Violence in Video Games Can Be Transferred to the Children's Real-Life Attitudes and Behaviors - Article Example

The paper “Violence in Video Games Can Be Transferred to the Children's Real-Life Attitudes and Behaviors" is a thrilling example of a case study on psychology. The author warns parents that high-violence content in your children’s favorite video games can have lasting effects on their personality. Studies swing back and forth in blaming video games for increased violence among the youth. Many of them give evidence, nevertheless, that violence in video games can be transferred to real-life attitudes and behaviors.

A 2011 study affirms similar findings. It shows that playing violent video games and thinking about it, also called “rumination,” tend to make men more violent 24 hours after playing it than others who didn’t think about their game.Brad J. Bushman, professor of communication and technology at the Ohio State University and Bryan Gibson, professor of psychology at Central Michigan University, conducted an observational study, where the effects of playing video games on aggression levels were examined.

Particularly, they were interested in the long-term effects of thinking about the game on actual aggression. One-hundred twenty-six college students, who volunteered for the study, flipped a coin so that they could be assigned to play either a violent or non-violent video game for twenty minutes. After this process, those who were selected to play violent or non-violent video games were randomly assigned to play one of six popular violent video games used in similar studies. For participants who were asked to ruminate over their games, they were asked to think about their playing style and how they could enhance it for the next 24 hours.

This increased the potential causal relationship between playing and ruminating on the game and actual violent conduct.The next day, the participants played another competitive game with the same sex, where they were given the option to blast their defeated opponent with noise. They also had the alternative to not blast their opponents. Winners could also control the length of time that they could blast the losers. The researchers observed that men, who played violent video games and reflected on it, were more aggressive in punishing their opponents.

On the contrary, men who played non-violent video games and thought about it did not exhibit signs of increased aggression. Gender seemed to be an important determining factor as well. Female participants showed no to little aggressive tendencies in punishing the losers, whether they played violent or nonviolent video games and thought about their play.Bushman and Gibson concluded that there is a potential direct relationship between playing and thinking about violent games and sadistic behaviors in real-life settings.

They stressed that according to the cognitive no association theory, reflecting on violent video games can have a long-term impact on players’ thoughts, emotions, and actions. This study is important to society because it provides some evidence that playing violent video games and thinking about it makes men specifically vulnerable to developing sadistic tendencies. If twenty minutes of playing it in a one-time study can have such lasting effects, how much more for those who play it longer than that and have peers to talk about it too?

Though the participants of the study are not that numerous and it is possible that other individual and social factors can impact aggression, it cannot be entirely true that violent video games will not make children more aggressive toward others. Parents and the youth should think about the implications of this study too. They should ruminate over the possibility that constantly interacting with violence in the media and reflecting on it can produce long-term effects on human personality. Before, it’s just we are what we eat.

Now, it’s we are what we play.