Violence and Computer Games - Research Proposal Example

Violence and Computer Games 2008 Violence and Computer Games Video games are a relatively new type of entertainment that first appeared only some thirty years ago in the 1970’s. However, they become really popular only in the late 1980’s and only then the interest emerged in exploring their impact on children’s psychology. As usually there is more than one opinion on the problem. Majority of researchers consider violent computer games to be among the top causes of aggressive behavior and violence in real life.

Yet some psychologists think that computer or television violence does not really causes violent actions in real life, rather on the contrary: it helps people to give a loose to their negative emotions and thus reduces probability of aggressive style of behavior in real life (ScienceDaily, 2008). Early studies of video games carried out in the beginning of 1980’s failed to prove their effects on children’s behavior, but in more recent studies and reports this connection has been confirmed (Zisman, 2000).

There are two main approaches in social psychology that throw light on the nature of how computer games influence children. The fist one is called the cultivation theory. The main principle of this theory is that intensive continuous influence of television or virtual reality of computer games lead to gradual distortion of sense of reality. In other words children start to form opinion of real world based upon the picture they learned from playing games or watching films. Keeping in mind that boys at age between eight and eighteen years spend approximately forty minutes per day playing computer games and that the average number of violent scenes observed during those forty minutes amounts one hundred and eighty, it is easy to imagine possible results (Gerbner et al., 1994). The social learning theory of A.

Bandura presents another point of view on the issue. Proponents of this approach think that computer games are a sort of educational program that teaches children violence. Children observe and virtually participate in violent scenes that lead to increase in aggressiveness in their everyday behavior (Bandura, Ross, and Ross, 1961). Actually, during playing computer games children learn new models of behavior to be implemented in real life. Here are results of recent research that convincingly prove direct relationship between violent computer games and increasing aggressiveness in behavior.

Craig Anderson and Karen Dill performed extensive study and presented persuasive evidence that entertaining violence definitely lead to substantial increase in aggressive behavior. They found out that computer games addicts demonstrated strong predisposition to delinquent behavior. Following laboratory experiments only proved the previously obtained results and “…demonstrated that in both correlational investigation using self-reports of real-world aggressive behaviors and an experimental investigation using a standard, objective laboratory measure of aggression, violent video game play was positively related to increases in aggressive behavior.

In the laboratory, college students who played a violent video game behaved more aggressively toward an opponent than did students who had played a nonviolent video game. Outside the laboratory, students who reported playing more violent video games over a period of years also engaged in more aggressive behavior in their own lives” (Anderson, and Dill, 2000, p.790). There are a number of other studies on the subject but in general their results do not differ much: they prove positive correlation between playing violent computer games and aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior for “they [violent video games] introduce a unique feature: the individual creates and participates in the violence” (Funk, 2004).

However the exact nature of this correlation is still not clear and requires more investigation. We are still not aware of long terms effects of violent video games: majority of studies explore only immediate, short-term consequences. Nevertheless available results convincingly demonstrate that children do represent a social group vulnerable to negative impact of aggressive video games that is proved by a number of psychological researches. Works Cited Anderson, C. and Dill, K. “Video Games and Aggressive Thoughts, Feeling, and Behavior in the Laboratory and in Life”, in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 78, No. 4, April 2000, p. 790. Bandura, A., Ross, D., and Ross, S.A. “Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models”, in Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, No.

63, 1961, pp. 575-582. Funk, J.B. “Children and Violent Video Games: Are There "High Risk" Players?” online article, retrieved December 3, 2008, from http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/conf2001/papers/funk1.html Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Signorelli, N., and Morgan, M. “Growing up with television: The cultivation perspective”. In: J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (Eds.). Media effects: Advances in theory and research, 1994, pp. 17-41. ScienceDaily, “Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence?

”, May 15, 2008 [available online at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514213432.htm] Zisman, Alan Game violence-- the BC solution? Vancouver Computes, October 2000 [available online at http://www.zisman.ca/Articles/2000/BC.html]