Moral High Ground and Video Game Violence; A Research Paper

                 Since video games entered the mainstream people have questioned if simulating violent acts in the virtual world were having an impact on people in their real lives, more importantly people were asking if it was making the players more violent. Many studies have been done and speeches have been made by politicians condemning video games and claiming they are poisoning the youth of our country but when put to the test it is clear to see this topic is little more than a soap box to stand on for people looking to take the moral high ground.

                It all began in 2005 when senator Hillary Clinton introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, a law seeking to put similar regulations on video games that are on the purchase of alcohol and other aged based products. This law would have enforced serious repercussions on any business selling “M” rated games to anyone below the legal age. Something like this bill had never been proposed for the movie industry despite a much longer existence of making violent and sometimes grotesk films in the decades prior but video games had been singled out for the more hands on role of the audience. The bill would have put more federal enforcement behind the existing Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) classification of video game content which was already in place on a voluntary basis by the video game industry fearing such a law would attempt to target them. However the bill never made it passed the senate floor and was called unconstitutional, Clinton was taking the moral high ground “defending” the youth without any research to support her claims.

                   Moral panics can be damaging. They have the ability to greatly damage the lives of individuals on the short end of the stick regardless of research. Using video games as a scapegoat or a way to gain public support without facts is precisely the problem with the arguments for and against a link between games and violent actions.

                  Studies like the ones done by Farrar are a big part of the problem. The current study focuses on the relationship between violent video game play and the use of guns on both social norms related to aggression and real-life behavioral aggression. This is what some people would call a paper tiger. They present this link between videogames and violent gun owners without taking into consideration other factors and asking the question is this correlation or causation, making much of the findings done in the article easily refuted by other academics looking into the subject. This article concludes that both violent video gamer and gun owners were positively related to behavioral aggression without once mentioning the social, geographical or economic groupings of the test subjects. They instead make quotable claims about violent video gaming gun owners to further incite moral panic in the public they seek to “inform”.

                  Studies claim playing violent video games have been linked to long-term emotional desensitization. In a study done in 2017 scientists hypothesized that desensitization effects in excessive users of violent video games should lead to decreased brain activations to highly salient emotional pictures in emotional sensitivity brain regions. Twenty eight adult male volunteers who had excessive long-term use of violent video games and age and education were used as control participants and were examined in two experiments using standardized emotional pictures of positive, negative and neutral violence. No group differences were revealed in any of their statistical findings. This study was done by a group of scientists seeking to find a link between video games and some sort of disconnect from reality that would make people more violent but instead they found nothing out of the ordinary in any or the men tested.

                   Since the arrival of increasingly violent video games and the media coverage attracted by recent mass killings, the emotional debate has developed concerning the impact of video games on aggressive, violence, and criminal behavior. Findings from the in depth analysis done by Fournis, Gaël, and Nidal Nabhan Abou in their article “Violence, Crime, and Violent Video Games: Is There a Correlation?” are contradicting some studies that show an increase in aggressiveness. Their findings suggest a decrease in criminality. Exposure to violence in video games did not always have a negative effect. Although human or fantasy violence was associated with a stronger effect than violence in sport games, overall the influence on aggressiveness was weak and less significant than that of violence on television. So despite showing that movies and television are at minimum on the same level as video games the mainstream media still seeks to attack the video game industry for producing increased aggression, criminals and the ever so present school shooters.

                 By attacking the youth and promoting anti-youth sentiments in adults, misleading studies and headlines by mainstream media outlets only succeed in alienating a large group of young people in our culture. They distract us from more pressing issues. If some researchers and organizations can provoke the public to panic over video games they can secure funding to conduct potentially biased studies that seem designed to feed on the public’s fear.  A large part of the piece done by Patrick Markey and Christopher  Ferguson Is devoted to the potential that the behaviors that are provoking moral panic over video games have distracted us from issues that actually do influence aggression and violence, such as poverty, mental illness, and educational disparities. By shifting the discussion to where the public’s energy should be we could bridge the divide between pro and anti-video gamers and do a lot of good for the world in the process.

 

 

                 1.MARKEY, PATRICK M., and CHRISTOPHER J. FERGUSON. “Teaching Us to Fear: The Violent Video Game Moral Panic and the Politics of Game Research.” American Journal of Play, vol. 10, no. 1, Fall 2017, pp. 99–115. EBSCOhost, remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=127477163&site=ehost-live

 

This article exposes the political motivations behinds the claims that video games cause violence and that is really moral panic that is fueling studies to have biased findings. The authors go on to talk about how video games are used as a scapegoat for parents to rationalize why their children are acting a certain way, a moral panic occurs when the public’s fears of an object or activity greatly exceeds the actual threat posed to society by that object or activity. Starting from the beginning, when in 2005 senator Hillary Clinton introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act, the law that would have put more federal enforcement behind the existing Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) classification of video game content, the article takes aim at the motivations behind lawmakers activities. The bill never made it passed the senate and was called unconstitutional, the point was that Clinton was taking the moral high ground “defending” the youth without any research to support her claims. Moral panics can be damaging. They have the ability to greatly damage the lives of individuals on the short end of the stick regardless of research. Disparaging youth and promote anti-youth sentiments in adults, as a side result alienating a large group of young people in the process. They can distract us from more pressing issues. If some researchers and organizations can provoke the public to panic over video games they can secure funding to conduct potentially biased. Studies that are  seemingly designed to play on the public’s fear. A large part of the piece is devoted to the potential that these behaviors the provoke moral panic over video games have distracted us from issues that actually do influence aggression and violence, such as poverty, mental illness, and educational disparities.

