he believes that there is a link between the violence
and video games and and real life violence. Um. He
cited several studies that suggested that after playing violent video games,
children showed more signs of aggression, um even if they
(10:08):
had only played twenty minutes of a violent video game,
whereas kids who played video games that didn't have violence
in them, like say just a simple like a race
card game or something Tetris tetris, anything like that did
not show this kind of level of aggression. UM. So
things like that he cited, and and he uh He's
(10:31):
written several Times about how he doesn't believe that the
many that most of the studies were done very well.
They he doesn't think that they were poorly designed or
poorly executed. Um. So he's defended his position. But other
people like Benjamin Radford, who's one of the managing editors
of The Skeptical Enquirer, which is a journal about critical
(10:53):
thinking and skepticism. Really yeah, you wouldn't imagine it from
that title. Huh see it? Yeah, sure you. Well, it's
actually an excellent journal, but it's he He writes that
the meta analysis alone is kind of questionable, and that
the link between violence and video games is not at
(11:16):
all apparent. It may exist, but it's not hasn't been proven. Um.
And that also correlation and causation are two different things,
which is a very important point. So here's here's the question,
video games make kids violent? Or do violent kids like
violent video games? I am not an adequate judge to
(11:38):
answer that question. Yeah, I would from from a common
sense kind of perspective, which of course means that it's
not at all scientific scientific, Yeah exactly. This is this
is just based on my own sort of gut instinct,
and I have nothing to back this up other than
just my own personal experiences, and uh so it really
(11:59):
doesn't hold any way. It's just my own personal opinion.
I think that violent kids do tend to enjoy violent
video games. It's it's a way of acting out kind
of a power fantasy, right. You're able to exert power
over other individuals. Now granted these individuals may be completely virtual,
they're just characters on the screen, but you're able to to,
(12:21):
uh to, like I said, exert power over them. And
so you're drawn to that because I mean, that's the
kind of personality you have. Then you know you're gonna
want to play those sort of games. And you may
also be violent in real life as well. But that's
not because the video game. It's because of your the way,
the way you are. UM, I don't necessarily think that
(12:44):
a violent video game makes a person violent. And I
this is anecdotal, so again not scientific. UM I play
a lot of video games. You play some violent video
I play some seriously violent video games. I have the
Grand Theft Auto series. I've played the heck out of them.
I play first person shooters. I UM, I enjoy playing
(13:05):
these violent video games, and I am not a violent person.
It has been literally days since I punched someone. Um. No, seriously,
I'm I haven't been a fight since I was thirteen
years old, al decades, twenty years to it. And there
you go. We know, Christopher Ferguson and wrote a report
(13:29):
in Psychiatric Quarterly. UM, and he said that he actually
did a study on on peer of view journals and
just to see the other literature that was out there. Um,
he found you know, once he was he had stripped
the bias away. According to what he said, you know,
stripped the bias way. He didn't find any support for
the idea that video games cause violence. And he actually
(13:49):
believes that there are some positive benefits. Um. You know,
visio spatial cognition. Um. Basically you know, getting your bearings
in the virtual world. UM. So you know there may
be there may be some benefits to it, I suppose.
But you know this, this really isn't a new concept,
you know, talking about the violence and video games that
(14:11):
are corrupting influences. I'm sure you may have heard of
Dr Frederick Wortham or maybe the title Seduction of the Innocence. Yes,
this was a book written many decades ago, almost a
hundred years ago now I'm getting there anyway, I guess
seven years ago, and um, it was about how violent
comic books were causing kids to commit crimes. And then
(14:35):
there's the whole heavy metal music causes kids to commit suicide.
