Violent videos games lead to aggression in individuals

Violent video games desensitizes individuals, causing them to take real violence lightly. People habituate the video game violence and become physiologically numb to it. Nicholas Carnagey, an Iowa State psychology instructor and research assistant, and ISU Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson collaborated on the study of "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence" with Brad Bushman, a former Iowa State psychology professor now at the University of Michigan, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. 257 college students, 124 men and 133 women, were tested individually. After measuring their heart rate and galvanic skin response and asking questions about their video game preferences and general aggression levels, each participant was exposed to one of eight randomly designated violent or nonviolent games for 20 minutes. The four possible violent games were Carmageddon, Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat or Future Cop; the non-violent games were Glider Pro, 3D Pinball, 3D Munch Man and Tetra Madness. After the 20 minute duration, the test subjects were subjected to the same tests and then asked to watch actual violent episodes constructed from TV episodes and commercially-released films in the contexts of courtroom outbursts, police confrontations, shootings and prisons fights. Physiological differences were observed throughout the entire viewing. When viewing the actual images of violence, participants that played the violent video games had a significantly less skin response than those that had played nonviolent video games. In addition, the participants that had played the violent video games had a lower heart rate than those that played nonviolent video games. The people that participated in the experiment had no discrepancy in heart rate or skin response before the beginning of the study or immediately after playing the assigned games The results demonstrate that only 20 minutes of exposure can cause people to be less aroused by violence. When desensitized to violence and accepting it as the norm, one is more apt to commit violence. Video game players can become more aggressive in outlook, perceptual biases, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior than they were before the repeated exposure or would have become without such exposure. In a study entitled "Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feelings, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life', it was found that violent video game play and aggressive personality separately and jointly accounted for major portions of both aggressive behavior and nonaggressive delinquency. "Violent video game play was also shown to be a superior predictor of both types of delinquency compared with time spent playing all types of video games. This is also consistent with our GAAM formulation and suggests that future research (unlike most past work) needs to distinguish between these types of video games. The positive association between violent video games and aggressive personality is consistent with a developmental model in which extensive exposure to violent video games (and other violent media) contributes to the creation of an aggressive personality. The cross-sectional nature of this study does not allow a strong test of this causal hypothesis, but a zero or negative correlation would have disconfirmed the hypothesis, so the test is a legitimate one. " I conclude, from the evidence stated, that video games lead to aggression. If you wish to verify these studies or this information, go to . http://www.sciencedirect.com... . http://www.apa.org... . http://www.public.iastate.edu...