The Virtual Scapegoat: is Violence in Video Games Really Detrimental to Society?

Several of today’s popular games have out-performed top movie releases – the fastest selling video game in history, Halo 3, grossed over $300 million in sales in its first week alone – out-earning any movie release that same year and making it “one of the most successful entertainment properties in history”.

As video games become an increasingly large part of the entertainment industry it is only natural that they will receive increased scrutiny from the general public, just as the music industry did when it first came to dominate popular culture. The game genre that receives the most direct scrutiny is that which provide players the chance to play out their fantasies of violence in a virtual world. These games have long been demonized and blamed for playing a major role in several tragedies, such as the Columbine shootings, where the killers played violent games regularly.

But is there really a scientific basis for this scrutiny? Is it possible that we are enacting laws and creating panic among worried parents without any scientific evidence of an actual correlation between video games and violent behaviors and actions? There are several different perspectives that need to be taken into consideration before anyone can confirm the violent video game scrutinizers’ hypothesis that “video games cause violence in the real world”: the physiological perspective which is solely based on the body and brain’s natural responses, the psychological perspective which examines factors including priming for aggression as well as possible desensitization, and the social perspective, which will determine whether or not playing violent video games leads to withdrawal from social activities as well as increased aggressiveness towards peers.

I intend to present evidence that rejects the aforementioned hypothesis, and will show that within each of the given perspectives, there are many incorrect or unresolved issues that need to be attended to before the hypothesis can come anywhere close to being acceptable.

Physiological Response

The first area that needs to be examined is how the body’s natural responses give us an indication to whether or not violent video games are affecting the body in a similar way to how it would react in a real-life violent situation. This is important because if the needed response to the games is not present, or it differs extremely from an actual violent situation, then the hypothesis that “violent video games causes violence in the real world” cannot be true.

The most basic body responses – heart rate and galvanic skin response – do show increased activity levels while playing a violent video game, just as they would in a real-life violent situation (Carnagey). This comes as no surprise – these factors can typically be expected to increase in activity when something this graphic is viewed. Interestingly, Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran has shown that even when a person sees his or her mother it elicits a significant galvanic skin response, so it really isn’t a stretch to believe that galvanic skin response as well as heart rate would be affected by violent video games if they are affected by something as commonplace as one’s mother.