Murder

Not necessarily but the possibility remains. Until these guys start shooting at people, they were not criminals, mostly. They may have bent the law here and there but probably no more than you do when you drive to work or file a tax return. As it has been mentioned frequently, criminals will (probably) always have access to weapons (a necessary assumption for some arguments) but they never go on shooting sprees unless they are cornered after a bad holdup attempt or something. It's the so-called good guys that we need to worry about.

As far as violent games go, it is an interesting thing to think about, though I'm not speaking of video games. Baseball is an interesting game but it's not at all violent. One might even say it's slow. Basketball is fast but also not violent. Then there's football, soccer and rugby. They sometimes can be violent. Very violent, in fact. I think sometimes players even get injured but usually the fans do their fighting outside of the stadium. So, yes, violent sports can inspire violence, at least on the scene. I doubt it carries over into the living room. There's too much left out when you see it on television.

The news, however, is just the opposite. Again, there's a lot left out but typically only the violent parts will be shown and because there's not so much all the time, you will be shown the same snippet over and over again, just as you would if some woman's skirt fell off and captured on film. It will be shown over and over.

Personally, it seems a little odd that grown men should enjoy watching other men play games. When I was little, we watched the Friday night fights and professional wrestling. The fights were real but the wrestling was an act (I found out later), so neither was a game. But you know, I used to get in fights all the time when I was little and wrestle. You don't suppose....
 
Studies have shown that Biblical passages make people aggressive. They use the same (as suspect methodology) as the video studies.

I propose we ban religion or have to fill out a 4473 ish form to worship.

Anyone get the point?

Also, wrestling is fake? Wow - :eek:
 
Sounds like you've been reading David Grossman's Stop Teaching Our Children to Kill. Grossman argues that the media desensitize people to killing. In older films, cowboys did kill, but most of the time were such terrific shots that they disarmed the other fellow by shooting the gun out of their hand. All cowboys were doctors too and after examining a wounded man would proclaim, "He'll be fine." :D In a lot of those movies, the bad guys were rounded up and taken alive. So there was violence, but much less than today's films.

Anyway, he adds that in the old days, parents or teachers would correct the child if (s)he injured their playmates. This, he argues, is missing today especially with video games that encourages body count.
 
Who, me? Never heard of the guy.

However, I do believe movies have become more violent. Argue the point if you want. I may have already mentioned this in this thread, too. It's like violence and gore increases by steps. A certain movie comes along that has a comparitively high level of violence, then everyone else ratches up their productions with the same level. Then another one has even higher levers.

Take the difference between The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan and note the difference in the gore.

The old cowboy movies and serials had more action and less violence and probably more horses. Some of the serials had fistfights every ten minutes. They were almost cartoonish in that those fighting it out might not even lose their hat (Everyone wore hats then).

Lots of other things have changed in the movies, too. Comic books have been accused in the past of being bad influences on children, too. Who knows? Maybe they were.
 
A short article in Scientific American a few years ago explained the vicarious nature of spectator sports. For example, the areas of the brain most active while watching a football game are the same as playing the game. I assume there is some carryover to video games both violent and non-violent.

The article further stated that similar pleasure is derived from both playing sports and observing sports. Watch the reaction of spectators at a football game and it seems that they are "in the game" as much as the players.

Behavioral scientist Konrad Lorenz in On Aggression, stated that symbolic aggression exists in lieu of actual aggression as an outlet for aggressive nature. Video games and rough and tumble football are examples of symbolic aggression.
 
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Oh, dear - this is old stuff. I would repeat, yet again, the acutal link of games to real violence is NOT accepted as a major causal agent by all in the field.
 
IMO I personally think it has something to do with child discipline. I remember as a kid playing violent video gams and watching the same kind of movies but I also remember my dad's belt for when it got out of hand too.
 
As was said on an old Simpsons episode on just this topic....


Shrink: "There used to be these things called The Crusades...thousands of people were killed!"

Talking Head: "Fascinating!"
 
I recall a front page news analysis story in the New York Times in the Fall of 1993 which acknowledged that far more than the easily availability of guns in the crime problem was the high rate of illegtimacy, in a recent column entitled "The Lesson the Educators didn't Learn" George F. Will said the high rate of illegitimacy produces " a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males".
 
I grew up on video games and still play them myself. I've seen all the various arguments made about them teaching children to kill and being the root of all evil in the world. The funny thing is none of those claims ever pan out. One of the best and yet most overlooked statistics from the DOJ showed that violent crime among youths has been on a steady decrease since the 1950's. We always here about these spikes in violent crime every time a tragedy like Aurora comes around, but they don't actually exist. Millions of children, teenagers, and adults across the globe expose themselves to media that contains violence every day, and yet only a miniscule percentage of them actually commit violent crimes.

I'm sure that a very large percentage of those violent offenders also eat breakfast cereal in the morning, and therefore breakfast cereal must be contributing to violent behavior. We need some new laws restricting the sale of breakfast cereal to children less they become violent murders. :rolleyes:
 
We have thousands of Veterans who have seen some pretty severe violence and killing. The overwhelming majority fit back into society. If being desensitized to violence was a trigger then the blood ought to be running in the streets. We have lots of folks who suffer from mental health problems and are on medication and don't go around killing people. It seems to me this is the norm rather than the exception. Yet the media and others have created this is the norm instead of the exception and if you tell it that way long enough everybody will beleive it is the norm to use for their own purposes.
 
I recall a front page news analysis story in the New York Times in the Fall of 1993 which acknowledged that far more than the easily availability of guns in the crime problem was the high rate of illegtimacy, in a recent column entitled "The Lesson the Educators didn't Learn" George F. Will said the high rate of illegitimacy produces " a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males".
Click to expand...

The subject of that NY Times article is used in many (if not all) Psych 101 classes, now. Key point: Is it really that they're illegitimate? Or is it the environment said children generally grow up in, and the violence they're exposed to?
Or, most importantly, is it just a logical fallacy - a clustering illusion? (The "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy")

With a little research, most people declare it to be a clustering illusion. The paper is generally considered "junk science" ...even in Psych 101. ;)
 
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