Violent Games Change the Players' Behavior

Violent games change a person's brain function and desensitize chronic players to real world violence, a University of Missouri researcher said after carrying out a study.

"Most of us naturally have a strong aversion to the sight of blood and gore. Surgeons and soldiers may need to overcome these reactions in order to perform their duties. But, for most people, a diminished reaction to the effects of violence is not adaptive. It can reduce inhibitions against aggressive behavior and increase the possibility of inflicting violence on others," the researcher said.

Bartholow, along with two other researchers, asked 39 male undergraduate students how often they played their five favorite video games and how violent the games were.

Next, the researchers showed participants a series of images on a computer screen, including emotionally neutral images, such as a man raiding a bicycle; violent images, such as a man holding a gun to another man's head; and negative, but nonviolent images, such as a dead dog.

As participants viewed these images, the researchers measured a type of brainwave, known as P300, which is believed to reflect how people evaluate images like these.

After viewing the pictures, participants were told that the last part of the experiment involved a competition with another participant to see who could press a button faster following a series of tones. Before each tone, participants set the level of a noise blast that their opponent would receive if the opponent lost. What they didn't know was that there wasn't any opponent.

The researchers found that the participants who routinely played violent video games showed less brain reactivity when they viewed the violent images.

They also found that the smaller a participant's brain response to violent images, the more aggressively he behaved during the final part of the experiment.