So I'm doing research...Follow

Tetris should put your subjects into an appropriately trance like state.

For the violent game I'd go with GTA, personally.

Tetris would probobl be ideal for the puzzle oriented game, however I'm not sure if there are any current releases of it for current game consoles.

As for Doom 3, well, we're not supposed to expose the subjects to anything in any way harmful or detrimental to their health... I neeeded to go to the hospital after playing that.. though it was mainly because security beat me up when i demanded my money back

I found Manhunt to be much more violent. Or was that manhunt 2, im not quite sure.

Welcome to "What's Wrong With The World In a Nutshell".

This week we explore the disservice academics do the world with inane studies that revolve around the classic defense of "The video game made me do it."

By the way, what are you studying? The thesis you posted makes it sound like video games are attributed to violent tendencies. Is that really where you are going? Sounds more like a marketing study to me. Or do you mean violent tendencies attributed to video games (or alternately video game contributions to violent tendencies).

No offense, scratch that, I don't give a f'uck whether you're offended or not, get a clue. You're just another academic trying to give people a loop hole to jump through to justify behavior. Why not do something of value. Maybe "Personal Responsibility and You: What happens when we stop blaming pop culture and look at root causes." Nah, that might require some f'ucking thought on your part. Bob knows that's unlikely.

Moe, all technology is, by virtue of its existence, directly responsible for the speeding up of processes and therefore reflexes. The world moves at a certain pace and we all develop to keep up with it. This includes emotional and knee-jerk reactions. It's not the video game that made anyone do it, it's more complex than that.
Violence is not an illness that afflicts only the insane. It needs to be looked at like a disease, in all its shades and from all possible roots and outcomes, and without moral judgement of its study. Much like how people that have blackouts can be having a psychotic episode, experiencing severe emotional distress, or have a brain tumor, and studying blackouts doesn't mean you agree with psychotic behavior or think it's excusable.

I'd say tetris is a really good control group, or columns from Sega Genesis.

As to violent I'd pick any of these:

Manhunt 2
Counter-Strike
Any Doom or anything like that
GTA
Super Smash Brothers Melee
An old school Mortal Kombat
Halo
Lemmings (nuking 100lemmings? that's evil, and no one will see it coming!)

Basically anything where you're killing people and it's either funny, or can really **** you off if you don't kill them should work.

Yeah, so it was manhunt 2. That is by far the most violent game. Its banned in a few states.

Actually, I'm going into forensic psychology (the study of psychology applied to law and legal systems). Anyways, I have been an avid gamer for a long time. I don't want the results to suggest that video games cause ANYTHING. However, if the data show it, then the data show it. If there is in fact a causal relationship, I'd rather it be shown, and therefore studied, than have it denied because people think I'm trying to find "a loop hole." Relationships exist in nature, and scientists experiment to expose them.

Anyways, the actual study will be studying if video game exposure can cause increased agression, or at least increased aggression when self-reported by a subject (still have to work out a scale of aggression). Not really biased in either way, though there is a very substantial body of evidence showing that video games can cause increased short term direct aggressiveness, and longer term indirect aggressiveness. So, as much as I hate it, there appears to be some sort of link. We can never say 100% that there is a link (nothing can ever be 100% proven), but its looking like it exists. Sorry you don't want to believe it, and feel that my research is threatening, but I'm not really trying to say that they cause violence. Just increased aggression. Aggression normally feeds into violence (hard to have a brutal mass murder without any form of aggression). A person is still accountable for what they did, no one will get them out of the legal system for playing video games. There is a link between exercise and aggression, but no one gets out of prison by saying "well i just got done exercising so..." They'd be laughed out of courts. This would be along those same lines.

Edited, Mon Nov 1 11:36:45 2004 by scubamage

Longshot in as much as its a much more simple thing to study than what I'd originally been looking at (learned helplessness in classrooms... pain in the *** because I'd have to get a bunch of paperwork filled out to work with school children). With this all i have to do is have some poeple play video games, then respond in either a role play situation, or else fill out some questionaires. Might test some other ways.