You want to go even further back, talk about Victorian England,
where there were some people who believed that the that
a performance of the incredible case of Dr Jackal and
Mr Hyde somehow managed to inspire Jack the Ripper. Yeah,
(14:56):
So I mean this is something that goes way back,
talking about fan to see somehow impacting reality. Yeah. And
and the reason why video games I think gets more
attention than say I mean, obviously you've got parent counsels
that are concerned about violence in all forms of media,
not just video games. But the reason why video games
I think get a lot of attention is because you
(15:17):
take an active role. You're not just passively watching or
reading your you are your actions are being translated into
this video game world. So I think it's that extra
step that concerns some people. And I think to part
of it is that some of the populace is just
not into video games. They've never played them. Um, it's
(15:38):
new for a lot of people. Um, you know, for example,
ballroom dancing, uh, you know to to Uh. I won't
admit to watching Dancing with the Stars, but I, you know,
possibly may have been an earshot of a TV when
they said that. I think it was. The waltz was
considered risk. Ay at one time. Now we've all been alive.
Everyone you know on the planet now was alive. Sense
(16:00):
the walls was a normal thing. So to think about
it in that context, you think, what are you kidding? Well, yeah,
we have violent video games. Now that's so much more corrupting.
But you know, in a hundred years it may not
be such a big deal. They'll find something else to
be outraged about. You can hear the same thing about
certain composers when some of their like Beethoven's, several Beethoven's
(16:21):
pieces got the same sort of attention. UM. Getting back
to to the video games, I wanted to mention one
other study UM, which was conducted by Patrick Kirkgard UH
and it was published in the International Journal of Liability
and Scientific Inquiry. Kirkgard also decided that from his from
his research, he decided that many of the claims that
(16:43):
violence comes like people kids were becoming violent because of
the violence of video games. Uh, he thought that those
conclusions were faulty. He didn't necessarily he didn't go so
far as to say that they were completely wrong. He
just said that you couldn't support that from the teas
that were conducted. Um. So again, it's one of those
the question is still up in the air. UM. I
(17:06):
bring that one up because it was fairly recent. I
had first heard about it. I think it was this
past spring. So again, studies are still ongoing. I'm not
sure that we're going to get to the bottom of
this anytime soon. For one thing, I think there are
way too many variables and too many factors to take
into consideration. It's hard to boil it down to hey,
you know, a little billy just played Mortal Kombat and
(17:28):
then he's gonna go and punch his sister and and
I mean, it's there are too many things to take
into consideration to just blame it on one factor. And
I don't think that video games are completely innocent, to
be honest. Somebody who is going to commit a violent
act like that may find inspiration, yeah, but they can
find inspiration from anything. Though. Well, you know, it doesn't
(17:51):
help when you hear things say. According to CBS News, UM,
when the police brought in Devin Moore, he said the
quote was life is like a video game. Everybody's got
to die sometime. So but that just adds fuel to
the fire when people say that this is a result
and then you see, you know, an act like I
(18:12):
remember a report of a school shooting, um some time
ago now where the kid shot out the mirrors in
the bathroom, in the school bathroom. And at this point
it's apocryphal because I had difficulty finding it in the
short amount of time I allotted to find that particular article. Um,
but that actually is directly from what Duke nucam I believe,
where their actual power ups behind the mirrors there may
(18:35):
have been so this and this argument to me doesn't
hold any water because you're talking about disturbed individuals who
will take anything, latch onto anything, and that could fuel
their their power fantasies. I mean, we see the same
thing with the arguments against role playing games, where parents
were saying, hey, this role playing game is corrupting children.
(18:56):
It's gonna convince them to become Satanists. They're gonna kill
each other. And you're talking about saying that kids should
not indulge in any kind of fantasy play at all
because there's the danger that they're going to believe the
fantasy is reality. I think that's just ridiculous. I think
really that you have certain individuals who are predisposed to
(19:18):
that kind of psychosis. But you can't sit there and
say that the fantasy was the cause of it. It's
the cause. The cause is internal, it's not external. No.
