Inspired by a plotline from the 2003 movie Runaway Jury, University of Southern California researcher Kwan Min Lee, and associates, conducted research under the title “Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People’s Judgments of Violent Crimes?”
The inspiring scene from Runaway Jury involved “the lawyer for a defendant accused of committing a violent shooting tried to have a hardcore video game player selected as a member of the jury.” The lawyer carried the belief that a hardcore gamer would judge the shooter less negatively because of “similar, though virtual,” experiences.
52 undergrads were involved in the study—who had never played the game used in the experiment (True Crime)—and were randomly assigned to either a game-playing group or a control group. The game-playing group was tasked with playing True Crime for 2 hours.
Both groups were then asked to read “two real-life crime cases committed by police officers and two by generic criminals,” and then to answer a series of questions in which they judged the crime and the criminal. It was reported that, “people who played the violent game had more favorable judgment of the crimes and perpetrators than people who did not play the violent game in terms of their negative judgment of the perpetrators.”
A few other results:
• … participants who played the role of a violent police officer in the video game judged real life police officers who committed crimes to be less negative than generic criminals who committed crimes of similar severity.
• Participants who played the role of a violent police officer in the video game judged crimes that were committed by police officers in real life to be less unjustified than comparable crimes by generic criminals, whereas participants who did not play the game had similar judgment of the unjustifiedness of the crimes committed by police officers.
• Participants who played the role of a violent police officer in the video game also meted out less jail sentence to real life police officers who committed crimes than generic criminals who committed crimes of similar severity.
• Within the game-playing group, there were significant differences of the judgment of crimes committed by police officers and generic criminals in terms of the negative evaluation of the perpetrator, the unjustifiedness of crime, and the sentence meted out.
The researchers concluded that “that even a few hours of game playing as a particular game character can significantly influence one’s attitude towards real-life criminal behaviors conducted by an individual similar to the game character.”
Additionally, the researchers opined that their findings add “empirical support to the limited research on the desensitization of playing violent games and the General Aggression Model.”
It was also theorized that perhaps the jury selection process should take into account both real and virtual experiences as it was shown that attitudes towards real criminals can be influenced while taking on a similar role in a videogame.
Thanks Wai Yen Tang!
How is empathizing with the police after playing as them DEsensitization? The study needs to differentiate or account for multiple possible reasons players would side more with the sort of people they’ve played as.
Wouldn’t we see the same result if the gaming as a certain populace caused an increase in acceptance of crimes OR an increase in compassion toward those who commit them?
On an unrelated note, the same study needs to be run (more scientifically) using non-authority figures. Milgram’s obedience studies (and to a lesser extent, others’ follow-ups) suggest that we’re inclined to trust or obey people we perceive as authorities. For all we know, this effect might not have occured if the subjects played as just any average citizen.
Additionally, the researchers opined that their findings add “empirical support to the limited research on the desensitization of playing violent games and the General Aggression Model.”
Just want to say that aggression is an emotion. Yes it can be expressed in other ways, but it’s true form is emotion.
"It’s better to be hated for who you are, then be loved for who you are not." – Montgomery Gentry
"Sucks that playing a game makes some people find real-life crime less despicable."
The study itself does not support that conclusion. As I understand it, it compared the opinions of people who played a game with those that didn’t. It did not compare the opinions of the same people before and after playing the game so there’s no evidence to support that any opinion change occurred let alone that playing a violent video game caused the change.
Andrew Eisen
Well that’s disappointing. If anything, cops that commit crimes deserve MORE punishment than a normal civilian equivalent. Sucks that playing a game makes some people find real-life crime less despicable.
-Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis-It is best to endure what you cannot change-
So let me get this straight… games help people to identify with real life people who are representative of the characters they’ve been playing. In what way is this a ‘bad thing’?
Look folks, part of the problem with our messed-up legal system is that too often jurors cannot identify with defendants. Our jails are filled to bursting with folks who have committed minor crimes and were jailed by folks who could not identify with their lifestyle. Society would be much better served if minor criminals were given lesser sentences so that they could change, rather than excessively long sentences that turn them into habitual criminals.
Well the next time when someone assalts you, tell the judge that it’s my fault and I’ill get sued.
-Lyrics from Eminem "Sing for the music"
And it is really fitting that we use quotes like that, because even Eminem and other Rap artists have also been attacked by people who used moral panic.
They say games can alter moods and talk to you, but can they load a gun for you and cock it too?
They didn’t even think to have the subjects play both sides and see the outcome of that?
Who the hell does these "studies"?
Pwnage of Empires
The title of the study is:
“Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People’s Judgments of Violent Crimes?”
You can’t answer that question simply by quantifying people’s judgments of violent crimes after playing a video game. You have to know what their attitudes were beforehand.
Andrew Eisen
Point 2 of yours is the whole point of the study, do you get that? They are hypothesizing that there is a link between violent game play and attitudes towards crime. They then devise an experiment that will help them support or not-support their hypothesis. Basically, the observed and reported difference between the control and the group that played the game IS the data. Whether the game playing actually caused the difference in opinion and views you’d need more tests and more data to determine.
