Researchers found video games DO NOT cause violent acts

NEW YORK,USA: Researchers at the University of York have found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent in a report published on the 16 January 2018.

3,000 participants were tested in a series of experiments that demonstrated concepts within video games do not "prime" players to behave in a certain way and that the increasing realism of violent video games does not necessarily increase aggression in players.

The idea of players being "primed towards violence" is built on the idea that violence in video games would lead to the ease of violent acts being done in real life, which is not the case as the study has shown.

The Researchers at the University of York increased the number of participants in experiments, compared to studies that had been done before it, and compared different types of gaming realism to explore whether more conclusive evidence could be found.

In another study, participants were asked to play a game where they had a choice to be a car avoiding collisions with trucks or a mouse avoiding being caught by a cat. After the game, the players were shown various images, such as a bus or a dog, and asked to label them as either a vehicle or an animal.

Dr David Zendle, from the University's Department of Computer Science, said "If players are 'primed' through immersing themselves in the concepts of the game, they should be able to categorise the objects associated with this game more quickly in the real world once the game had concluded.

"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."

He also continued by saying " We found that the priming of violent concepts, as measured by how many violent concepts appeared in the word fragment completion task, was not detectable. There was no difference in priming between the game that employed 'ragdoll physics' and the game that didn't, as well as no significant difference between the games that used 'real' and 'unreal' solider tactics.