It looks like our parents were wrong! Video games have little to no link to violent behavior according to York University.
York University has released a study that goes against what we were told as kids wanting to play grown-up games. According to this study, there is no connection between the violence in the game and violence in the player.
In the study, which used over 3000 people, players were to play either as a car avoiding collision or a mouse avoiding a cat. After playing the game the subjects were given images -dogs, trucks, cars, – and told to sort them into animals, or vehicles.
If the games had influenced the subjects they should have reacted quicker to their respective group from their game. I.E. the players of the mouse game would sort animals quicker. This, however, was not the case.
Dr. Zendle said:
‘Across the two games we didn’t find this to be the case. Participants who played a car-themed game were no quicker at categorising vehicle images, and indeed in some cases their reaction time was significantly slower.’
The evidence just wasn’t there, in fact, some of it was against the study. To read the full study you can download the pdf here.
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So what does this mean? Well, video games are not having the feared impact we all thought they were. They do not prime subject to have faster reaction times or behavioral changes. But kids and adults alike are still violent, so what is it? what is making people so violent? Or rather, what or who are we going to blame next?
