Does Virtual Aggression Lead To Actual Aggression
Bllod flows freely as still – warm corpses lie on the ground. Potential victims beg for mercy, while others moan in pain. Some people catch fire before they are mowed down, falling to the ground dead.
This is just some of the continual violence that characteries the game, trigger – happy players aet out the role of portal Dude, who shoots at everything and everyone in his path. Like doom, a favorite gam of one of the Columbine High School killers, Postal allows players their choice of a veriety of weapons of carnage.
Postal and Doom are just two of many highly realistic, imolving, and violent video games now on the market. In fact one survey found that almost 80 percent of the most popular games involved aggression, with one fifth of them involving violence againts woment (Dietz, 1998),
Can playing games like postal and Doom lead to actual Agrression? Increasing research evidence suggests that it might. According to a recent series of studies by psychologists Craig Anderson and Karen Dill (2000), playing violent video games is associated with later aggresive behavior. In one study for example, they found that college students who frequently played violent video games were more likely to have been involved in delinquent behavior and aggression. Frequent players also had lower academic achievement.
On the other hand, such result do not show that plaing violent games causes delinquency, aggression, and lower academic performance, the research only found that the various variable were associated with one another To explore the questions of whe the violent game play actually caused aggression. Anderson and Dill subsewuently conducted a short term lavoratory study. In it, they had participant in an experiment play either a violent video game. *Wolfenstein 3D) or one that was nonviolent (Myst). The results were clear : example to the graphically violent video game increased aggresive thoughts and actual aggression.
The finding of a link between plaing violent video games and aggresive behavior is consitent with findings grom other studies, and it makes sense in light of the research on the consequences of exposure to violence in the media. In fact, the effects of playing video games could be even greater than the effects of merely watching an aggresive television program, vecause viod games teach something that the more observation of vioelence does not, the motor skills involved in aggression. By actually firing virtual weapons at pople and objects appearing on the screen, games players presumably hone the skills that would make them more effective in using actual weapons (Cooper et Mackie, 1986; D, Cohen, 1996; Griffiths, 1997)
If a conclusive causal link between playing violent video games abd subsequent aggressive acts were established, would you support a ban on such games? why or why not?
source: essentials of understanding psychology by robert s. feldman
