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Are
Violent Video Games Acceptable and Desirable?
Ma.
Carmina Felizco
In recent findings of targeted school violence from the 2004 report of
the United States Secret Service and the United States Department of Education
entitled ‘The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative’, it
was identified that violent incidence at school during the past three decades
usually displayed attackers that had targets.
The first episode happened in 1974 when a student used guns and bombs
while setting off the fire alarm and shooting at emergency and custodial
personnel (Vossekuil et al., 2004, p.15). Since
that year, there were about 37 incidents of school violence, wherein 41 school
attackers were identified in the 26 states in U.S., especially in the states
like Arkansas, California, Kentucky, Missouri, Georgia, and Tennessee (Vossekuil
et al., 2004, p.15). With this fact
we ask, do thoughts and acts of violence and aggression have anything to do with
playing violent video games? Can we
say that playing violent video games is acceptable and desirable?
Eric Uhlmann and Jane Swanson (2003) did a study on the effects of
violent video games to 121 students. There
were a total of 54 male psychology students, 65 females, and 2 no answers, who
were about 18 years old or slightly older or younger, and who volunteered for
the experiment of playing the violent video game ‘Doom’ and the non-violent
video game ‘Mahjongg: Clicks’. For
‘Doom’, there were 5 new levels that the players could choose from, while
the controls were simplified for them to use only the mouse and the arrow keys;
for ‘Mahjongg’, however, players played by attempting to clear the computer
screen with the use of the mouse.
The
experiment was done by applying the Implicit Association Test or IAT that became
the standard of measurement on the total aggression that was shown during the
game. Greenwald et al. (1998)
developed this standard, which assumed that
“[P]erforming tasks that oblige people to sort well-associated categories
together is easier than performing tasks in which the categories to be grouped
together are not associated.” (Uhlmann & Swanson, 2003, p.44)
Four categories were used: (1) Self and Other; (2) Aggressive and Peaceful; (3) Self = Aggressive; and (4) Self = Peaceful. There were also feeling thermometers that were used, some self-ratings, aggression questionnaires, and interviews on previous game exposure.
From
the result of the study, it appeared that “playing the violent game did, as
hypothesized, increase automatic aggressiveness, and that this effect was
equally likely to occur for male and female players” (Uhlmann & Swanson,
2003, p.46). It also suggested that
“exposure to the violent game did not significantly influence the
self-reported aggressiveness of either male or female participants” (Uhlmann
& Swanson, 2003, p.46). From the
study, it turned out that playing violent video games does influence the level
of aggressiveness of a person, both male and female; however, it does not imply
that it leads to acts of violence, since it does not significantly influence the
self-reported aggressiveness trait of a person, be it a male or a female.
Thus, we can say that playing violent video games is acceptable and desirable, especially when gaming is used for the
purpose of self-training on jobs or work that require a higher level of
aggression, such as to those that are subjected to the military and to sports.
In the report made by Vossekuil et al. (2004), wherein 73% of the incidents had
the attacker kill at least one person at school, about 95% of the student
attackers were currently enrolled during the time of the incident (p.15). Precisely
81% of them carried out the attack alone; about 11% carried it out with some
external assistance; while the remaining 8% carried out the attack together with
some individuals (Vossekuil et al., 2004, p.15).
More than half of the attacks or 54% were centered on one or more school
personnel, while exactly 73% had some kind of grievances with the targeted
personnel (Vossekuil et al., 2004, p.16). With
the attackers that come within the average of 16 years old, with 63% coming from
two-parent families, the same 63% had not been in the same kind of trouble prior
to the attack, and about 73% had no marked change in terms of friendship
patterns (Vossekuil et al., 2004, p.20), it appears that the causes of violence
come from mental, emotional, and psychological disorders.
This is proven by the fact that most attackers had a history of suicidal
attempts and an extreme form of depression or desperation.
Many of them felt bullied and persecuted prior to the attack.
Playing
violent video games could make an adolescent capable of committing a crime when
there is emotional weakness and mental insecurity in the psychological bearing
of the person. Worsened by peer
dilemma, the influence of media violence, plus some external influences within
the environment, the person becomes weak against controlling oneself, especially
concerning those who left them some grievances.
With all these, it is evident that the cause of school violence has
nothing to do with playing violent video games, which increases the level and
likelihood of aggressiveness but is ineffective when it comes to influencing
self-reported aggressiveness trait of a person.
Thus, violent video games are still acceptable and desirable.
References
Coping.
(2007). Retrieved September 23, 2008, from http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/04/18/us/20070418_COPE_SLIDESHOW_7.html.
Uhlmann,
E., & Swanson, J. (2004). Exposure to violent video games increases
automatic aggressiveness. Journal of
Adolescence, 27, 41-52.
Vossekuil,
B., Fein, R. A., Reddy, M., Borum, R., & Modzeleski, W. (2004, June). The
final report and findings of the
