Post by leunas on Sept 14, 2006 20:26:12 GMT -5
Our first reaction when reading about yet another games-induce-violence study is to discount it utterly, but a discussion happening over on GamesFirst right now suggests that we do the opposite, and mine these studies for their true implications.
A man name Garrett wrote in to GF's coverage of a study claiming that playing video games causes numbness to violent acts, and among many other viable points, drew our attention to the following:
[...] In all five studies, the researchers took pains to note that the likelihood of aggressive behavior was inevitably related to parenting variables rather than the amount of game play. Murphy and Mitchell also noted that game play typically lead to more active family time because it tended to cut into television viewing, a finding I have also found in my own statistically-based work (Williams, 2004)."
(Page 6 of netfiles.uiuc.edu/dcwill/www/Williams.pdf)
Shocking indeed. If you spent less time looking for researchers' heads to hunt and more time getting to understand what the results of that research mean, you might find that science is more on the side of us gamers than you believe.
www.gamesfirst.com/index.php?id=1408