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Video Games Don't Cause Violent Behavior

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Do Video Games Cause Violence? 9 Pros and Cons

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Proponents say playing violent video games causes more aggression. Opponents say the games are a convenient scapegoat for real-life violence.

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In my opinion, violence is somewhat of a learned trait as well. It is unfair for adults to blame their violent video games causing their own children to be violent, when it is sometimes just bad parenting or neglect. Kids have always been violent, even before video games. This is shown through school fights in old books and bullying portrayed in old movies.

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(Image: Getty)

It's a topic that has been widely debated amongst the scientific community - do violent video games make players more aggressive in real life?

Now, scientists from the University of York claim that they have found no evidence to support this link.

In a series of experiments with more than 3,000 participants, the researchers showed that video games don't 'prime' players to behave in certain ways.

In one study, participants played a game where they had to either be a car avoiding collisions, or a mouse avoiding being caught by a cat.

After the game, the players were shown images, such as a bus or a dog, and asked to label them as either a vehicle or an animal.

Dr David Pendle, who worked on the study, said: "If players are 'primed' through immersing themselves in the concepts of the game, they should be able to categorise the objects associated with this game more quickly in the real world once the game had concluded.

"Across the two games we didn't find this to be the case. Participants who played a car-themed game were no quicker at categorising vehicle images, and indeed in some cases their reaction time was significantly slower."

In another study, participants were asked to play two combat games - one that had realistic characters, and one that did not.

Following the game, players were asked to complete a word-association puzzle.

While the researchers expected participants who had played the realistic game to choose more violent word associations, this wasn't the case.

Dr Pendle said: "We found that the priming of violent concepts, as measured by how many violent concepts appeared in the word fragment completion task, was not detectable.

"The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players."

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Violent video games DO NOT make players more aggressive in real life

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It's a topic that has been widely debated amongst the scientific community - do violent video games make players more aggressive in real life? Now, scientists from the University of York claim that they have found no evidence to support this link.

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I am against the idea that violence in video games causes kids to become more violent and aggressive. First, violence is triggered by mental impulses in your brain that results from anger. Playing violent video games does not make people angry. It doesn't put them in a hostile environment nor is the game itself threatening the gamer in any way. Aggressiveness is a trait that humans have used over time as a survival instinct, and just because a video game has some guns and blood in it does not increase the chances that the player will suddenly go out and shoot up a school. In a recent study by the University of York, researcher set up an experiment where players of a certain video game had to categorize items that pertained to that certain game. In theory, the players should have categorized the items faster than a non gamer would, since they should be "primed" and more familiar with objects, transferring it to real life. This was not the case, and the players categorized the objects at normal speed, even slower at times. Another reason that violence is not caused by gaming is that by the age of 7, most kids know the difference between reality and fantasy, and they can surely tell whether or not shooting a glock in game can carry over to their own daily lives. The number of violent video games has been increasing, yet the number of juvenile crime rates has decreased. Violent video games may also act as a support system for unnaturally aggressive kids, allowing them to vent their anger in the game rather than real life.