Okay my point was too the last rant is that there where lots of contributing factors that caused the two boys to commit the crime they did.
Clearly the two boys where psychological unstable and to find the cause of what brought them to commit the act they did would be impossible now.
5.6 million copes of Call Of Duty: Black Ops where sold in North America in the first 24 hours of release. From what I'm aware there was no mass killing by gamer teenagers, or a rush of recruits to the military.
The nature to kill is innate in human as it is for all creatures. Fight or Flight.
However there are numerous ways in which psychology has tried to explain aggression. After studying this last year I actually have use for it again. Who knew?
One of these theories is the social learning theory, if we see other succeed doing an action, we are more likely to commit the action. This could be linked to video games as in most games the character acts aggressively and succeed in his quest, mission or task. The gamer may unconscious acknowledge this as a way to succeed and mimic the behaviour. There was evidence to support this, the week after a Major Boxing match in the US homicide increased dramatically. Although no direct conclusion can be made, this could be seen as proof.
Another study was done of children using a Bobo doll, this was conducted by Bandura et al. The children were either shown a video clip of someone acting aggressively to the doll. E.g. punching and kicking. Or someone playing nicely with the doll. They found the group of children shown the aggressive video displayed higher level of physical and verbal abuse to the doll. One child also picked up a toy gun from the same room and put the barrel to the dolls head.
This can also be linked to the Stanford Prison experiment conducted by Zimbardo, this is one of my favourite psychological experiments. It tests how people act when they are given a role to play, prisoner or prison guard. They where told to act in the role, and where given costume accordingly. However no specific action where they told to do. But the prison guard took an aggressive and dominant approach over the prisoner, who where just fellow students. The experiment got out of hand by day 6 one of the prisoner even shown signs of going crazy before the end of the experiment.
Yet again if your interested worth a watch. Amazing what the human kind can do after been given power.
There are some picture and video clips that can be disturbing.
This can also been linked to Abu Ghraib, and how American solider could treat the prisoner so badly so easily.
The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
Took me awhile to find this, could be boring, I liked it. I'm not sure I like this theory, found this lecture interesting, tell me what you think.
There are some picture that can be disturbing.
Okay to relate this back to violence again, these other factors could increase the likelihood of people becoming aggressive. The video games could just act as a reinforcement.
I also found out the mean age for gamers is 35, older than what thought it would be do, only 25% of gamers are younger than 18. So the teenagers from shootings where a tiny percentage, like I said earlier 5.6 million copies where sold, say two became mass killer from that. That is a tiny percentage, how can that be blamed on a computer games. Whenever I play a game I'm aware I'm playing a game I know its not real, I never get confused about what is real and what is not. I think the the blame of video games for violence is just a scapegoat.
Although games like Grand Theft Auto and Man Hunt and DOOM all have strange level of violence, its a choice to play and I don't think we can conclude that games can cause violence.
Back to Good and Evil
Milgram Study
Think may shock you..
it may not depends how you perceived the human race, if you watched the Zimbardo video I'm repeating myself.
Could the Holocaust Happen Here?
No?
Would you kill somebody if someone told you to..
In Milgram Study 1000 people responded to an Ad in a paper, they where told that the study was based on memory. They where given $4 for there time. Ordinary people. One will become the learner the other the teacher. The learner is actually a confederate someone paid the experiment to act in a certain way, the learner is hooked up to an electrical apparatus. A man in a lab coat, tells the teacher to ask a question and either shock them if they get the question wrong or to ask another question if they answer correctly. The first shock is 15 volts, unfeelable by human. The last in the scale is 450 volts capable to kill a human man, on the machine at 375 volts danger. They predicted only 1% would go to 450 volts, two thirds went to 450 volts. Only one participant wouldn't of killed the learner out of 1000. Less than 99% stood up to authority. The man screams out at one point to show his in pain, after a few more shocks, the learner goes silent. (To presume death)
Shocking.
(No pun intended)
Maybe there should be less haste to blame the media, when moral can be thrown away then authority tells you other whys.
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