Do video games with firearms and weapons truly cause violent activities in real life settings? According to the latest research which was published during the week on the Nature Molecular Psychology journal, this debate was well argued as the researchers tried to refute the claims by the majority of the people that such video games have effects on the way people behave.
The researchers from Germany used 77 participants in their experiment. They divided them into three teams that distinguished them as enlisted healthy people with non-gaming attributes.
Questionnaires and individuality tests were given to each team as soon as the study commenced. Afterward, one of the team allowed just two months to engage itself in Grand Theft Auto V (this game is new among the series and it has over 30 types of firearms used to destroy enemies), for 30 minutes every day. Another team was assigned to play Sim 3, a controlled and mild game.
The second team was used as control team and was simply instructed to return after two months in order to conduct another type of corresponding assessments. Both teams did the duplicate tests and each team got a third assessment after two months.
No proof that violent games beget violent people
The study didn’t show any major change in the mannerisms of each team members, their aggression lifestyles remained the same just as it was before the experiment. Also, they retained the rates of their helplessness, compassion, their control of instincts, depression, and many more human traits. Close observations didn’t reveal any significant changes among the members as well.
Speaking on these findings, a professor of psychology and a video game researcher himself from the University of Stetson, Florida, Chris Ferguson, noted that although the population of the participants used for the research was low, it nonetheless served its purpose, well articulated and it shredded a beam on long-term effects.
He also said that researchers have heard some people debating on the certainty of accumulation of long-term influences and exposures, however, the German results debunked the common beliefs. “These results have served as proofs that must be considered to clear our doubts,” says Ferguson, who added that such outcomes should teach people on how to reconsider their misconceptions about the relationship between violence and video games.
Another personality by the name Patrick Markey also aired his opinion. He’s the chief of Interpersonal Research Laboratory, University of Villanova. He described this new study as the recent research to douse the general notion of video games being a propeller for people to develop violent attributes.
Priming is unreliable and questionable
He further stated that the last few years have given room for similar studies springing up in droves to correct the assertions which view video games as tools for rage and destructive mannerisms in the society. These types of studies have discouraged the majority of the scientists in that vicinity to quit calling video games the tools for mass destruction in the country.
The German researchers claimed that priming was used by previous researchers who said that they discovered a deadly impact video game has on people. They said these scientists just presented a formulated circumstance, which is same as priming. In the law of priming, it’s being stated that the environment where one lives can indirectly affect one’s mind or behaviors.
When looked into in this situation, it may be possible that the act of watching or engaging in aggressive video games is likely to influence your irritability impulse for a while, but naturally, the elements of priming found in people don’t usually go beyond some minutes. Recently, the unreliable theories behind priming have been strongly questioned because studies that used it didn’t produce a single solid proof to back up its ideas of bad influence in gamers.
Meanwhile, opponents of this result still maintain their stands which labeled aggressive video games as hazardous. According to a 2015 study by the American Psychological Association, an obvious connection exists between the rising enraged reactions exhibited in gamers and firearm games, but the study didn’t mention facts that the connection spanned to outlawed behaviors and reprobate attitudes.
In the past week, President Donald Trump had a closed-door meeting to discuss this worrisome issue with developers of video games and activists like the Chairlady of Parents Television Council, Melissa Hansen.
PTC is a Catholic moderatist organization that is advocating for the forbidding of CW series such as The Walking Dead. The gathering was meant to deliberate on the part being played by video games in the area of violent displays and shootings.
After the meeting, a visual that contained series of game murders was uploaded on YouTube by The White House to further stamp its own side of the divide. It would be recalled that Trump had pointed accusing fingers at video games for being the inspiration behind Sandy Hook public shooting that happened in 2012.
More studies like the ones done by Harvard’s department of Injury Control Research Center showed that when countries have strict laws on gun and weapons, then this will influence more on the violent usage of guns.