Video games and their psychological influences?

[Snowy_One]

If you ask me, video games, or any form of media for that matter, are not the 'cause' so much as an enhancer/mirror. Think about it for a moment seriously. There are many reasons to play a game like Civilization V. Some people like the tactical aspect. Some people love building a history to last forever. Some people love taking over the world. And... Some people love being a fascist dictator. Civ V allows people to live out fantasies like that. For every person who wins via peaceful means you will eventually have one who plays just to win by dropping nukes on the entire world. For every person who wins by dropping nukes on the world 'for fun' or because it's easier, there is eventually one person who derives pleasure from imagining that they're nuking jews, arabs, blacks, whites, or someone else in an attempt to release stress or live out fantasies. And for every one of those you will eventually get someone to whom the line between reality and fantasy is blurrier than normal.

Obviously I'm not saying Civ V is the cause of someone who wants to bomb a synagog, church, mosque, or anything else. But imagine what would happen when someone who DOES want to do those things plays it. He sees a reflection of his desires and can't tell the difference between a game and reality and, eventually, he 'stares into the mirror' long enough and looses himself.

Let's look at a more obvious example. FE and incest. I'm sure 99% of the people here have no desire to enter into a relationship with even a distant step-cousin (at least if they know of the relationship) despite the lack of blood relations. It's no secret that it is possible to marry a cousin in the FE games and at least implied for a brother/sister relationship in at least one of them. To most of us we might laugh or awkwardly ignore it and avoid those pairings, but it doesn't *really* effect us. It's part of a fantasy and a game, not real. Even people who are okay with incest can probably tell the difference between the game and actually sleeping with a cousin. But imagine you have someone with feelings for a cousin who isn't well-grounded, has trouble telling the difference between a story/game and reality, and is seeing these pairings frequently. Eventually it might be enough to push him over the edge. Not because the game itself 'made him do it', but because he stared at the reflection of his own desires for too long.

My churches youth pastor is a nice man. He helps kids and teens with many problems and has done a lot to help them. While he may not be perfect, no one would deny he's a good guy. He also has GTA IV in his office and loves it. However, to him it's just a game. One he plays for fun and nothing more. Someone else who I once knew was stuck in familial troubles constantly, emotionally unstable, and had a predisposition towards conflicts that ended up ending our friendship. He SOUGHT OUT GTA IV and outright reveled in the violence. Running over people and gunning them down was almost second nature to him. Beating hookers for his money back, shooting cops, and things of that sort were things he desired. I haven't spoken to him in over half a year now, but I would not be shocked in the slightest to find out he has a criminal sheet or will soon and that what he did was either inspired by, or aided by GTA IV. Not because the game itself is violent, but because someone who couldn't distinguish between the fantasy and reality and reveled in it was allowed to stare into a mirror of his own wishes and desires for far too long.

TL;DR version: It has an effect, but can be negated by a grounded person. However, some of the people who seek out games do so because they are NOT grounded and these games can make things a LOT worse if not handled properly in those instances.

[deleted35362]

Kids are impressionable. The media they're exposed to at a young age will definitely stick with them. I'd be nothing if I didn't have Disney movies and Nintendo games. Video Games will impact the mind. There's just no doubt about it.

[Steampunk]

Here's a press release by the American Pyschological Association from 2010: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/06/violent-video-games.aspx

It cites a few different studies, but the general idea is that violent video games will only increase hostility in a certain demographic that already has aggressive tendencies. For everyone else outside that minority population, violent video games didn't have any affect on aggressiveness/hostility, and also provide other benefits.

An APA press release in 2011 suggested that it may competitive video games that increase aggressiveness instead of violent ones: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games.aspx

I believe there are some major studies underway to look at it again, but so far the consensus (at least from what I could find at the APA website) is that violent video games only have a significant impact on small children (which they shouldn't have access to if the game is rated for someone 17 years old) and people who already have anger issues.

I was reading an article about violent television, which brought up an interesting point. It said, small children watching violent TV became more aggressive when the person committing the violence was considered a hero, or having done a noble thing. Kinda like how in action movies, the hero blasts the villain into mince with a missile and everyone cheers. This might suggest that it's not so much exposure to media violence itself that promotes violent behavior in children; rather violent behavior that is portrayed in a heroic light. In GTA IV, you murder people, I think the game makes it very clear that you are doing something "bad" since every cop in Liberty City wants a piece of your ass. What about games like Zelda (which you wouldn't think of as a violent video game) where Link stabs Ganon in the face, saves the world, and is regarded a legendary hero? Is it violence itself that's the issue, or does "heroic" or "justified" violence play a bigger role in promoting violent tendencies in children?