I actually I actually agree with you. What I meant was, um,
for somebody who is already predisposed to that kind of
an action, they can latch onto something they see in
a comic book or in a movie, but then they
are on the street. A solution to that would then
(19:40):
be eliminate all interesting stuff everywhere for fear that it
could cause someone to go off the deep end, right,
And I'm not advocating doing that, just saying that I
was totally gonna punch you. Oh no, I've fallen into
your Trapolette. I see what you did there. So no,
I'm just saying it that, you know, it's just impossible
(20:03):
to blame that one thing, but and you know, an
event like that, it can definitely that's what that Yeah,
that's what link that people are looking for. UM. So
you know, that's all I'm saying. Okay, that's all I'm saying.
All Right, I'm calm now, all right, sure you are. Wow.
(20:24):
Well this was a good conversation. We got we got
heated in that argument a little bit. I'm just good
because it's cold in here and it's a little chilly anyway.
So I guess we can probably wrap this up. Did
you have any any other interesting studies or anything you
want to bring up? No, no additional studies that the
difference with you. You know, Yeah, the the question is
(20:45):
still up in the air. I think it'll probably will
be for quite some time. They'll they'll definitely be more studies. Um.
Another thing to keep in mind I should have pointed
this out earlier is if you're reading a study, find
out who commissioned it, but because there may be bias. Uh.
If it's a completely independent study, then you can you
(21:06):
can feel a little more comfortable that there is no bias.
But if it's something where a parent teacher association has
funded a specific study that brings into question the findings,
I mean, you know, even if the scientists were trying
to go straightforward and not not will make the results
lean one way or the other. When you're receiving money
(21:27):
from a specific interested party. I think it's a little
complicated to keep that in mind. But if you want
to learn more about this, we have a great article
on the side. Actually, it's called do Violent Video Games
Lead to Real Violence? And that was written by Julia
Layton and that was updated as as late as the spring,
so it's it's up to date too, so I would
recommend checking that out if you want to learn more. Also,
(21:50):
I would play this podcast backwards for our secret message. Yeah,
I hope. I hope you guys find it. If you do,
write in and tell us what it was, and then
we'll probably send somebody out and they won't run you over.
I don't know where I'm going with that. I'm done,
guys in the white coat is shown anyway, make sure
you visit how stuff works dot com so read this
article in others and we will talk to you again
(22:12):
soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Let us know
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stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented
two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi there, everyone,
Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polatt. I'm
an editor here at How Stuff Works, and as usual,
(00:20):
I have the always tough senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey,
I was trying to adopt a tough video game voice
like this big you know, super muscular world. Yeah, actually
we miss you Fontane. Anyway, we wanted to talk today
(00:40):
about violence and video games, violence in video games, and
violence outside of video games that may have been caused
by the violence that you find in video games. Now
I want to shoot you. Well, my work here is done.
So there's been a lot of talk of pretty much
since video games really started turning pretty violent in the
early nineties. I guess about whether or not the violence
(01:03):
you find in these games has any correlation or causation
for violence in in everyday life. And um, we wanted
to kind of address this and talk about it because
it's it's a it's you know, it's definitely one of
those hot button topics. And uh, I don't think it's
been resolved one way or the other. Um, despite numerous studies. Yes,
(01:27):
I would say so. Actually I was doing research on
the on the podcast, and uh went to the library
online and there were literally, you know, at least a
hundred articles you know about both sides, you know, um,
scholarly journals even so, I mean they're people, people's opinions
(01:48):
are are mixed, even among the experts. It's um something
that yeah, it becomes a question of who do you
want to believe rather than you know, who has the
right answer, because as the jury, I guess is still out.
But before we get too far into this, we should
talk a little bit about, you know, kind of the
reasoning behind this. Um. You know, video games when they
(02:10):
first came out there, the biggest concern was they would
wrought your brain because you'd be sitting there for hours
playing them, uh instead of doing things like reading or
going outside, at least according to my parents outside. Yeah,
apparently there is something that exists with you know, outside
of the realm of your living room where you was. Um.
