Virtual Psychopaths
by Kris Olsson
The Courier Mail, Brisbane (Page 17)
4 May 2000
US researchers say they have concrete evidence that violent interactive video games increase aggression in the young and cause long-term psychological damage, Kris Olsson reports
Let's call him Johnno. He is, essentially, just a kid; his limbs still growing and adolescent skin showing no signs of the facial hair that makes a boy a man. Not popular at school. A loner, but the kind of loner who attracts one or two other loners to hang about with, to eat his lunch with, to play the kind of bloody video games that reinforces their view of the world bleak, punitive, violent.
That's certainly the view he gets at home. Johnno's unemployed step-father regularly expresses his frustration and anger by hurling his dinner plate at his mother or beating him and his brothers senseless for "insolence". He's always hurting somewhere. He'd never tell, though.
How does he assert himself in such a world? In the video games he plays, the power and vengeance he dearly wants are easily procured with guns and knives and total nonchalance.
He plays them for hours, exacting revenge and meting out punishment and feeling satisfyingly hostile, bristling with aggression and, for once, in control. Next time one of those nerds at school insults him he could just pull out his Dad's semi-automatic.
Johnno could be living next door to you. In other places and times, he might go by other names: Dylan Klebold, Martin Bryant.
Every year, a Johnno character carves out a special place for himself by taking vengeance for his anger, his alienation, his hurt and killing 10, 20, 30 people with the kind of focus and joy he's only ever felt behind the controls of his video or computer games.
And the world is left wondering what went wrong.
Increasingly, the finger of blame has been pointed at violent videos and those suspicions were confirmed last week by United States researchers whose definitive study of the effects of violent video games like Quake and Doom and Mortal Kombat has shown they can, in fact, make children more aggressive.
The research, which comes hard on the heels of the anniversaries of two shocking massacres - the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado which claimed 15 lives and those at Port Arthur which claimed 31 - showed that violent interactive video games were far more harmful than violence on television or in films because they required the player to "identify with the aggressor".
It showed that "aggressive behaviour, hostile thoughts and irrationality rose steeply in males and females after playing violent games", and that young men who were already prone to aggression may be "especially vulnerable to the aggression-enhancing effects of repeated exposure to violent games".
"In a sense they provide a complete learning environment for aggression," said Professor Karen Dill a psychologist who co-authored the study. "These results are very, very worrying".
The findings have come as no surprise to Australian researchers whose concerns over the effects of media violence on children have prompted numerous research projects and pleas to parents to monitor their children's exposure to it.
But they urge caution over the US findings, saying various factors determine a child's levels of aggression and that video games alone will not produce mass murderers.
Glenn Cupit, a senior lecturer in child development at the University of South Australia, says it's been well established by "thousands of studies" that exposure to media violence increases the probability of violent behaviour in children, decreases their sensitivity to injuries to other people and increases their anxiety about the world they live in.
But, he says, "not very child is going to end up 'violent' from watching violent videos or playing violent video games. Every child is an individual case. You'd expect, for instance, that when a child is in a stable family relationship with positive values around that the influence of the media will be moderated."
"But if they have other influences in their lives that accentuate violence, it's more likely to have a strong effect," he says.
He cites among those influences a disrupted family, no supportive peer group and violence in the home, and says these things combined with aggressive games and disturbing media images can lower a child's inhibitions about violence and make it more of an option, something "the child is prepared to consider because they've played it out".
In Cupit's mind there is no debate. He says the research has been unanimous since the 1980's that media violence has "a very significant effect" on children and young adults".
"It's very complex, but the effects are basically an increased likelihood of violence, an increased fear of the world they live in and a decreased sense of compassion," he says.
But he emphasises that videos and games cannot be seen in isolation and that the real question posed now is how effective parental intervention can be in moderating those effects.
"I think these finding s are consistent with all we know about the way we raise our kids," Cupit says. "It asks questions about the limits and requirements of parenting.
"This doesn't let legislators and the media industry off the hook. We need to look hard at the industry. But parents need to take some responsibility. The probability is that something is missing in these kid's lives".
Julie Duck, lecturer in psychology at the University of Queensland, agrees there is often a "complex cycle of violence" in the lives of children who are severely affected by violent interactive games.
"You often find there's other violence in their backgrounds which supports the use of violent solutions to problems," she says.
"But they're right. Playing interactive games means you are actually involved in the violence, you're perpetrating it. And we know that aggressive stimuli of all sorts will prime or activate aggressive thoughts."
Duck also believes, however, that the * * of interactive images are mitigated by the "unrealistic and over-the-top" nature of the figures and scenes depicted in them.
"They're often so unrealistic, couched in fantasy rather than reality," she says. "I think the more realistic violence of television is more of a link. In interviews with children, they are quite definite about things that are made up. They draw the distinction."
Duck believes violence will always be represented in literature and film because "it's part of being a human being" but wants more education about alternative ways to solve conflict.
Like Cupit, she believes parental mediation can make a big difference but this is limited to inside the home.
Melbourne clinical psychologist Les Poseha is similarly worried about the general nature of the US findings, and suggests that counsellors working in the area of domestic violence would say violence happens in "a lot of homes without computers."
"Let's not over emphasize this because it's a "definitive" study," he says. "You cant' generalise day to day human behavior. What this does is highlight changes in our culture that we ignore at our peril, things like technological change, changes in work modes and who is employed and who isn't"
"We need to look at all sources of violence."
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