Do video games really cause violence?

Revealing the dark side of video games in a simple easy to read explanation

Video games have a long lingering superpower that many of us may reject or accept. In this case, it is video games potential to spark violence, eventhough it is a rather mysterious and dark hole in social psychology, we might have an answer for you.

It remains at a stalemate, between parents, children and third party companies or research coalitions.As parents argue from experience and subjective observations, children argue from their desire or from reactance a bheavioral response to a threat to ones freedom such as their ability to game and researchers dive deeper on the cognitive side, carrying out studies.

So let’s analyse how gaming influences, the human brain for the better or worse.

The bo-bo doll beating is one the first-ever experiment to display now the long known fact that people imitate violence based on that of a clip or live-action, leading scientest after several more experinemnt to make a massive breakthrough with the idea that violence begets violence. This may seem like a rather straightforward and logical fact, but let’s not get blindsided by the vast array of hindsight bias we experience.

Thats why, we refrain from hitting or abusing our friends or family members when someone of young age in the room, as normalising this habit, can cause tramua and influenc the tendency for viloence as one grows up.

As decades before, hitting yourself, hitting an object or hitting others was a very common way to vent, releasing your anger through anger, but yet this research just states that this action is only an action that perpetuates it, encouraging viloence.

According to the majority of psychological consensus, video-games posses the quality and have a tendency of normalizing violence even with games that lack any bloodshed such as Fifa or a basketball game.

As this comes down to recognising that violence does not only take one form, as it is not only influenced by a single action or category, instead, it can be displayed in a multitude of ways or put onto someone in a vast array of different techniques. In the case of FIFA, the way it incites violence is through the competitive nature of the game. Especially with its correlation and long hailed history with funny internet clips of people smashing their controllers in anger and disbelief. A result when one is unable to achieve their goal, building a sense of frustration and therefore anger which often encourages violence.

As the motivation or need to win drives when lost violence and hatred that can spread like wildfire as we will explore. Pro-longing its effects even after the initial incidents sometimes lingering for days, due to anger being both present through of (slow arriving but long lingering) hormones and the brain’s electrical gradient for sudden or irrational outbursts of emotions.

However what matters most is that we need to as a society notice the bridge between reality and the virtual world, being increasingly similar. Soon maybe our appearances, behaviours and ideas will be fully dictated by the social expectations and the algorithms to the minds of one’s computer. Taking out reality where it was traditional to groom one’s personality to be soon replaced by the digital void, where instead playgrounds such as fifa will be the ultimate decider for our personality. A very worrying fate as inciting competition, brings out anger, ultimately shaping our behaviours and attitudes to orientate around this very principle, as to conform to social norms, and to fit in with society’s needs to be considered successful or supposedly popular.

The digital void and the physical world as we have discussed threatens to shake the rudimentary aspect of our emotional well-being and alter our upbringing and values.

As sure football is as violent and can bring outrage among fans, it differs in terms of what its pros are and how they triumph over such emotions, which the act of gaming lacks at hand.

Learning through imitation is most dominant at a young age, which sets a stanza for often what you will and want to be when older. As being surrounded by shouting irresponsible adults can lead you into the same faith growing up and following the same footsteps.

Imagine this you are currently working for a preservation park, which houses a very famous set of stones. Constantly and anonymously being chipped away by visitors day by day slowly causing destruction. So as you try to educate the problem, you put a sign that reads about 87% of people who pass the rock chip it and beg them not to do the same.

However with the most fundamental basic knowledge of social physiology one is able to imply that such strategy will not work. By saying 87% of people chip away at this rock, you are essentially saying that everyone who passes chips the rock. Giving everyone a green light to act like everyone else without fear of consequences. As you normalise the behaviour. Bringing this back soon the violence we see carried out in the likes of GTA normalised in the digital world as one primary principle can and will be more likely carried out in the real world. Merging your new personality and behaviour to the game in the digital to the physical world.

For those who still argue on the fundamental basis of correlation and causation. Which

“A correlation between variables, however, does not automatically mean that the change in one variable is the cause of the change in the values of the other variable. Causation indicates that one event is the result of the occurrence of the other event; i.e. there is a causal relationship between the two events.”

This theory of causation and correlation has been largely connected to combat the testomints of many experts. Taking one of the more vague examples, one would say that a spike in the use of video games which is researched to have a spike in violence does not necessarily mean that violence is caused by video games.

However this idea can only hold for so long until the pounding force of reality comes crashing through the door as a 100 studies have been produced finally assembling the final step of connecting causation with correlation as 6 of the leading psychological institutes have formally agreed that violence ultimately causes violence. Trumping your claims. As to close this debate down I want to intrigue you as a reader for a special treat in a story which also explains violence and boxing. Tying up the point between causation and connection, imitation and ultimately brought to you as readers by the university of weslayan.

“In Mexico, nearly a million people enrolled in a program to learn to read after watching a TV drama that promoted literacy by showing characters struggling to read and then becoming literate. And in Tanzania, a series of TV dramas led married people to discuss the need to control family size and to adopt family planning methods. But returning to the topic of aggression, one of the most important questions that grew out of Bandura’s research is whether behaviors modeled on television show the same sort of effect that he documented in the laboratory. For instance, when there’s a widely publicized boxing match, does the level of aggression in society go up? In one of the most famous boxing matches in history, Muhammad Ali against Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali actually took out a little gorilla doll and punched it during a press conference, pretending that the doll was Joe Frazier (somewhat similar to a little Bobo doll). Now, you could hear people in the background laughing,but the question here is deadly serious. Could this sort of highly rewarded prizefighting and punching increase the aggression of TV viewers? Not only is the answer yes — there’s evidence that it may even lead to murder. David Philips, a sociology professor at the University of California, San Diego, published an award-winning study in which he examined all heavyweight championship prize fights between 1973 and 1978, and found that U.S. homicide rates jumped over 12% above average three days after the boxing matches took place, and over 6% above average four days later — increases that translated into nearly 200 additional murders over this five-year period and led Professor Phillips to conclude that “heavyweight prize fights stimulate fatal, aggressive behavior in some Americans.” In this research, Professor Phillips also found that the more a fight was publicized, the larger the increase in murder afterwards. And he found that when a Black boxer lost the fight, the murder rate increased for young Black men but not young White men. On the other hand, when a White boxer lost the fight, the murder rate increased for young White men, but not young Black men — a pattern suggesting that aggression was being imitated.”

Conclusion

Ultimately to finish this very debate, take video games as a sort of role model that will be at the forefront crafting and setting the tone of our future leaders, innovators and ultimately our successors.

The growing influence of E-sports and video games with their stereotypical nature to attract violence should not be condemned but instead as humans moving forward. It is paramount that we are able to process and maintain a high level of emotional aptitude. As raging during gaming is not the intention of game makers, ultimately to be happy and enjoy the game through stoic is though.

Video games which are expected to continuously climb with the pandemic has a larger outreach to all ages. Trumping the likes of already existing more physically demanding sports. However it is key to remember that even soccer in reality and boxing can cause mass murder. As citizens we can sure let hatred and competition direct us, sure, but if so we must be able to process and tune out our emotions using our prefontal cortex, ultimately managing our emotions (a rather perplexing challenge to the majority of today’s people)