(02:32):
So yeah, that was the big concern for a while.
But then once video games started reaching a certain level
of sophistication, and I mean that in a sense of
graphics and sound and and and user interface not necessarily
in content. Once it reached that sophistication, people began to think, hey,
this stuff might actually have an effect beyond just being
a time waster. So we're talking about games like Mortal Kombat.
(02:55):
That was one of the big ones that got a
lot of people upset because they had way over the violence. Uh.
I wouldn't call it realistic because I've never seen a
ninja shoot ice out of his hands for real. Um,
you haven't. You haven't lived until you had. I gotta
say I haven't lived then. Um, But yeah, Mortal Kombat
got a lot of people upset, and uh are a
(03:17):
lot of parents anyway, we're concerned about it because it
was over the top violence. And of course these are
kids who are engaging in these games off and especially
back in the arcade days, back when you could still
go to an arcade and play against all these other kids.
And you just watch a group playing around one of
these games, and yeah, it seems like they get kind
of not necessarily physically aggressive toward one another, but they
(03:37):
definitely adopt a much more you know, aggressive kind of personality.
And and there's a lot of smack talking and a
lot of that kind of piling around. And then the
game's continued to get more sophisticated and you got into
things like the first person shooters, which really started to
concern some people, especially when you had it tie into
(03:58):
other real, actual, real life horrible events like the Columbine shooting. UM.
There was a connection between the people who who the
students who committed that act and and the first person
shooters that they enjoyed playing. UM. And then people began
to think, well, hey, could there possibly be something that is,
(04:19):
you know, something about these games that's inspiring these kids
to do these kind of things. And that's really where
this this avalanche began. Yeah. M. According to David Walsh,
who has a child psychologist and I still want of
yours UM, he said that the National Institutes of Health
had done some some research into it, and uh. He
(04:44):
co authored a study that connected the the playing of
violent video games to physical aggression UM. But he cited
that that information from the National Institutes of Health, and
it basically said the teenage brain is not fully developed,
so uh, you know, it's kids aren't ready for handling
(05:04):
violence like this that can actually form an impression on
them and you know, make a a normally docile kid
into a killing machine. And um, you know, there there
have been some incidents like in June seven, two thousand three,
Um Devon Moore in a town called Fayette, Alabama, killed
(05:26):
two police officers in a dispatcher. Um he had been
picked up for allegedly trying to steal a car, and uh,
you know, at the police station, he jumped up. According
according the information I read on CBS News, he uh
jumped up and grabbed the gun and shot the police
(05:47):
officer who had him in the head. Then when another
police officer come came to find what was going on, Uh,
he shot More shot him too and in the head.
And then a police dispatcher was at the end of
the hall and More shot him in the head and
grab the keys to a police cruiser and took off.
(06:08):
Now they caught him. He was tried and convicted and
sentenced to the death penalty. Um. But um, a very
famous attorney named Jack Thompson picked up this case and
uh he wanted to sue the publishers of the game,
which was Grand Theft Auto UM because apparently he uh
(06:30):
evidence suggested that More played a lot of grand theft
auto and which a lot of people. Basically, when the
deal is you steal cars and you shoot people, you
you commit mons and tons of crimes, yeah, among other things,
and can run people over and yeah. So uh so
Jack Thompson said, you know this was obviously because the
(06:51):
violent video game. Uh. And he sued Take two Interactive,
the publishers, and rock Star Studios, the studio that creates
the game. Um. And uh, you know, trying to bring
him down for the for the obvious effects. You know
that he claimed the game had on on Devin Moore. Sure, so, hey,
(07:11):
what's what's the up to these days? Uh, Jack Thompson,
he's cooling his heels. Um. Apparently. Well, for one thing,
he was a Florida lawyer and he tried to to
get a waiver to basically a one time permit to
try this case in Alabama. Um. However, the he has
since been disbarred in Florida permanently because, according to the
(07:36):
report on the Florida bar dot org website, UM, he
engaged in a number of unprofessional behaviors in in this case,
he couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Well, he's
uh I'll let him suit you for saying. Um. But yeah,
he he is known to the video game industry. If
you search for his name on sites that are known
(07:58):
for gaming or technology, UM, you'll find his name popping
up a lot of places. And he does not It's
clear he does not like violent video games, right. And
he still holds that position even though he's no longer
able to practice law. Yeah, and there, but there are,
like we said, there are definitely uh, medical professional psychologists
(08:20):
who are who also believe in this um, in this
causality or at least correlation between violence and the violence
you find in video games. Craig A. Anderson did a
study and yes, Mr Anderson, actually Dr Anderson does study
and and uh I believe it was two thousand one. Um.
