Effects of Violent Gaming on Other Stuff
I was out at a bar the other night when I got into the whole “so what do you do” conversation with a friend’s boyfriend. I explained that I study media and culture, including video games, and he asked what my take is on video game violence. I gave him the usual run-down—effects may be there and very small, but media violence research too broadly operationalizes “aggression,” and so on.
He admitted that the question of whether media violence causes real violence doesn’t interest him, though: he’s more interested in desensitization to media violence, say, on the news. More specifically, does playing “war” video games (e.g., Call of Duty, or even our military’s own promotional game America’s Army) make a person less sensitive to our own soldiers dying overseas, and therefore more likely to support foreign wars?
I told him that I hope someone does this study because I would like to read it.
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