The American River Current

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    Brad C.Dec 10, 2014 at 12:04 am

    No studies show a causal link to violence, however, there is correlational evidence that exposure to violent video games has other, subtle side effects. For example, if players don’t critically examine the underlying ideology of games, they may internalize it as part of a greater culture of misogyny, and *phobia. You can see this bear out right now in the news about #gamergate, and the continued harassment of women in gaming. The video games aren’t directly causing the problem, but they are reinforcing negative messages in society–a group conformity problem you can see in the Stanford Prison experiment, and an observational learning problem demonstrated in Bandera’s Bobo Doll experiments. Another example is when people become desensitized and start to demonstrate inappropriate reactions to situations they would otherwise be aversive to. This can be a problem, because aversive disgust can lead to the moral dilemmas that cause people to question underlying behavior and motives.

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Violent behavior is no fault of gamers: I play violent games, and I’m no criminal