(08:42):
He looked at a lot of other studies. So he
did what is called in the science biz as a
meta analysis, where you take the results of various studies
and you combine those results to kind of get an
overall big picture of whether or not a whether or
not a certain theory holds any water. Um. Here's the
(09:05):
thing about a meta analysis, It's it's tricky to do correctly.
The problem with the meta analysis is that you take
all these different studies and you some of them may
not be very good studies. They may not have they
may have a bad methodology. Um, there may be a
very small sample size, so the the data is not
(09:26):
really reliable. UM. But you just lump it in with
everything else, so you get the good along with the bad.
And there's no real way of necessarily telling how much
of one you have versus the other. And uh So
he's received some criticism for his approach, uh to just
to take all these different different studies and combine them
(09:48):
and and try and draw conclusions from that. Now his conclusions,
he believes that there is a link between the violence
and video games and and real life violence. Um. He
cited several studies that suggested that after playing violent video games,
children showed more signs of aggression, um even if they
(10:08):
had only played twenty minutes of a violent video game,
whereas kids who played video games that didn't have violence
in them, like say just a simple like a race
card game or something Tetris tetris, anything like that did
not show this kind of level of aggression. UM. So
things like that he cited, and and he uh He's
(10:31):
written several Times about how he doesn't believe that the
many that most of the studies were done very well.
They he doesn't think that they were poorly designed or
poorly executed. Um. So he's defended his position. But other
people like Benjamin Radford, who's one of the managing editors
of The Skeptical Enquirer, which is a journal about critical
(10:53):
thinking and skepticism. Really yeah, you wouldn't imagine it from
that title. Huh see it? Yeah, sure you. Well, it's
actually an excellent journal, but it's he He writes that
the meta analysis alone is kind of questionable, and that
the link between violence and video games is not at
(11:16):
all apparent. It may exist, but it's not hasn't been proven. Um.
And that also correlation and causation are two different things,
which is a very important point. So here's here's the question,
video games make kids violent? Or do violent kids like
violent video games? I am not an adequate judge to
(11:38):
answer that question. Yeah, I would from from a common
sense kind of perspective, which of course means that it's
not at all scientific scientific, Yeah exactly. This is this
is just based on my own sort of gut instinct,
and I have nothing to back this up other than
just my own personal experiences, and uh so it really
(11:59):
doesn't hold any way. It's just my own personal opinion.
I think that violent kids do tend to enjoy violent
video games. It's it's a way of acting out kind
of a power fantasy, right. You're able to exert power
over other individuals. Now granted these individuals may be completely virtual,
they're just characters on the screen, but you're able to to,
(12:21):
uh to, like I said, exert power over them. And
so you're drawn to that because I mean, that's the
kind of personality you have. Then you know you're gonna
want to play those sort of games. And you may
also be violent in real life as well. But that's
not because the video game. It's because of your the way,
the way you are. UM, I don't necessarily think that
(12:44):
a violent video game makes a person violent. And I
this is anecdotal, so again not scientific. UM I play
a lot of video games. You play some violent video
I play some seriously violent video games. I have the
Grand Theft Auto series. I've played the heck out of them.