I'm just glad I don't have to fill out a 500 page HSIRB proposal to work with kids.

One, your control group shouldn't play ANY games. Your whole thesis (whatever it might be) can be corrupted by the fact that that people who play non-violent video games may show less proclivity to violence than people who don't play video games at all. (They don't, by the way, again this research has been done about a million times).

I hope and pray this is work for an undergraduate course you're doing, or better yet, high school, because if it's graduate work you're wasting an opportunity to research something meaningfull that will help you get a job later on.

Anyway, read:

Anderson & Bushman in Psychological Science 12

Anderson & Dill in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78

Cooper & Mackie in Journal of Applied Social Psychology 16

Graybill, Strawniak, Hunter, and O’Leary in Psychology: A Quarterly Journal of Human Behavior 24

Or any of the other 100000 papers written on the subject, copy their methodology and call it a day.

And thanks for the suggestion to not repeat the research. However, if you'd be so kind as to look up the term "replication," you'd see that no fact can ever be proven.


If you'd be so kind as to look up the term "redundant" you'd see that repeating the same research that's been repeated 100 times is pointless.


Literal or conceptual replication are therefore valid areas to be experimented with.


Only if you find a flaw with previous research and have reason to beleive your results will be diffrent. What you're doing is the equivilent of a Physics student replicating one of Newton's experiments.


Yes, this is undergraduate, however I'm hoping that it can lead into an honors project, and from there into a graduate study.


Well, thank god for that. Hopefully sometime in the next decade you'll come up with an original research subject that will be of some value to anyone at all.

Good luck.

You can't mix non emersive non violent games with emersive violent games. If you use Tetris as a non violent game you'd have to use something like "Street Fighter 1" for the violent game. If you use GTA for the violent game you'd have to use something like Myst for the non vioent game.

Otherwise you might as well have the non violent people play monopoly and the violent people box.

Relationships exist in nature, and scientists experiment to expose them.

True enough. Though it should also be pointed out that relationships exist in the minds of scientists and a sh’it load of grant money is spent on half baked schemes to prove an egotist’s point.

though there is a very substantial body of evidence showing that video games can cause increased short term direct aggressiveness, and longer term indirect aggressiveness.

And we come to it. The fundamental disconnect is that I, and many others, don’t buy this logic. Aggressiveness is there regardless of whether a video game is involved or not. The animal simply uses stimuli as an excuse to act in a certain way. We as a species are just looking for an excuse to shuffle ourselves loose the chains of “civilized society”. To suggest that video games or music or television cause aggressiveness is to ignore that.

We can never say 100% that there is a link (nothing can ever be 100% proven), but its looking like it exists

So, by that rationale, I can expect there to also be studies regarding the link between breathing, eating, drinking, etc. and aggressiveness? Accusing me of being obtuse with the analogy is not too far off, but if we apply a modicum of common sense (who’da thunk, right?) the point is still valid.

And Flea,
You can't raise boys by telling them that manhood is something that has to be proven and not grown into and not expect that they'll feel overwhelming pressure to prove it

You assume it’s a bad thing for a male to feel the need to prove his manhood at some point. The problem lies not in the need to prove manhood, but the flawed image of manhood that is relayed to young men by fathers, or the lack there of. Proving your manhood is essential, but manhood is not proved by acts of violence, it is proved by acts of honor, courage and loyalty.

People (even violent ones) are not disposable, they have family and loved ones that want to see them helped, and although this is not possible for most, it may be for some.

Evidently in some cases this is not all together true. Were it, boys would learn what it means to be a Man from a Man, rather than their televisions, pop songs and video games. The problem is not the technology, rather the break down of responsibility in a cyclical manner. And to those who would pose the “what about single mothers” question, I would say a single mother has the responsibility to find an appropriate male role model for her son. Raising a child is tough. If you’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to do it right, don’t complain when we fry your kid. : )