Video game violence has been a controversial topic for many years dating back to even the simplest classic video games such as Ms. Pac-Man, Centipede and Space Invaders eventually pushing into more modern games like Grand Theft Auto V and Call of Duty: Black Ops. This paper attempts to expand on and analyze the idea that due to the historical trend of video game violence being blamed for seemingly related violent events, some of the research may be faulty. The way we look at video games and how we research their ties to violence could potentially need to be corrected. Within this investigation we will be looking very closely at how these tests were completed, analyzing if they were valid, considering the people behind these tests and the general
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Tear and Mark Nielsen in their publication “Failure to Demonstrate that Playing Violent Video Games Demises Prosocial Behavior”. The research attempts to link the likelihood of prosocial behavior while playing videogames to what video games were being played by suggesting that a game would make the user less social and would represent the possibility of diminishing his or her social capabilities for an extended period of time. The method used was a simple pen-drop test (Tear, Nielsen 2). The participants in the experiment were presented with eight minutes of gameplay which included playing various violent, non-violent and prosocial video games. The experimenter would then drop pens in front of the participants. The likelihood that the participants would stop what they were doing and assist the experimenter in picking up the pens was considered an indicator of prosocial behavior. Now, even though the results of this study’s experiments “failed to find a detrimental effect of violent video games on prosocial behavior” (Tear, Nielsen 5) what is not mentioned is the game’s attention-grabbing effect it would have on its players. As an example, we can take a heavily attention-grabbing and competitive game like Call of Duty and compare it to a much slower paced prosocial game like The Sims 3. Call of Duty’s violence and competitive nature would be impossible to judge compared to the …show more content…
Holly J. Bowen and Julia Spaniol who researched the effects violent video games have on the brain, specifically with emotional memory and desensitization utilizing the old-new recognition task (Bowen, Spaniol 906). The experimenters showed the test subjects 300 random positive, negative and neutral images and measured their reaction time to them. After the first image test they exposed their test subjects to violent video games and then had them do the recognition task again shortly after. Once completed the experimenters compared their reaction time from the first image recognition task set to the second that was done after playing the violent video games and measured the results. Most people would generally expect that playing violent video games would desensitize you to seeing actual violence; Dr. Bowen and Spaniol were surprised to discover “that in contrast, they found no association between [Violent Video Game] exposure and self-reported arousal, recognition memory, or response bias for emotional stimuli” (Bowen, Spaniol 914). To most people this could be a shocking discovery; considering that to most people it is common knowledge that exposure to pretend violence would have an impact on their reaction to actual real-world violence. According to the research done by Dr. Bowen and Spaniol there is no impact what so ever and that all violent video games do is assist in identification of the violent material but
Tear and Mark Nielsen in their publication “Failure to Demonstrate that Playing Violent Video Games Demises Prosocial Behavior”. The research attempts to link the likelihood of prosocial behavior while playing videogames to what video games were being played by suggesting that a game would make the user less social and would represent the possibility of diminishing his or her social capabilities for an extended period of time. The method used was a simple pen-drop test (Tear, Nielsen 2). The participants in the experiment were presented with eight minutes of gameplay which included playing various violent, non-violent and prosocial video games. The experimenter would then drop pens in front of the participants. The likelihood that the participants would stop what they were doing and assist the experimenter in picking up the pens was considered an indicator of prosocial behavior. Now, even though the results of this study’s experiments “failed to find a detrimental effect of violent video games on prosocial behavior” (Tear, Nielsen 5) what is not mentioned is the game’s attention-grabbing effect it would have on its players. As an example, we can take a heavily attention-grabbing and competitive game like Call of Duty and compare it to a much slower paced prosocial game like The Sims 3. Call of Duty’s violence and competitive nature would be impossible to judge compared to the …show more content…
Holly J. Bowen and Julia Spaniol who researched the effects violent video games have on the brain, specifically with emotional memory and desensitization utilizing the old-new recognition task (Bowen, Spaniol 906). The experimenters showed the test subjects 300 random positive, negative and neutral images and measured their reaction time to them. After the first image test they exposed their test subjects to violent video games and then had them do the recognition task again shortly after. Once completed the experimenters compared their reaction time from the first image recognition task set to the second that was done after playing the violent video games and measured the results. Most people would generally expect that playing violent video games would desensitize you to seeing actual violence; Dr. Bowen and Spaniol were surprised to discover “that in contrast, they found no association between [Violent Video Game] exposure and self-reported arousal, recognition memory, or response bias for emotional stimuli” (Bowen, Spaniol 914). To most people this could be a shocking discovery; considering that to most people it is common knowledge that exposure to pretend violence would have an impact on their reaction to actual real-world violence. According to the research done by Dr. Bowen and Spaniol there is no impact what so ever and that all violent video games do is assist in identification of the violent material but