I play first person shooters. I UM, I enjoy playing
(13:05):
these violent video games, and I am not a violent person.
It has been literally days since I punched someone. Um. No, seriously,
I'm I haven't been a fight since I was thirteen
years old, al decades, twenty years to it. And there
you go. We know, Christopher Ferguson and wrote a report
(13:29):
in Psychiatric Quarterly. UM, and he said that he actually
did a study on on peer of view journals and
just to see the other literature that was out there. Um,
he found you know, once he was he had stripped
the bias away. According to what he said, you know,
stripped the bias way. He didn't find any support for
the idea that video games cause violence. And he actually
(13:49):
believes that there are some positive benefits. Um. You know,
visio spatial cognition. Um. Basically you know, getting your bearings
in the virtual world. UM. So you know there may
be there may be some benefits to it, I suppose.
But you know this, this really isn't a new concept,
you know, talking about the violence and video games that
(14:11):
are corrupting influences. I'm sure you may have heard of
Dr Frederick Wortham or maybe the title Seduction of the Innocence. Yes,
this was a book written many decades ago, almost a
hundred years ago now I'm getting there anyway, I guess
seven years ago, and um, it was about how violent
comic books were causing kids to commit crimes. And then
(14:35):
there's the whole heavy metal music causes kids to commit suicide.
You want to go even further back, talk about Victorian England,
where there were some people who believed that the that
a performance of the incredible case of Dr Jackal and
Mr Hyde somehow managed to inspire Jack the Ripper. Yeah,
(14:56):
So I mean this is something that goes way back,
talking about fan to see somehow impacting reality. Yeah. And
and the reason why video games I think gets more
attention than say I mean, obviously you've got parent counsels
that are concerned about violence in all forms of media,
not just video games. But the reason why video games
I think get a lot of attention is because you
(15:17):
take an active role. You're not just passively watching or
reading your you are your actions are being translated into
this video game world. So I think it's that extra
step that concerns some people. And I think to part
of it is that some of the populace is just
not into video games. They've never played them. Um, it's
(15:38):
new for a lot of people. Um, you know, for example,
ballroom dancing, uh, you know to to Uh. I won't
admit to watching Dancing with the Stars, but I, you know,
possibly may have been an earshot of a TV when
they said that. I think it was. The waltz was
considered risk. Ay at one time. Now we've all been alive.
Everyone you know on the planet now was alive. Sense
(16:00):
the walls was a normal thing. So to think about
it in that context, you think, what are you kidding? Well, yeah,
we have violent video games. Now that's so much more corrupting.
But you know, in a hundred years it may not
be such a big deal. They'll find something else to
be outraged about. You can hear the same thing about
certain composers when some of their like Beethoven's, several Beethoven's
(16:21):
pieces got the same sort of attention. UM. Getting back
to to the video games, I wanted to mention one
other study UM, which was conducted by Patrick Kirkgard UH
and it was published in the International Journal of Liability
and Scientific Inquiry. Kirkgard also decided that from his from
his research, he decided that many of the claims that
(16:43):
violence comes like people kids were becoming violent because of
the violence of video games. Uh, he thought that those
conclusions were faulty. He didn't necessarily he didn't go so
far as to say that they were completely wrong. He
just said that you couldn't support that from the teas
that were conducted. Um. So again, it's one of those
the question is still up in the air. UM. I
(17:06):
bring that one up because it was fairly recent. I
had first heard about it. I think it was this
past spring. So again, studies are still ongoing. I'm not
sure that we're going to get to the bottom of
this anytime soon. For one thing, I think there are
way too many variables and too many factors to take
into consideration. It's hard to boil it down to hey,
you know, a little billy just played Mortal Kombat and
(17:28):
then he's gonna go and punch his sister and and
I mean, it's there are too many things to take
into consideration to just blame it on one factor. And
I don't think that video games are completely innocent, to
be honest. Somebody who is going to commit a violent
act like that may find inspiration, yeah, but they can
find inspiration from anything. Though. Well, you know, it doesn't
(17:51):
help when you hear things say. According to CBS News, UM,
when the police brought in Devin Moore, he said the
quote was life is like a video game. Everybody's got
to die sometime. So but that just adds fuel to
the fire when people say that this is a result
and then you see, you know, an act like I
(18:12):
remember a report of a school shooting, um some time
ago now where the kid shot out the mirrors in
the bathroom, in the school bathroom. And at this point
it's apocryphal because I had difficulty finding it in the
short amount of time I allotted to find that particular article. Um,
but that actually is directly from what Duke nucam I believe,
where their actual power ups behind the mirrors there may
(18:35):
have been so this and this argument to me doesn't
hold any water because you're talking about disturbed individuals who
will take anything, latch onto anything, and that could fuel
their their power fantasies. I mean, we see the same
thing with the arguments against role playing games, where parents
were saying, hey, this role playing game is corrupting children.