 

2. FARRAR, K. M. et al. Ready, Aim, Fire! Violent Video Game Play and Gun Controller Use: Effects on Behavioral Aggression and Social Norms Concerning Violence. Communication Studies, set. 2017. v. 68, n. 4, p. 369–384. Disponível em: <http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=124896210&site=ehost-live>

 

In addition to individual risk factors, this article dives into recent findings surrounding the effects of violent video games provides compelling evidence that the contextual features of games also contribute to increased outcome aggression. The current study focuses on the relationship between violent video game play and the use of gun controllers on both social norms related to aggression and real-life behavioral aggression. This article concludes that both violent video game and gun controller use were positively related to behavioral aggression. The implications of these findings are discussed along with their influence on future research in this area. The charts show a correlation between video game players and what is referred to as outcome aggression. Pointing to increased probability that avid video game players are more likely to show violent tendencies by around eleven percent. Longitudinal research triangulates with experimental work in this area and supports a link between violent video game play and aggression. Research conducted in both Japan and the United States found that habitual violent video game play at the beginning of the school year predicted subsequent aggression in both samples, even when gender and previous levels of aggression were controlled.

 

3. SZYCIK, G. R. et al. Excessive users of violent video games do not show emotional desensitization: an fMRI study. Brain Imaging And Behavior, jun. 2017. v. 11, n. 3, p. 736–743. Disponível em: <http://remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mdc&AN=27086318&site=ehost-live>

 

This part of the book dives into actual studies where they used brain imaging to show that video game violence does nothing to desensitize players from feeling emotions, on the contrary the people they studied showed complete range of regular emotion including empathy, remorse and regret. Playing violent video games have been linked to long-term emotional desensitization. The scientists hypothesized that desensitization effects in excessive users of violent video games should lead to decreased brain activations to highly salient emotional pictures in emotional sensitivity brain regions. Twenty-eight male adult subjects showing excessive long-term use of violent video games and age and education matched control participants were examined in two experiments using standardized emotional pictures of positive, negative and neutral valence. No group differences were revealed even at reduced statistical thresholds which speaks against desensitization of emotion sensitive brain regions as a result of excessive use of violent video games.For the first experiment, the ANOVA revealed significant results for the factor stimulus in emotion sensitive limbic areas such as amygdala and parahippocampal gyrus but neither a main effect of group nor a significant group by stimulus interaction. For experiment 2, which used optimized stimulation parameters, virtually identical results were found. Again, robust activations were revealed for the stimulus factor mainly in limbic brain areas, but neither a main effect of group nor a group by stimulus interaction was obtained at the chosen threshold. In two experiments as well as in the joint analysis of both data sets together, there was no evidence for a neural desensitization in the processing of emotionally salient stimuli, i.e. the responses of both groups, long-term users of VVG and controls, were very similar. It has to be pointed out that this lack of a group effect and a group by stimulus category interaction is not due to a general lack of emotional reactivity.

 

4. Fournis, Gaël, and Nidal Nabhan Abou. “Violence, Crime, and Violent Video Games: Is There a Correlation?” Psychiatric Times, vol. 31, no. 9, Sept. 2014, pp. 1–4. EBSCOhost, remote.baruch.cuny.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=103912595&site=ehost-live.

 

Since the arrival of increasingly violent video games and the media coverage attracted by recent mass killings, an emotional debate has developed concerning the impact of video games on aggressive, violent, and criminal behavior. Findings from the in depth analyses are contradicting some studies that show an increase in aggressiveness, while others suggest a decrease in criminality. Exposure to violence in video games did not always have a negative effect. Although human or fantasy violence was associated with a stronger effect than violence in sport games, overall the influence on aggressiveness was weak and less significant than that of violence on television. These findings informed Sherry’s rejection of the hypothesis that violent video games can induce aggression. Following this statement, an increasing number of scholars expressed skepticism regarding the link between violent digital games and real-life violence, and numerous studies have cast doubt on this link. A 2004 review of the literature did not show a clear relationship between an individual’s exposure to violent representations and criminal acts. In fact, the preponderance of evidence shows a negative correlation between violent video games and crime. A study by Ward revealed a negative correlation between an increase in the sale of video games and criminality. Cunningham and colleagues found that for a 1% increase in the sale of violent video games, the incidence of crime decreased by 0.03%. Findings from Markey and colleagues also suggest that violent video gaming is associated with a decline in criminality. The concerns about the effects of violent video games on aggressive thought patterns, emotions, and behavior are justified. Until now, no study has been able to show that exposure to violent digital games is associated with an increase in criminality, aggressiveness, or violent behavior. Nevertheless, these paradoxical results are not incompatible. There is indeed a tremendous difference between aggressiveness and hetero-aggressive outburst. It is likely that the answer lies in the complexity of the concept of committing an act. Exposure to violent video games could be one factor, among many others, in a constellation of parameters leading an individual to commit an aggressive act.