‘Video games don’t make you violent’
Scientists have found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent. In a series of experiments, with more than 3,000 participants, the researchers demonstrated that video game concepts do not ‘prime’ players to behave in certain ways and that increasing the realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in game players.
The dominant model of learning in games is built on the idea that exposing players to concepts, such as violence in a game, makes those concepts easier to use in ‘real life’.
This is known as ‘priming’, and is thought to lead to changes in behaviour. The researchers from the University of York in the UK expanded the number of participants in experiments, compared to studies that had gone before it.
In a separate, but connected study, the researchers investigated whether realism influenced the aggression of game players. Research in the past has suggested that the greater the realism of the game the more primed players are by violent concepts, leading to antisocial effects in the real world.
They compared the results of this experiment with another test of game realism, where a single bespoke war game was modified to form two different games. In one of these games, enemy characters used realistic soldier behaviours, whilst in the other game they did not employ realistic soldier behaviour.
“The findings suggest that there is no link between these kinds of realism in games and the kind of effects that video games are commonly thought to have on their players,” Zendle said.