(18:56):
It's gonna convince them to become Satanists. They're gonna kill
each other. And you're talking about saying that kids should
not indulge in any kind of fantasy play at all
because there's the danger that they're going to believe the
fantasy is reality. I think that's just ridiculous. I think
really that you have certain individuals who are predisposed to
(19:18):
that kind of psychosis. But you can't sit there and
say that the fantasy was the cause of it. It's
the cause. The cause is internal, it's not external. No.
I actually I actually agree with you. What I meant was, um,
for somebody who is already predisposed to that kind of
an action, they can latch onto something they see in
a comic book or in a movie, but then they
are on the street. A solution to that would then
(19:40):
be eliminate all interesting stuff everywhere for fear that it
could cause someone to go off the deep end, right,
And I'm not advocating doing that, just saying that I
was totally gonna punch you. Oh no, I've fallen into
your Trapolette. I see what you did there. So no,
I'm just saying it that, you know, it's just impossible
(20:03):
to blame that one thing, but and you know, an
event like that, it can definitely that's what that Yeah,
that's what link that people are looking for. UM. So
you know, that's all I'm saying. Okay, that's all I'm saying.
All Right, I'm calm now, all right, sure you are. Wow.
(20:24):
Well this was a good conversation. We got we got
heated in that argument a little bit. I'm just good
because it's cold in here and it's a little chilly anyway.
So I guess we can probably wrap this up. Did
you have any any other interesting studies or anything you
want to bring up? No, no additional studies that the
difference with you. You know, Yeah, the the question is
(20:45):
still up in the air. I think it'll probably will
be for quite some time. They'll they'll definitely be more studies. Um.
Another thing to keep in mind I should have pointed
this out earlier is if you're reading a study, find
out who commissioned it, but because there may be bias. Uh.
If it's a completely independent study, then you can you
(21:06):
can feel a little more comfortable that there is no bias.
But if it's something where a parent teacher association has
funded a specific study that brings into question the findings,
I mean, you know, even if the scientists were trying
to go straightforward and not not will make the results
lean one way or the other. When you're receiving money
(21:27):
from a specific interested party. I think it's a little
complicated to keep that in mind. But if you want
to learn more about this, we have a great article
on the side. Actually, it's called do Violent Video Games
Lead to Real Violence? And that was written by Julia
Layton and that was updated as as late as the spring,
so it's it's up to date too, so I would
recommend checking that out if you want to learn more. Also,
(21:50):
I would play this podcast backwards for our secret message. Yeah,
I hope. I hope you guys find it. If you do,
write in and tell us what it was, and then
we'll probably send somebody out and they won't run you over.
I don't know where I'm going with that. I'm done,
guys in the white coat is shown anyway, make sure
you visit how stuff works dot com so read this
article in others and we will talk to you again
(22:12):
soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Because at how stuff works dot com. Let us know
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
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