Open Challenge - 4 Topics

<Psychology> Let’s say your 6 year old kid said he would beat you up if you did not pull over and buy him ice cream, the parents would not stop, why? Because, even with the child’s aggression, the parent know that there will be no backup to his claims. Now if you replaced the 6 year old child with a pro wrestler, then you may be more inclined to pull your car over. If you cannot realistically threaten others, than acting aggressive will not help. Playing Grand Theft Auto all day may lead to you wanting to crash more digital cars, or beat up more fantasy people(In the near future), the advisability of your agression will not change. We can connect this to a non-human example, which is always helpful when looking into psychology because if an idea only works on humans, than it is more likely that the idea does not have interpretation. Let us take a moose, or 3 straight hours you show the moose a video of moose fighting. Afterwards your moose will not rush out to find a rival to duel, why? The reason, is that the moose chances of victory do not increase, so why should it’s actions change? Obviously the topic at hand is much more complex, but it gives us a foothold on why violent video games should not have a lasting impact on the aggression of humans. Humans do not play games because the game is violent, instead they play the game for the challenge. Following that idea, it is more logical to assume that changing the difficulty of the game would have a much greater effect that changing the level of violence. <Difficulty> Andrew K. Przybylski of Rochester University released a report on the supposed link between violent video games and aggression. His report consisted of a series of 7 studies, I will explain them here(1). In study one Przybylsk let 99 players play two different games. One game was non-violent, and had relatively easy controls. The other game was violent, and had significantly more complex controls. Przybylsk and his team then asked each participant to rank 3 things, level of violence of the game, difficulty the participant had with the controls, and the aggression afterwards. As expected, difficulty with controls had a much stronger correlation with aggression than violence. In study two, two versions of the game Half-Life two were created. One was violent the other was not, both games had the same atmosphere and difficulty. When testing the participants, frustration with the difficulty of the level was a much better indicator of aggression that the violence of the game. Study three is similar to study two, but the difficulty of the controls of the game was changed. The game in question is tetris, a non-violent game, those participants with more difficult controls were more likely to have aggressive compulsions. Study four changed a few variable over study three, but reached the same conclusion. Competence was inversely proportional to aggression In study five 112 participants were given one of two complex games, one that was violent, the other was non-violent. Half the participants were given 10 minutes of practice time. As expected considering the results of the previous studies, those participants without practice time showed more violent tendencies, the violence of the game showed no correlation. Study six asked participants to dunk their arm in ice cold water, then play tetris. The game was set at various difficulties. The patients were then asked the current participant how long the next participant should put their arm into the water. The harder the game’s difficulty, the longer the current patient suggested the next subject put their hand in the water. In study 7 the researchers interviewed gamers on the games they play, and their aggressive tendencies. The difficulty of the game was a held a stronger correlation to aggression that the rating of the game. In conclusion, it is evident that, instead of the violence of the video game, the difficulty of the game is a much better indicator of the aggression of the player. Losing the game tends to provoke rage, it does not matter the violence of the game. <Empathy> In a study lead by Dr. Gregor Szycik(2), the researchers lead a study on the long term effects of video games on humans. This is important, as a vast majorities of other studies on this topic focused on short term effects. A group of gamers who played first person shooter for a minimum of two hours a day were compared to a group of people with no experience of violent video games. Each gamer refrained from playing the game for 3 hours, though most waited longer. The participants were asked a series of physiological questions, and were then showed pictures that were meant to provoke an emotional response. MRI scans were conducted on the brain during this time. The questionnaire reported no difference in aggression and empathy in gamers to non-gamers, and that finding was backed up by brain scans <Time> A study lead by Oxford University(3) found that the time playing video games lead to lower academic scores for children, but that change was incredibly minor. The study found that students who played video games generally had lower grades, the important thing, is that they found no correlation between the rating of the game. This is important, as it suggests that addiction to game would have a negative social effect while violence would have a negligible social effect. If you look at a more extreme case, you can look at Adam Lanza. He is, of course, the infamous Sandy Hook shooter, and was obviously mentally unstable. Many people were ready for the FBI to release document about how violent video games had effected Adam’s mental state, but they got a disappointing surprise. The game that effected Adam the most, was not violent, it was “Dance Dance Revolution”, a single player arcade game. Adam put an excessive amount of time into the game, suggesting that his disconnect from society was the real reason for his deteriorating mental state. This disconnect is important, as the Oxford study found that multiplayer games may increase a child’s ability to be social. <Third Variable> Previous studies on violence in video games have been criticized for not recording the atmosphere of the game. Controls, difficulty, and competition have all been shown to affect aggression, yet many studies neglect this. The importance of the studies I have linked is that many include a third variable, whether it be time or difficulty. This is extremely important, as the studies have found a much strong correlation with that third variable. Many first person shooters are mechanically hard and competitive, and that may be the real reason that some study have found a correlation between videogames and violence. In many of these studies, this correlation has been minimal enough that in no way would it constitute a negative social outcome. <Conclusion> In conclusion, it is evident that violent video games do not have an affect on society that can be deemed to be negative. The ever expanding library of rage quit videos on youtube also prove my point. The common denominator of the aggression in all of these videos is not violence of the video games, it is losing. It is clearly evident that addiction to game has a greater negative effect of society over violent video games. Correlation does not equal causation, and it is evident that any correlation that may be found would be the result of not examining every factor of the games being studied. Being competitive, or being a bit impatient cannot possibly be considered a negative social outcome. The average COD gamer is not going out punching people, or being overly aggressive because of the game.In fact, the most popular violent video games are multiplayer, so social interaction may be increasing. Many may consider online conversation “not real”, and it is obvious that too much time online can have a negative effect, but video games can build important social bonds for many people, myself included. In no way is society as a whole being affected by this, crime rates have continued to drop(4), as video game sales have continued to rise. I may be pushing it to say that the drop in juvenile crime may be the result of videogames, in fact I highly doubt it. But it is only logical to assume that the relatively cheap distractions may have played a role in that decrease. If violent video games did have a negative impact on society, than the 70 million copies of GTA V that were sold in stores should have resulted in an increase in crime. But never, in all my time of playing violent video games, have I ever had the urge to blow up a car; many people can share that sentiment. <Sources> 1.http://selfdeterminationtheory.org... 2.https://blog.frontiersin.org... 3.http://www.ox.ac.uk... 4.https://upload.wikimedia.org...