Why violent video games actually decrease violence 

I am addicted to gta v, I love killing people in hilarious ways. But guess what? I am never going to murder anyone. I despise murderers in reality.

Increase violence, reduced empathy and reduce helping behaviour? This is what happened to me after 4years working customer service. Not video games although chance the 'increase violence' to 'quicker to anger' (always verbal never physical).

If you take a closer look, first person shooters aren't even focused on the killing. They're focused on the shooting. I've never felt like I was killing someone while playing a first person shooter. It feels less violent than paint ball.

The decrease in crime rates is due to winter, and the rise in games sales in December is due to Christmas. But otherwise great vid!

As a good friend of mine once said: "Only the guy who was already crazy will go out and do what he saw in a video game/movie." Parents are the ones who need to be held accountable for violent teens and adults. If you let them grow up as a psychopath, well, who else was going to notice they had a problem? Once they commit a crime it's too late to just sit them down and correct their behavior.

No violent games don't make people violent, lag does tho.

Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. I was on holidays. A couple of changes. Firstly, I am switching to Sunday instead of Thursday to upload videos. Also, expect the videos to come out less frequently (once a fortnight but depending on the length of my videos, it might be twice a fortnight). Lastly, I’ll be introducing a couple of other series to this channel so keep an eye out for those. Apart from “What you don’t see”, another series will be about psychology studies/concepts that I think everyone should know because they are practical/ particularly helpful. This video was heavily sourced from slatestarcodex.com, in particular these two articles. slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/22/social-psychology-is-a-flamethrower/ slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/streetlight-psychology/ I think this blogger’s work is great so I highly recommend it to all my fellow viewers. Thanks for staying with me through the hiatus and I hope you enjoy my future videos.

Think about it this way. A teen male gets addicted to violent video games when he is 12 and with little exercise his body produces less testosterone and he becomes a skinny ass kid and even when hes way past 25 hes scared to pick fights, scared of needles and faints at the sight of blood. Yea, thats my story of how violent video games made me a pansy.

I fully believe that violent video games don't cause violence but the 0.03% crime drop is just way too insignificant for evidence in my opinion.

Simple question: who are people more likely to be afraid of; a gang of nerds or a gang of street thugs? Nobody fears for their safety if they come across a large group of gamers/nerds/otaku. They simply don't have a long history of frequent acts of violence. There are cases of people exhibiting unusual violent behaviour but they are outliers, the exception not the rule. Usually if you read into those cases you'd find the person had a predispotion to being violent. If video games didn't exist they would have found something else to "express" themselves.

blaming violence games is like blaming your pen for failing the exam -ctto this is so tru i had to share it

I don't know mate when ever I played the SmackDown vs Raw series as a I kid, I didn't think twice about running out of my room to RKO my little sister.

