Violent Video Games Impact on Players

                                Violent Video Games Impact on Players

Roderick E. Buycks

The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Violent Video Games Impact on Players

        Psychologist have investigated the perspective of the impact of violent video games and how violent games influence behavior, on those who play them.  Tobias (2014) offered empirical data research on violent video games and aggression.  He noted that studies so far found that exposure to violent video games noticeably increased participants aggressive thinking, their unfriendliness, and aggressive conduct.  He further stated that some of the findings were minor to average and some studies said that violent video games did not cause aggression, it stated that participants were already aggressive and the games just enhanced their aggressiveness.  Responses from passionate game players stated that these violent games had no impact on their aggression.  Tobias contended that the player disagreement is due to the comparison of their behavior while playing the game and their daily life.  He explained that the violent video games enabled the player to use guns, missiles, knives and other deadly weapons to destroy and kill opposing characters.  In proportion to those deadly acts of violence, player’s aggressive behavior daily looks harmless.  For instance, the violent video games caused severe hurt and death while playing, so shouting, or pushing others were seemingly as not being aggressive.  A difference was noted in people that did not play violent video games they were more likely to view the shouting or pushing as aggression.  

        The psychologist conducted two experiments to test the impact of playing violent video games by players.  Tobias (2014) studied the comparison prediction which states players that play violent video games viewed their daily life aggressive behavior as not being such in experiment one.  In the second experiment, he examined whether observations on what is counted as aggression triggered the outcome of playing violent video games on aggressive conduct.  The first experiment had players play a violent video game or an unbiased one for 15 minutes. Half of the players were instructed to envision an extensive variety of aggressive behaviors that happen daily.  The players rated each conduct on its aggressiveness.  The other participants rated the same conduct, however this conduct was displayed by someone else to determine if violent video games also affected the insight of aggressive behavior revealed by others.  He suggested that when other participants judge others self plays a critical role.  For example, other people evaluated other people’s athletic actions were dependent in some way on their athletic activities.  He stated that the influence of violent video games played on discernments were more distinct for the player’s own behavior in contrast to the behavior displayed by others.  Studies on social comparisons show that individuals compared themselves to others that are like them.  No one is more like a person than the person them self.  Thus, playing a violent video game instead of a neutral one led players to observe their day to day aggressive behavior as non-aggressive.  Therefore, playing violent video games increases ensuing aggressive behavior.  The second experiment priorities repeated the first experiment discoveries that showed violent video games decreased how one views their day to day life aggressive behavior, and if the prejudiced outlook of what is considered aggressive behavior explained what increased that behavior for example hot chili sauce given to players after playing violent video games.  The players played a violent game and a neutral game like in the first experiment.  Next, the players were measured on how they like the game with two elements, two elements measured how challenging the video game was, two items measured the pleasure level, and one element measured mood.  Likert scale was used on a scale of 1-7.  The alleged aggression of how the players on conduct, but observations of others conduct were not evaluated.  The hot chili sauce was used to measure the aggressive conduct of the players.  The findings were not affected by the liking, perception, excitement, and mood. Future research is recommended on participants that play these violent games over and over and their insights from daily life aggression. Furthermore, more research is needed to determine if these discoveries change the player’s thinking on how they view themselves.  

                     Studies have been conducted in laboratories on violent video games testing if playing violent video games with replications of acts of violence would lead to participants acting the violence out in real life.  The evidence is sparingly on that however, Gitter, Ewell, Guadango, Stillman, and Baumeister (2013) conducted two studies to see if participant’s aggression levels increased towards others because of playing violent video games.  In their first study the details were given clearly that if the motives were prosocial for example if the participants had to protect someone they love and advancing their goals without violence would aggression be lowered initially in these participants that played violent video games.  This would be done by grooming optimistic prosocial thoughts in participants.  The second study focused on the motivation of the violence of the participants that played violent video games to determine if the motives were more justly unclear and to determine if they displayed greater levels of positive behavior thinking while playing violent video games.  The researchers presented the violent video games in a clear positive way to recall encouraging thoughts and to lessen the effects of aggression that had been observed in earlier tests.  The research had participants play a zombie killing game or a game with no violence.  The object in one game was to rescue an acquaintance from the zombies so that they could complete a mission.  The other game the reasons of the person were justly unclear and the character just killed the zombies for amusement.  The story lines of the characters were manipulated to determine if aggression would be higher after justly unclear violent video games than clear productive violent video games.  The researchers hypothesized that aggression would be greater towards a human participant after justly unclear violent video games compared to clear positive violent video games.  Also, a study was conducted later to test the results of the participants attitude of productive satisfaction.  Suggesting that participants that played clear positive violent games would prompt sturdier positive satisfaction than justly unclear violent games.