False Science: Video Games Do Not Make You Violent

It's no secret that scientific communities across the globe have long accused videogames of many foul evils (seriously, click that link, it's hilarious). As early as 1976 the science minded amongst us have been giving politicians the ammunition they need for decades to gain the support of every mother in America by blaming videogames for all the problems. But, what's the real story behind it all? Well, it's not quite as simple as you may think. In fact, the whole damn "videogames make you violent" argument is one big convoluted ball of falsified science, half science, pop culture, and political scare tactics. Those of you who know me personally (I'm assuming that number is quite large, since my Former Alien Abductee Association Conference after parties are the stuff of legend) know the unfortunate truth about me. As it turns out, despite having spent years to project an image opposite to my true history, I am actually fairly well educated. Not intelligent, just educated. And, I focused my initial career as an academic on studying videogames. Anyway, one of the most unfortunate byproducts of being well educated is involvement in academia. And what's so wrong with academia? Academics. That's what. Academics tend to think they know better than the average person, because they're paid to tell the world their results. But, the truth comes down to the fact that many academics just pretend to know more than the average Joe, Dick, or Tom, because it's their job to know more. That's not to say that people like Einstein are fakes, but lets face it, not every scientist can be Einstein. They have to pay the bills, though, and that means publishing scientific findings. So, you're an academic, but you're not smart. You can only get more money by publishing scientific findings, but you're not all that great at the sciency side of science. What can you do? Find a hot button issue, which will be sure to get you the attention you need to advance your career, then go out and make a study with results that can't be proven or dis proven, but seem to be logical. So here's the score: there are some fundamental truths about video games that you ought to know. The first, and sorry to be the one to break it to you, is that they do in fact increase aggressive behaviors. The good news, though, is that the way it increases aggression is much much different from what you've been told.

Bad Science

When you're measuring how fast a robot can run (pretty damn fast), it's pretty easy to come up with a measurement system. Run that thing on a treadmill, then divide the time by the distance. So if it runs 6 kilometers in 30 minutes, it was running at 5km/hr. But, what if you're measuring how angry, violent, or downright criminal a person is. You can't exactly divide the number of veins in their forehead by how much blood is on their hand and call it a day. Well, you could try just asking them. However, it's pretty much a proven fact that if you ask a person the question "are you violent", that you've already ruined any chance of getting a real answer, because now they're thinking about it too hard. Also, if the answer is vague, who gets to decide which side of the line that falls on? Well, to combat this problem, Qualitative Research Methods have been dreamed up by hundreds of "scientists" across the globe, in order to better understand human behavior by just describing it. But politicians don't want descriptions, they want numbers, damnit, because Americans are too lazy to listen to a description. We want a damned graph. And so, Quantitative Research Methods had to be dreamed up. That means, that researchers had to come up with a way to measure anger or violence in numbers. Sounds fairly impossible, right? But, boy did they try. First, there's the infamous BoBo Doll Experiment of 1961, which dealt with children learning violence from outside sources, and how exposure to violence can create violent behavior. How was it measured? Well, kids watched a an adult beating the shit out of a blow up clown doll (one designed for taking a beating) with a hammer for a solid 10 minutes. Then, a researcher gave the kid a toy, and immediately took it away. Then the kid was instructed to play with the BoBo Doll. What do you think he did? He beat the piss out of the thing, because that's how he was taught to do it. Up until 2010, in Ferguson's "Blazing Angels", The BoBo Doll Experiment was hailed as absolute proof that violent behavior can be learned through watching violent behavior. Of course, as anyone not being paid to find a specific result could see, the experiment simply proved that children do what adults tell them to do, something that is slightly less than revolutionary. And, there's been more. Researchers have tested aggression by letting people play violent video games, then seeing how much hot sauce they put on their food, or even how many balloons they pop in a room full of balloons and thumb tacks. And they've used these bulletproof methodologies to prove that videogames, especially violent videogames, are responsible for the massive rise in violent crimes in the United States. There's only one problem with that theory, homicide rates are at the lowest they have been since 1961, the same year doctors started telling kids to beat clowns with hammers. In essence, there is little to prove that there is a direct correlation between violent games and violent behavior. Claims have been made that thousands of studies prove the association of violent games and violent behavior, some even going so far as to say it's the same as the relationship between smoking and lung cancer, a claim that would be laughed at in any legitimate social science debate. I won't waste any more of your time by citing the thousands of recent studies that contradict the fraudulent work created by fame/funding-seeking researchers over the past twenty years. But, I will tell you that all you really need to do is Google it to find the truth.

2. But..

Videogames in general do increase violent behavior. I mean all videogames. Like, freaking Mario Party makes you an angrier person. Why? Not because of violence featured or violence learned. Instead, or violent tendencies are increased because videogames encourage us to engage in two things that would make anyone angry: one sided competitions and frustrating, repetitive tasks. So, by the same standard doing your taxes, trying to use Photoshop CS5, getting stuck in traffic, playing baseball, or even playing chess is just as likely to increase your aggressive tendencies. So, next time you see a man stuck in traffic AND stuck on the same level of Angry Birds, I strongly suggest you give him your seat on the bus.