If you actually look closer than just a passing glance at the 'violent videogames increase violent behavior' idea, it really falls apart. The entire argument rests upon a pretty sad foundation. It is based completely and entirely upon wordplay and trickery. It starts at the very beginning. 'Violent videogames'. How could a videogame be violent? Clearly, it simply can't be. For something to actually be violent, it has to hurt people through physical force. That's what violent means. It's just a shortcut to refer to fictional works which feature depictions of fictional violence between imaginary characters as 'violent'. But those presenting a claim that violent videogames are a problem rely implicitly upon the listener confusing this and expecting actual violence to be involved. The first question to answer is: What's bad about violence? It causes suffering. Does fictional violence cause suffering? No. So what negative trait of actual violence does fictional violence share which would make it sensible to treat them and speak of them similarly? None. Yet, almost all of the arguments against violent videogames (or movies, or books or poetry or paintings or comic books or radio plays or any other form of creative expression ever created) rests upon an implicit assumption the audience can be tricked into of overlooking this fact. So they automatically feel that because real violence is terrible, fictional violence must share SOME aspect of it that is bad. There is another aspect to it, though, beyond that first one. That first one is used in arguments that children should be kept away from violent media. "My little Jimmy killed someone!" and such. Relying on language tricks and the listener navigating the argument emotionally rather than with reason. The other aspect, the one that is more often studied by psychologists, is whether depictions of violence can lead to a lowering of inhibitions against violence. This sounds more promising. There is a tiny nugget that might suggest there is a mechanism for this to take place. Mirror neurons. When we see another person do something, mirror neurons cause a (much lower) pattern of neuronal activation in our brains similar to what is happening in their brains - its how we understand and predict others and is also instrumental in learning by example. But... there are a lot of caveats here. Mirror neurons work primarily with direct experience. Depictions on a screen are really very radically different from real life. (Children grasp this implicitly, adults simply seem to forget it or ignore it to support their own arguments.) Let's get around that though. Let's assume that tomorrow someone develops fully immersive VR with absolutely perfect fidelity, such that the input our perception gets is exactly identical to actual, real violence. There would still be a single difference - the player would know that it wasn't real. They would know that they donned a helmet or jacked a videogame console directly into their brainsteam. Is that single difference enough to actually affect how the players brain processes things? How could we possibly know? Well, we actually can know. We already have a situation where people experience totally immersive fictional situations, where their perceptions are made to mimic real situations - plays. When an actor in a play fires a real gun (loaded with blanks) at a real human being, who has 'blood' explode from their shirt and who falls to the ground, wailing in pain, the perceptive experience is very nearly perfect. Much better than any videogame (when you fire a gun in a videogame, your ears do not ring from the crack of the gunshot, the target is an animated character rendered with terribly low fidelity, rendered on a screen which makes them only a few inches tall and lacking all depth.. the extent to which "realistic" videogames fall short of reality is staggering when you actually THINK about it). The only difference is that they know they're in a play. They know they are a player. Is that enough? Does it prevent them from developing post traumatic stress disorder (the thing you should actually EXPECT if the player is processing things as if they have killed a real person)? Yes. Do they, after years of such performances, become markedly more inclined to real violence against real people? Nope. Look at the argument closely. And the language. When someone says "Little Jimmy shot a man in the head!" there is a lot of complex trickery involved. Jimmy actually only pressed a plastic button, while sitting safely on a couch. The button caused a fictional character to 'shoot' another animated fictional character. Fictional characters feel no pain. They can not suffer. They have no family to grieve them, no friends to miss them. They have no actual life which can be ended. So what is wrong about "killing" them? Nothing. Every single negative aspect to actual killing is absent. This makes it deceptive and disingenuous to even refer to it as "killing", really. But people putting forward such arguments rely completely upon the listener being tricked. They rely completely upon the listener simply assuming that fictional killing and real killing must have SOME similarities, especially when referred to as "realistic". If they used honest language, their arguments would sound as absurd as they actually are. Claiming that a videogame can control the behavior of a human being, child or adult, is very little different from claiming that the CIA can exert mind control through radio waves. It's just dressed up in tricky language which is sadly enough to dupe huge numbers of people.

Actually. All these people like the once from the school shooting in high school were suffering from things like mania. But media quickly drew the conclusion that it was the game's fault. And even with the shooting on a reporter which was caused by someone who also was mentally ill and had things like suicidial thoughts and mania to name a few. Media still jumped on the conclusion that it was the violent games and not the mentall illnes he had. Even though his room mates made it clear he never played any video game. People with common senses does not get effected by violent video games. The same way I did not get effected by Tom And Jerry a very violent cartoon.

I came to the exact same conclusion, there is evidence for both sides almost equally. When it comes down to it, I really believe that it is entirely dependent on the individual who is playing them. Younger people are probably more malleable and those of a lower intelligence and education.

I'm glad you finally uploaded a video! Keep up the good work.

I really enjoy your videos. Can't wait to see more.

I actually like your videos! I'll be waiting for more! :)

These are pretty great videos, nicely done :)

Bite, your videos are short, clear, convincing and very well illustrated. I love'm :D

Great vids, they're really interesting!

