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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 19 2018, @07:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the priming-the-pump dept.

No Evidence to Support Link Between Violent Video Games and Behaviour :

In a series of experiments, with more than 3,000 participants, the team demonstrated that video game concepts do not 'prime' players to behave in certain ways and that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players.

The dominant model of learning in games is built on the idea that exposing players to concepts, such as violence in a game, makes those concepts easier to use in 'real life'. This is known as 'priming', and is thought to lead to changes in behaviour.  Previous experiments on this effect, however, have so far provided mixed conclusions.

Researchers at the University of York expanded the number of participants in experiments, compared to studies that had gone before it, and compared different types of gaming realism to explore whether more conclusive evidence could be found

[...] "The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players.

"Further study is now needed into other aspects of realism to see if this has the same result. What happens when we consider the realism of by-standing characters in the game, for example, and the inclusion of extreme content, such as torture?

"We also only tested these theories on adults, so more work is needed to understand whether a different effect is evident in children players."

Journal Reference:
David Zendle, Daniel Kudenko, Paul Cairns. Behavioural realism and the activation of aggressive concepts in violent video games. Entertainment Computing, 2018; 24: 21 DOI: 10.1016/j.entcom.2017.10.003


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @10:28PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @10:28PM (#764040)

    I’ve never even seen a gun!

    You've not been Christmas shopping in the past 2 years? Link: 1 [dailymail.co.uk] 2 [thesun.co.uk] Forgive the sources -- google it for multiple local papers covering this

    For pretty much everyone in the UK – there simply are no guns.

    So a computer game with guns is pure fantasy for us – ‘we’ (UK citizens) can’t be ‘primed’ to go out and shoot people, cos we can’t get guns with which to shoot people anyway…

    You can't live in a rural area and have never seen a shotgun and I have no idea where you live in the UK but it doesn't sound like the country I live in. [parliament.uk]

  • (Score: 2) by splodus on Tuesday November 20 2018, @02:10PM

    by splodus (4877) on Tuesday November 20 2018, @02:10PM (#764238)

    I've lived in rural Devon for 50 years - never been interested in going on a shoot so never seen a shotgun...

    Your link to the report on gun crime puts Firearm Offences in the South West at 4 per 100,000 population!

    I did just remember though as a kid seeing guns in a sports shop in Heavitree - not sure if they were shotguns or air-rifles, but maybe I have seen a gun after all? Ha!