![]() Afterward, the team took various measures of arousal, both physical and psychological. In one recent study, Christopher Barlett, a psychologist at Iowa State University, led a research team that had 47 undergraduates play “Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance” for 15 minutes. Lab experiments confirm what any gamer knows in his gut: playing games like “Call of Duty,” “Killzone 3” or “Battlefield 3” stirs the blood. The research falls into three categories: short-term laboratory experiments longer-term studies, often based in schools and correlation studies - between playing time and aggression, for instance, or between video game sales and trends in violent crime. “We are left to glean what we can from the data and research on video game use that we have.” Ward, an economist at the University of Texas, Arlington. ![]() “I don’t know that a psychological study can ever answer that question definitively,” said Michael R. (Such calculated rampages are too rare to study in any rigorous way, researchers agree.) Yet it is not at all clear whether, over longer periods, such a habit increases the likelihood that a person will commit a violent crime, like murder, rape, or assault, much less a Newtown-like massacre. Moreover, youngsters who develop a gaming habit can become slightly more aggressive - as measured by clashes with peers, for instance - at least over a period of a year or two. Playing the games can and does stir hostile urges and mildly aggressive behavior in the short term. Girls play at lower rates and are significantly less likely to play violent games.Ī burst of new research has begun to clarify what can and cannot be said about the effects of violent gaming. The issue is especially relevant today, because the games are more realistic and bloodier than ever, and because most American boys play them at some point. Social scientists have been studying and debating the effects of media violence on behavior since the 1950s, and video games in particular since the 1980s. It was as if all that exposure to computerized violence gave them the idea to go on a rampage - or at least fueled their urges. The young men who opened fire at Columbine High School, at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and in other massacres had this in common: they were video gamers who seemed to be acting out some dark digital fantasy.
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