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Video games and violence

A new research has shown that watching violent films, TV programmes or video games desensitises teenagers, blunts their emotional responses to aggression and promotes aggressive behaviour. Lead author Dr Jordan Grafman, senior investigator at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, USA), and colleagues recruited 22 boys aged between 14-17 for the study. Each watched short clips of violent scenes from 60 videos, arranged randomly in three lots of 20 clips. The degree of violence and aggression in each scene was low, mild or moderate, and there were no extreme scenes. They were asked to rate the aggression of each scene by pressing one of two response buttons at the end of each clip. The boys were positioned in a MRI scanner that collected data on their brain function while they watched the videos. They also had electrodes attached to the fingers of their non-dominant hand to test for skin conductance responses (SCR). This is a sensitive way of measuring people's emotions and responses to internal or external stimuli. Data showed that the boys became more desensitised towards the videos the longer they watched them and also that they were more desensitised by the mildly and moderately violent videos, but not the ones that contained a low degree of violence. Data on brain activation patterns showed a similar effect.

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