Study Suggests Violent Video Games Contribute to Reducing Crime Rates

[BobYoMeowMeow]

Abstract:
Psychological studies invariably find a positive relationship between violent video game play and aggression. However, these studies cannot account for either aggressive effects of alternative activities video game playing substitutes for or the possible selection of relatively violent people into playing violent video games. That is, they lack external validity. We investigate the relationship between the prevalence of violent video games and violent crimes. Our results are consistent with two opposing effects. First, they support the behavioral effects as in the psychological studies. Second, they suggest a larger voluntary incapacitation effect in which playing either violent or non-violent games decrease crimes. Overall, violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime.Number of Pages in PDF File: 42

Keywords: Video Games, Violence, Crime

JEL Classifications: D08, K14, L86



Research paper here
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804959

Credits to
Scott Cunningham
Baylor University

Benjamin Engelstätter
Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) - Information and Communication Technologies Research Group

Michael R. Ward
University of Texas at Arlington - College of Business Administration - Department of Economics

Anyways, at least call of duty has a purpose
The paper says video games can cause aggression but does not contribute to crime.
People would take out their anger ingame rather than irl
basically, if you're spending time playing video games, the less likely you're going to commit a crime.

[Mrlucky77]

Probably because people are spending so much time playing games instead of criming.

(is that even a word, criming? I doubt it)

[Yoorah]

There's more factors to it than that.. so it's pretty silly to base much on that study, imo. I haven't read the whole thing, so I apologize if my point has been addressed, but this caught my eye:

In this paper, we argue that since laboratory experiments have not
examined the time use effects of video games, which incapacitate violent activity by drawing
individual gamers into extended gameplay, laboratory studies may be poor predictors of the
net effects of violent video games in society. Consequently, they overstate the importance of
video game induced aggression as a social cost. We argue that since both aggression and time
use are a consequence of playing violent video games, then the policy relevance of violent
video game regulation depends critically on the degree to which the one outweighs the other.
So two things can be said with some degree of confidence:
1) Violent video games do cause aggression.
2) Violent video games take time to play, and therefore the would-be criminal won't be committing any crimes during that time.

And they're basically saying that the latter outweighs the former, therefore lowering crime overall.

But are they comparing the levels of brutality in the various violent crimes statistics? Not all violent crime is the same.

The main concern I would have is that video games can condition people to be more ruthless and cruel. I remember someone a while back linking an interesting article about how even soldiers on the battlefield deliberately miss when they fire on an enemy, because as mentally healthy human beings, they subconsciously do not want to lower themselves to that level of brutality and kill someone. Video games are used as training tools to condition soldiers into bypassing that. The same is likely happening to kids, which are more even more easily influenced, as they are younger. This could mean the difference between a violent crime where a kid knifes another kid to scare the crap out of them, and a violent crime where the kid stabs the other to death.

We'd be better off if the would-be criminals wasted their crime-time playing Mario instead.

[Cynic]

...Isn't that kind of obvious?
It's an out-let for violent behavior.

It will do nothing against real criminals, though. Who commit acts of violence for sexual reasons.

[Cucurbita]

Mom: Games cause violence! Its always on the news! Stop playing them and stop hanging out with people who play them!
Me: Those news are biased. There is plenty of research that debunk the correlation between video games and violence.
Mom: SHOW ME PROOF!
Me: *shows her some researches*
Mom: BECAUSE I AM ALWAYS RIGHT, THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY THOSE ARTICLES WERE WRITTEN BY GENUINE SCIENTISTS THAT KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING.

This is really more or lss how every argument goes in the house.

My mom claims something is wrong.
I claim it is okay.
She demands proof.
I show proof.
She says the people who came up with said proof are all whackjobs no matter how abundant and solid the proof is.

My mom claims only bad people does something she believes is wrong.
I tell her I know many people who do those things and the numbers are greater than she can imagine.
She tells me only a very rare group od the worst trash people could possibly do such things and that I exaggerate.
I start talking about the ratio, in school, coworkera, friends, etc.
She tells me I hang around bad people and I should defriend them all immediately.

[Jarvan IV]

Mom: Games cause violence! Its always on the news! Stop playing them and stop hanging out with people who play them!
Me: Those news are biased. There is plenty of research that debunk the correlation between video games and violence.
Mom: SHOW ME PROOF!
Me: *shows her some researches*
Mom: BECAUSE I AM ALWAYS RIGHT, THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY THOSE ARTICLES WERE WRITTEN BY GENUINE SCIENTISTS THAT KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING.

This is really more or lss how every argument goes in the house.

My mom claims something is wrong.
I claim it is okay.
She demands proof.
I show proof.
She says the people who came up with said proof are all whackjobs no matter how abundant and solid the proof is.

My mom claims only bad people does something she believes is wrong.
I tell her I know many people who do those things and the numbers are greater than she can imagine.
She tells me only a very rare group od the worst trash people could possibly do such things and that I exaggerate.
I start talking about the ratio, in school, coworkera, friends, etc.
She tells me I hang around bad people and I should defriend them all immediately.

Next thing you know she's on your face deleting all friends that she claims evil, alot like Light.

I'll take your bad face book friends, AND DELETE THEM!