[Phoenix Wright]

That's the conscious realization.

How about subconscious realization? Is there nothing? Honestly, I don't dislike GTA. But what I'm saying is that there are effects. Fine, so I can't give examples, but I'm going off of the fact that humans seem to adapt. Change. Do what they see. And children, especially before adolescence, have developing minds. What they learn then could be set in their minds for life.

I'm not saying that people who play GTA will become serial killers or drug dealers or anything (in fact, I never said or thought that). What I'm saying (and said before) was "What effects do they have?" "If kids change, however subtly, how do they?" And stuff like that.

Just saying.

Grand Theft Auto III came out in 2001, and I played it in 2002 at the very latest, at about seven or eight years old. I played Metal Gear Solid, too. If there exist any effects, I don't think they're very noticeable. Even then I realized the difference between fantasy and reality. I'm quite sure, based off of personal experience as well as some readings here and there, that video games have very minimal psychological effects. I'm willing to generalize that argument to other forms of entertainment too.

[Rehab]

I read this article some time before. It was pretty interresting on the subject.

Let's not kidding ourselves, video games influence behaviour, but I think it's more complicated than just the content.

Fire Emblem itself is already a really violent game, even if the gore is pretty minimal.

And do you remembered how you felt after starting the same chapter for the Xth time ? Or if you accidentally delete one of your game save ? I don't really play a lot of gory game, but I know these situation made me mre angry than seeing some blood ?

Games also have more insiduous effects than violence. I heard a lot of talk about th treatment of women in GTA who can be as dangerous, or more dangerous than some violence.

There is a big difference between a sports and sports' Video Games.

You don't react the same way if you're sitting behind your screen and if you're exerting yourself. The exercise makes you feel good and counterbalance more or less your aggressivity. You don't have these positive aspects on competitive gaming. You don't have a place where to direct your aggressivity.

Got any proof? Hockey and both kinds of football come to mind as counterexamples.

[SRC]

Video games are a wonderful scapegoat but are actually pretty terrible at causing violent behavior. This is particularly effective on worried parents who do not fully understand the medium, which naturally causes fear. During the recent Sandy Hook shooting, for example, news outlets and NRA loved pointing fingers at violent video games as the problem. I find games to be a sort of red herring while the news cycles ascend misguided youth into infamous supervillains while firearms are glorified and easy to obtain.

The blaming of violence on video games is nothing new and has been going on for at least around 100 years. Dime novels, jazz, and comic books have been "corrupting our youth" years before Atari even came into existance. Despite what some will have you believe, video games are no different. Sure, they're interactive, but the same disconnect from reality very much exists like in older media.

Personally, I would be more worried about video game addiction, which is a tangible problem that actually harms people.

[Knife]

Videogames made me the badass I am today. I don't know if this helps or hurts anyone's argument.

[Excellen Browning]

How would you people define reality and not-reality, anyway? I'm really missing that bit.

[Chiki]

Having real life consequences? It's as simple as it gets.

[Espinosa]

Some 2-3 years ago, I would play FE for hours and when I would go to sleep, my brain would continue repetitively moving units around and having them attack over and over in my sleep.

Strangely, these dreams stopped as soon as I started LTCing.

[Excellen Browning]

Let me use two propositions, then.

1. smoking cigarettes causes addiction.

2. addiction is a real life consequence.

3. Getting lung cancer from smoking cigarettes is a real life consequence.

4. Cigarettes are real.

1. World of Warcraft can cause addiction and costs money to play.

2. Addiction is a real life consequence.

3. Starvation due to world of Warcraft addiction is a real life consequence.

4. Paying money so you can keep on playing world of Warcraft is a real life consequence.

5. World of Warcraft is real.

[Chiki]

There are two kinds of consequences: direct and indirect. What you speak of is indirect. An action itself is not causing a consequence, the feeling of wanting to do an action is. It causes one to play a game obsessively.

The actions you do in a World of Warcraft game don't have direct real life consequences. If you kill a player on a game, the real life consequence of the player dying in the manner that the player was killed in the game won't follow.

In a Call of Duty game, a person that you kill with a bazooka won't die from a bazooka at the same time in real life. That is what I mean by real life consequences--it's very obvious that games can have real life consequences (like the kid who ran away from home and died freezing because his parents took his Xbox 360).

I think you're just nitpicking as you always do; it's very clear what I meant, and you know it too.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Chiki