Research Of Stigma’s With Video Games

This article covers the stigma’s surrounding the gaming communities and works to disprove the stigma’s by comparing popular research that supports the stigma’s to more recent and more profound research. The stigma’s that surround the gaming communities is that people who play video games actively are lazy, and unmotivated. The second stigma is that violent video games will make the player more violent or aggressive in real life. This stigma has been wildly debated ever since the Columbine school shooting, and in this article it was concluded violent video games will not make the player a more violent player, but less empathetic in some cases.

The player will not have permanent adverse effects from playing the games and that playing violent video games like first person shooters use a variety of cognitive abilities. The stigma that people who play video games are lazy was also discredited by the APA who made an article saying that playing video games will improve communication, co-operation and transfer over problem solving in the game into real-life scenarios. There is two stigma’s that are correlated with gaming. The first being, that people who play video games are lazy. The second stigma is that video games will make people more hostile or aggressive. This stigma is in need of being proven or debunked more than since video games popularity have been on the rise in the recent years, and these stigma’s have become more pronoun and worrying for gamers. The stigma that instill violence or aggression has been a heated debate since the Columbine High School shooting. In the wake of the Columbine school shooting, a plethora of new research has come out talking about the possibility that video games make people more aggressive. On the other hand, many have countered this and provided research that claims that video games are healthy, not unhealthy. This article will further disprove the stigma against gamers and show the positive effects video games have on the player.

The first stigma that will be addressed is that video games instill violent behaviors that can lead to violent crimes. This claim isn’t entirely false, as proven in the article The Effect of Online Violent Video Games on Levels of Aggression, Jack Hollingdale, and Tobias Greitemeyer, both graduates from prestigious schools and doctorates in psychology, collaborated and created a study about how violent video games makes people more aggressive while people who play neutral games are not. The study looked at video gamers or players, giving x amount of chili powder to the taste tester who doesn’t like chili powder. Hollingdale and Greitemeyer’s prediction was accurate, being that players who played more aggressive video games would give more chili powder to the taste tester. All the players were aware of the circumstance of the test and knew that the taste tester wasn’t fond of chili powder, the results of this showed that players who played more violent games disregarded this fact. While players of neutral games were much more empathetic and had varying reactions to the other players. (Hollingdale, Greitemeyer) Yet, Hollingdale and Greitemeyer conceded that there isn’t enough research done for them to say long term gaming will lead to more violent crimes. Yet is what they found really what they describe? Is this really proof of video games instilling violence or is it a lack of empathy? The experimenter’s goal was to test signs of aggression and their hypothesis would be proven to be true if this is considered an act of aggression, but can it really be considered that? The definition of aggression is: “hostile or violent behavior or attitudes toward another; readiness to attack or confront. ” While the definition of empathy is: “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. ” (Dictionary) What Hollingdale and Greitemeyer’s research shows falls more in line with lacking empathy for the taste testers distain of chili powder.

The participants are not being hostile or showing violent behavior, they’re simply showing that they do not care for the taste testers dislike of spicy food. Lack of empathy Segway’s into the next topic which is an article about the “Negative Potential of Video Games” written by author Russel A. Sabella with a Ph. D in psychology, takes the stance that video games have a lot of negative potential. Which is not false, video games can have negative effects on the brain and body if taken to the extremes. Yet during this article Sabella makes statements that hold some merit but most usually are false. One of the statements Sabella makes is that: “More often games do not offer action that requires independent thought or creativity. ” This statement by Sabella isn’t really true, almost every single game makes your brain work in a different way says Authors of the article “The benefits of playing video games” on APA. org’s website. “Contrary to conventional beliefs that playing video games is intellectually lazy and sedating, it turns out that playing these games promotes a wide range of cognitive skills. This is particularly true for shooter video games (often called “action” games by researchers), many of which are violent in nature (e. g. , Halo 4, Grand Theft Auto IV). ” This quote from Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, and Rutger C. M. E. Engels is in complete contradiction of Sabella. Both Sabella and the authors of “The Benefits of Playing Video Games” are talking about violent video games. First person shooter video games to be exact, yet their results are drastically different. This is because one article focuses on the bad and has a narrower research focus and the other focuses on the good with a larger scale research project.

The good in this case again outweighs the bad, the authors of “The Benefits of Video Gaming” did a thorough job in explaining the cognitive benefits of playing “shooter” video games (violent) among like: “faster and more accurate attention allocation, higher spatial resolution in visual processing, and enhanced mental rotation abilities” Their evidence for this claim comes from recruiting players who aren’t keen on playing shooter like games and randomly add them to control groups, one group playing shooter video games and the second group playing a none shooter. Concluding that the players who had played the shooter game had resulted as shown above (Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, Etc. ). The next stigma about video games is that they make people lazy, or that they aren’t as motivated. President Obama was even apart of this stigma saying, “You can have the nicest computer in the world, and the best books in the world, but if you’re lazy, and sittin’ around just playing video games all day, not really interested in it, well you’re probably not going to be a great student. ” (Spiering 2015) Claiming that students who would rather play video games than read are lazy and wouldn’t be as good of students.

This is false, unlike television, video gaming takes focus and problem-solving skills. In some games even, strategy. Romeo Vitelli wrote the article “Are There Benefits in Playing Video Games?” and in this article, he states that video games are beneficial for motivation and better understanding of intelligence, even teaching the player that intelligence is incremental, or something that can be increased overtime. This provides the player motivation to keep learning and improving. Vitelli also says, “Immediate feedback also keeps players in the "zone of proximal development" which allows them to solve problems on their own while working towards specific goals. ” This means that players feel better about themselves after completing a goal, teaching them that they will feel better later in life after completing a set goal. Possibly giving them motivation, but there is little evidence to show that the motivational benefits transfer over into real life, although many of the learned problem-solving skills will transfer over into real life. The chances of the motivation gained from playing video games depends on the players personality (Vitelli 2014). Video gaming also promotes a variety of cognitive functions which can increase learning.

In the article “The Benefits of Video Games” It states “Moreover, contrary to what we might expect, these experiences of failure do not lead to anger, frustration, or sadness, although players often do feel these negative emotions intermittently. Instead, or as well, players respond to failures with excitement, interest, and joy (Salminen & Ravaja, 2008). When faced with failure, players are highly motivated to return to the task of winning, and they are “relentlessly optimistic” about reaching their goals (McGonigal, 2011). The development of a persistent motivational style charged with positive affect may, in turn, lead to lasting educational success (Ventura et al. , 2013). ”This means exactly what it states, that video games lead to the development of a positive and persistent thought process, but Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, Etc. also state that no empirical studies have been conducted to test the transfer of these learned habits in video games to real life.

Although, there has been one study recently that says these indicates that these relations do exist. (Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel Et al. 2014). This meaning that persistence learned in video games can transfer to real life. That video games are mentally demanding and provide motivation for the players and that games really aren’t lazy like they’re perceived to be. Meaning this social stigma about video gamers being lazy is not really true.