...but... what if the reason crime goes down when violent video games or movies are released is because there is simply less people to assault? Hmm... so then the reason people may think it actually goes up is because the criminals' deprivation to commit crimes during the "release period" causes a "boom" effect a while *after* the games have been released for a long time because people start spending more time outside again? People have made the argument that the sheer evidence that criminals play violent video games is enough evidence to link violent entertainment to violent behaviour but games/movies used as prime examples in these cases are all extremely popular. Games like CoD, GTA, and BF have been linked to the rise in crimes but in reality it's just a case of coincidence. Take a look at Vsauce's latest video "Math Magic" where he discusses in the beginning of the video how creepy and suspicious some coincidences can be. If you dig deep enough you will find coincidences in just about anything. "Oh that 14 year old boy raped and killed his 13 year old girlfriend? oh it must be the violent video games that kids are playing these days. See if you can find out if he consumed any sort of violent entertainment before the incident." "Sir, his mother reported she bought him GTA5 for Christmas and that he wouldn't do any other thing than play the game all day every day." "Oh I knew it! GTA5 is twisting the mind of young people. Good work team; that's a wrap". Sure there weren't any other factors involved that could've led to the incident such as bad parenting, physical/mental abuse, or the possibility of mental illness that'd be ridiculous right?. Later it was discovered through the friends of both kids that the girl had mild mental issues and was jealous of her boyfriend's previous girlfriends and was planning something big for him on their 1st month dating together. All of the sudden the boy's claim to be innocent made sense now. HE was being forced to have sex with her and he refused, so the girl snapped and physically attacked the boy. Fearing for his life the boy defended himself and killed her by accident. The boy pleaded not guilty but the ignorance and arrogance of the people in charge of the investigation ruled him guilty and sentenced him to death as well as campaign against violence in the media. Case is fictional but it shows the role that arrogance plays on these tests when not taking into account coincidence. In the end - at least for the most part - it's just a coincidence that criminals play violent video games. In a lot of real life cases the victim played the same games as the criminal. The studies that rule violence in entertainment as a link in the rise of crimes and don't take into consideration coincidences, are extremely flawed.

your channel is awesome dude!

Correlation is not causation.

Nice job, man. Really well done. Thanks you

At 1:46 the study that was mentioned, I was like, I play Tf2 and I'm always eager to help people, in real life the only time I attack is when they attack first.

One of the best channels I ever found !!

You do not have enough views or subs for how quality these videos are! Holy cow, we need to get you advertised

Awesome!!! Will stay tuned

This is an amazing idea. Keep going!!

If anyone bothered to read the graphs the spike in video game sales was due to the Christmas shopping season. And violent crimes drop in colder months. I wasn't convinced of causation.

Ooooh, now I get that! You know, you're right - I can't wait to see more of that series! Challenging my own opinions and biases will be good for me!

Past Bite Size Psych, that ending was a great descision

Welcome back

What's the theme music for this?? I checked out Huntsman but it didn't sound like the tune here was on their channel.

Subbed! You sound like you really know your stuff, mate.

59 triggered parents who won't stop at anything to show everyone that violent games are bad for you

Looking forward to more!

Oh sweet a schedule? I look forward to it!

Welcome back!

I have a better explanation: we're all a little violent, especially when we're angry or frustrated. Sometimes we just want to break something. Most of us prefer not to cause harm, and will intentionally seek outlets for this rage that do not involve hurting anyone. Violent games are that outlet. I feel like this conclusion is blindingly obvious, I don't see how it's so difficult for people to grasp this concept. It's like how people are utterly convinced that choosing to eat more food makes you fatter, and that the leading cause of obesity is choosing to eat a lot, which goes against mountains of readily-available evidence. The obvious conclusion is that getting fat (from other factors) makes you crave more food, but people adamantly refuse to believe that.

Nice new video!

