Reply #55: I mentioned 3 reasons the crime rate is falling.

[True Earthling]

"You agree with the fact that violence is dropping, but you think the major cause of this decline is abortion."

I mentioned 3 reasons the crime rate is falling. Just because it's not reflected in crime stats doesn't prove anything. The effects could be negated by the 3 factors I mentioned.

"There has also been plenty of data to indicate that our new media environment saturated with pornography and violence has also contributed to the decline in violence/rape/crime in general"

Plenty of data? Give me ONE study. Before you do, ponder this...

In my last post, I talked about how it can be counterproductive to try to let out your anger through a violent act. The evidence I reviewed there suggested that letting off steam through violence can actually increase your future aggression.

Unfortunately, violent video games don't seem to be a particularly good outlet for anger either. I'll give two examples here.

First, research by Douglas Gentile and Ronald Gentile reported in a 2008 paper in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence looked at the relationship between aggressive behavior and video game play. They treated video games as if they were a school curriculum with the potential to teach aggressive behavior. In school, if you want to teach something effectively, you want students to practice it often, and you want them to practice it in a variety of circumstances. Consistent with that analysis, they find that kids who play many different violent video games and play them often display more aggressive behaviors than kids who play fewer games and play them less often.

Second, research by Peter Fischer and colleagues in the October, 2009 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looked at the relationship between violent driving video games and aggression in driving. In their experiments, they had people play video games that promoted reckless driving. These games are ones where violating the rules of the road is rewarded. At a later time, they had people perform a driving test that had them decide when to stop a risky driving behavior in a realistic situation. The longer people wait to stop the risky behavior, the greater the driving risk they are tolerating. People who played aggressive driving games were willing to take on more driving risk in realistic situations than people who played driving games that reward good driving skill (such as Formula 1 racing games).

These results suggest that video games can actually create a curriculum for teaching aggressive and risky behaviors. Unfortunately, they do not provide a good outlet for anger and aggression. Instead, they reinforce anger and aggression and allow players to transfer that behavior to the real world.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/20...