Its like you’ve never heard of Scientific method.
I will agree with one thing, it would have been nice if the magnitude of the differences were reported and how they were judged. I HATE it when important pieces of info like that are left out of reports like this. But that is the journalist’s failing, not the scientist’s.
Just a few thoughts:
1. You don’t necessarily play as a bad cop in either True Crime game (although, good cop or bad cop, if the bad guys have guns, you’re free to shoot them, you’re free to break traffic laws all you want (you’re only penalized for running over pedestrians), and you can frisk anyone at any time). Were the participants instructed to play as a bad cop? Were their styles of play factored into the results?
2. Who’s to say playing the video game for two hours influenced their answers? Is there any evidence to suggest they would have answered differently having not played the game?
3. Just how large were these "significant differences" between the answers of the two groups?
Andrew Eisen
52 is a small sample and pure chance could have skewed the results.
Yep, because once again the people running the test believe that games are like drugs. Just have them shoot up with some True Crime for a couple hours for just one day and that’s all you need to test it’s effects on judgement. I’ve done experiments back in junior high that were more scientific and complex than these sad excuses for science.
This tests never prove anything because they’re always done with too small a group, over too short a test period, testing too few variables, and almost always with a bias against games to begin with.
53 people, 2 hours? They call that a study? You have got to be shitting me.
— Randi Tastix
You have a great point, and I think they could greatly improve psychological studies if they knew how to minimize the effect pre-event interference. They’d get better results if they discovered the "magic" time for people to wait prior to participating in the study.
I personally think that the study shows that people tend to be less punitive, aka nicer, after playing the violent game.
A better study would have included more forms of media and had the participants take a test both before and after experience with the media.
I also wonder how much time passed between playing the game and taking the test. It would be good to see a similar study where participants are split into numerous groups. Each group plays the game for two hours a day for a different number of days and tests are done by all groups each day until the end of the study. That would show if the results seen here actually last more than a few minutes/hours after playing.
I would suspect that such a study would see an effect only on the days where people played the game, but that there isn’t a significant lasting effect.
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Chris Kimberley
Good grief, you can’t cover science in one quick study unless you have millions in backing. It’s an incremental process where smaller discoveries and affirmations or contradictions warrant further research and experimentation, which can draw on prior work to be more comprehensive while remaining well controlled.
In the article on about the study (not the study itself because that’s apparently inaccessible) there’s one paragraph that really speaks to the nature of the experiment.
The authors offered a practical implication from this study in that the jury selection process should be mindful of people’s real life experiences as well as their media experiences as well. The authors wrote virtual, but I like to write in as media for a good reason. People who enjoyed violent criminal video games would be more lenient towards similar criminals. The same thing can be said about CSI, jury members might be convinced or demand evidence that’s similar to the show like DNA samples, blood splatter analysis, bullet analysis, etc. Even yet, how about other media like novels? Would this result in the same way?
This isn’t an attack on video games, it’s an experiment looking at the plausibility of the premise of some movie. It comes to an interesting conclusion that may warrant further research (aka funding) or may just be thrown into a pile of data that isn’t really used for anything.
So what they are saying is Free Speech media such as video games have the ability to shape our thoughts and feeling and give us ideas and inspiration whether positive or negative. Well no shit Sherlock BUT Freedom of Speech can’t be regulated, restricted or censored by the nanny-state because it can shape thoughts or feeling and give people ideas and inspirations. As this is a form of inpermissable though and mind control by the state.
As Thomas Jefferson said "It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
"No law means no law" – Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black on the First Amendment
Well to be fair the more media you cover, the more variables you introduce to your results. There are usually good reasons why experiments are limited in what subjects they study.
More to the point, researchers do research the effect violent films have on behaviour and thoughts. A quick search on Google Scholar yielded these two.
http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/abstracts/1995-1999/97A.pdf
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/2/306
Im sure there have been numerous other similar studies conducted.
Now they should do the same for movies and books and see if the effect is the same.
If someone were to read a book or watch a movie in which a police officer commits a crime and the reader/viewer is supposed to sympathize with the officer, would the results be the same?
I really wish these researchers would do their due diligence and research all media together.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
Oklahoma Game Development
Rusty Outlook
Random Tower
My Patreon
“that even a few hours of game playing as a particular game character can significantly influence one’s attitude towards real-life criminal behaviors conducted by an individual similar to the game character.”
Can I has facepalm tiem nao?
———————————————————— My DeviantArt Page (aka DeviantCensorship): http://www.darkknightstrikes.deviantart.com
Important question: Did they do these surveys directly after the gaming experience? Because I’d make people play a game for 1 hour a day for 5 days straight, then conduct any tests a month later. I mean, if you want to argue permanent effects, why test the shorterm influence?
Also, desensitization? How? When did sympathy for the devil become desensitization?