Thanks for this video. I happen to be writing a piece on a similar subject and was researching this topic recently and this gave me some additional things to think about. I found roughly the same results as what you demonstrated in the video. The aggression increases and empathy decreases but the results are varied over the long term. I had come to the conclusion that there's simply not a lot of research to the long term effects and that more factors are still not being considered. Perhaps if we tried to study people who played violent video games for many hours per day over the span of a few years? One might also narrow down other factors to how they were like before they started playing a certain type of video game as well as their socioeconomic standing and how stable home life is. Then the control group would have to be people who played a certain type of video game many hours every day for a few years and then stopped and see if those short-term effects wear off after such long exposure. There's also a physical aspect to take into account. A few articles and studies I read showed a strong correlation to the physical health and loss of fitness to people who habitually play video games for extended periods of time. I never saw the next connection made in the articles but there have also been plenty of studies showing a correlation to physical and mental health as far as outlook on life, the world or depression in general. I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts.

Why do you not have more subs? rofl subbed

is the information shown in the video accurater??....where did you get it from??

this is great!

0:47 **"zero point three" ≠ 0.03%

oh my god this is going to be AMAZING! :O

The thumb nail was dust 2 on csgo, this game calms me down

Hey I'm curious about the kind of background you have that enables you to make these videos

Interesting. When I was 7 I watched my family play company of heroes. It did make me slightly more violent after that.

I play and have played "violent" and "non-violent" videogames for a long time. I do not feel any increase in violent behaviour. In fact, everytime i get mad enough to be agressive, i calm down quicker. Just why does everyone accept everything they see and keep moving forward without point? Thanks for these kind of videos

If i get angry i go to video games to calm down especially the violent ones cause it helps me get rid of that anger and when im angry i can be violent although i try to avoid it

If I was the king of a country, I would make these videos (together with the ones of "in a nutshell" the first TV channel and obligatory in education.

I just found a similar channel to Ted-Ed that's unique in its own way. Already loving it.

i started playing violent games when i was 2 i'm grossed out by murders and don't even come close to killing anyone

Oh nice! Another video here. :) Do you know, if there is there some sort of database of research papers which also show you quickly what people criticized about them? So that when you are looking for studies about a specific topic, you can instantly see what you can skip because they didn't take a certain detail into account? Don't know if this question was worded properly. :D

Violent video games also show how bad violence is

From my understanding of things, it seems that violent video games actually reduce violence and crime because they vent all their anger in those games and relief some tendencies. However, contrariwise, violent video games also decrease empathy and break mental ties with displaying concern for violence and other acts. For instance, I see a lot of even young children talk of killing and brutally murdering each other casually and I believe that it is because they are being introduced to these ideas and so much so that they are desensitized to what these acts actually are. Interestingly, I believe that this, in turn, can POSSIBLY make violence more common in some people who have broken sensitivity to unleashing those emotions and acting on their emotional desensities in real life.

In my experience, even after playing 4 hours of CoD, Halo and Fallout, I’ve never gotten aggressive.

I have a cousin who is way too much on his iPad and I tried letting him play outside but he refused to...

The only thing why video games or cartoons or anime don't increase violence because they are not real thing, we not connect with it, but when you watch movies or sport you feel the real person did in that movies or sports, so we more connected to them and we want to try it

This is probally a break through in helping younger kids get fun games! Thats exactly what I used it for atleast, but the results are coming in...

it lets you take out your anger in a non dangerous way

do you have a patreon

make. more. videos. PLEASE. (like for reals, make a Patreon or something to get support!)

Obsessed with Bite Sized Psych

A MAJOR question would be which 'violent' video games are being tested? Do you just assume that Grant Theft Auto has exactly the same effects as Halo, or Skyrim, or a game where you're piloting a vehicle? Is it different when it's historical/ realistic violence like a WW2 game as opposed to some animé game that is very unrealistic? Is it different if you're playing as the good guys vs bad guys?

This video was featured in my english class !

I want.... another one!

But correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation in these statistics

Violent video games draw the aggression of aggressive people in. They focus their view on fictional characters or objects instead of real life ones. Therefore, violent video games and violent media in general should be actively changing the target for aggression, rather than simply reducing aggression. However, it could also mean that violent media increases the level of hostility of society as a whole, but changes the target of that hostility based upon what is being shown in the media. This should be very similiar to the effect created by mainstream news media, which seems to affect how people feel about certain cultures, races, religions, and so on. Conversely, although people might focus their aggression more randomly by not watching violent media -- they may be less hostile overall. This should still indicate that behavior is affected by violence in media, but not the way mainstream psychology is and has been indicating for some time now. To add to this, it shows how vulnerable people are to misleading data.

I wonder how the numbers would compare with people who played sports...

Crime has done nothing but decrease over the last decade

In the end, we choose how we act on he streets. Nothing we did a couple hours ago will influence us to make violent decisions

Blame lag for having violence

I play pleenty of violent video games and have plenty empathy outside of them.

Actually violet video games made me more aware of dangerous situation. GTA 5 is very interesting because there's a situation where a armed robbery at a store you can shoot the armed robber while he's getting away.

A lot of insane murderers have been linked with video-games. I believe that the bigger reason for this is that these insane people are easier attracted to video-games. Sad games can probably make you depressed, but this is usually very short-term and not severe enough to be a decisive factor. Anyways, I think the bigger reason people think violent video-games cause violence is due to many of the people attracted to those games.

A thing that I have seen with people I meet and become friends with is I try to get them to play a violent game and they get into it but then in real life they are less violent because they see in those games what can happen and that it looks like I used to be into World War II saw how sad and gross it was and now I am a street freestyle BMX rider because people see the violence and then they think danm I dont want that to happen to me so they keep away from violence

Actually, all the criminals are playing their copy of CoD when sales hike

So basically people spending time playing video games don't have the time to commit crimes. Then when they get borded of the video game, they can finally put to the test their freshly learned aggressive behaviour.

To be honest games are stress relievers

heres my theory: after you spend an hour or two killing people in games, you kind of lose interest in doing that irl because why do you want to deal with the consequences if you can do that in a game

Nice job adding a 2 second intro with channel name. Also you haven't yet added the links at the end of the video. But since its only 1 hour since you uploaded the video I hope you are going to add them soon. Just a friendly advice from a fellow youtuber.

I love this video. I believe that video games DON'T cause violence but I also believe that we shouldn't be on the lookout for evidence that only confirm our belief (i.e confirmation bias)

I still remember the burning soldiers screaming im Verdun :(

Every video you make videos of is so counter intuitive

It would probably take years of playing violent video games before it would start changing real world behavior, if it even does. Even if it does cause violence, it clearly does not weight out to the already existing amount of violence elsewhere.

There’s more kids online playing games like GTA V and Call of duty than there is adults.

And here I am dying from a trip mine about to shoot up a daycare

i think some games with repetition can instill entitlement values into ones psyche. For example playing RPG games, raiding everyones house for stuff to help yourself. [felt it happening to me] I also think that some people are just violent already and they happen to play games. If all you do is play video games then i can see this being a problem but for i think people that have a balanced life will not see any detriment to their behavior and actually have an opposite effect like those stress relief toys.

See. Me, I'm a nosey person. I want to see how stuff works and how war is in real life. I was lead to Call Of Duty. It honestly makes sense for the "Violent Acts from games" but if you think about it. Doesn't it help us know how to handle a situation involving guns in real life?

Actually I think both are true. Of those who have problems with violence, to one it might be a substitute, to another it might be amplifying. Also: If either one was solely true, we would probably know so.

there would be a big spike in violence if video games were banned.

it's the scientific metod you try to prove you are wrong and only after being unable to disprove it accept it as fact how can something so simple so often be forgoten

I haven't even watched this yet but it's because it's a release and metal music is the same

Violent video games will be rehearsing behaviour options and reinforce violence as a behavioural option. . The example of comparing it with depression is not useful because one is a behavioural option and the other is a mental state. - you are not comparing like with like.

Play a FPS or grindy game 15 hours a day for a week and you are to knackered to think of violence, just a craving for sleep, sugar or caffeine.

No matter which side you take, we can all agree that some games increase violence... ...Mario Party.