Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Researching Aggressive Behavior from Violent Video Games

As I said in my recent posts, more kids are growing too attached to violent video games slowly making them aggressive. Today, hundreds of studies are being done on  children and their behavior when playing violent video games. There are many reasons how violence in video games can affect children's behavior according to an article I came across during my research.

An article states recent studies about aggressive behavior. Shankar Vedantam explains in his article how easily our minds can be affected by listening, seeing, and experiencing violent behavior in violent video games. The experiment starts which researchers put college students in groups to "measure how each student in each group feel and how they behave."(paragraph 4)

Vendatam then explains the research comparison begins between two professors from different colleges with "social psychologist Brad Bushman from The Ohio State University"(paragraph 5) and "Chris Ferguson, a psychologist from Texas A&M International University."(paragraph 12) 

He quotes Bushman's conclusion which '"everybody was more aggressive if they'd played a violent game than if they played a nonviolent game, and the more numb they were, the more aggressive they were in blasting their opponent with loud noise through their headphones.'"(paragraph 10)

Vendatam quotes Ferguson's opposition which he concludes "'playing violent video games probably will not turn your child into a psychopathic killer,' Bushman said, 'but I would want to know how the child treats his or her parents, how they treat their siblings, how much compassion they have."'(paragraph 18)

Vendatam's article basically describes research from professional researchers showing different results. Both psychologists experimented on the same age group and both concluded different outcomes which made their argument interesting.

I'ts interesting  to know that there are people who have diverse thoughts on how video games affect people in different ways. It's important to read about experimentation of violence in video games to know about games suitable for your child.

Resources:

Vendatam, Shankar (2011, July 07). It's a duel: How do violent video games affect 
                                                      kids? npr.org. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/
                                                      2011/07/07/137660609/its-a-duel-how-do-violent-video-
                                                       games-affect-kids

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