According to a new American Psychological Association task force games.aspx” target=”_blank”>report, use of violent video games not only increases aggressive behaviour, but also aggressive cognitions.
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In response, Appelbaum said that similarities and slight variations among the consulted studies have provided the task force the certainty that playing video games have direct relationship in a person’s ability to gear toward aggression.
The APA says that theres no single factor that can drive someone toward violence or aggression, but that violent video games could be classified as one risk factor.
“One can never know for sure whether playing violent video games causes violent criminal behavior, because it is unethical for researchers to allow participants to engage in violent criminal behavior in their laboratory experiments”, Bushman told CBS.
The American Psychological Association (APA) is calling for additional parental control over the inclusion of violent scenes in video game titles after discovering that such portrayals are linked to the development of callous and aggressive behavior.
This included four meta-analyses that reviewed more than 150 research reports published before 2009. Yes, video games have become more realistic and more violent overtime and there is a heightened level of realism that could affect people in society. It claims a link between video games and violence.
Ferguson and colleagues looked at violent video games from 1996 to 2011 and found that there is little to no evidence that video game violence affects gamers. Now the review of such studies has proved that those who play violent video games are more at a risk of enhanced aggression. Certainly, it has come up occasionally over the last several years, particularly when it was revealed that Sandy Hook Elementary school shooter Adam Lanza had logged 83,000 kills on the video games that had consumed so much of his life.
At the same time, the Entertainment Software Rating Board is urged to re-define the rating system to reflect the findings of the report.
The research is the first in this field to examine the breadth of previous studies and to undertake multiple approaches to reviewing the literature.
Those involved in the industry also disagree with the report. Task force chair Mark Appelbaum noted that his task force really wanted to find concrete evidence as to whether violent video games actually cause aggression.
The ESA, which runs the E3 Expo and operates the ESRB, didn’t have nice things to say about the APA’s new report.
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They also saw changes in social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to violence, but researchers do not suggest youngsters will commit more crime. In a statement given to Polygon, the ESA said “considering the APA’s long-standing bias against and attacks on video games, this slanted report is not surprising”.
