New Study Says “Violent Video Games May Increase Moral Sensitivity”

Remember when your parents told you that violent video games and violent movies would desensitize you to violence? A study coming out of the University of Texas Austin and Michigan State University suggest that your parents were big fat liars….Well, maybe.

The study finds that doing heinous acts in video games increased the players sensitivity towards those acts in normal life. So, you car-jack a car or murder a hooker in GTA and you may be more sensitive about car-jacking and hooker murdering in real life. Super!

“We found that after a subject played a violent video game, they felt guilt and that guilt was associated with greater sensitivity toward the two particular domains they violated — those of care/harm and fairness/reciprocity,”

THAT’S WHAT I JUST SAID LESS INTELLIGENTLY. The study, which will be published in an upcoming “Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking” claims that we should all rethink the effects of violent video games.

I’ll wait to see the actual piece, but this seems like a common thread: Group A will claim negative about violent video games and then weeks later Group B will claim something positive about violent video games. There’s no definitive answer on the violent video game subject (AND THAT MAKES ME RAGE, AS I WAS JUST PLAYING MORTAL KOMBAT)

“Our findings suggest that emotional experiences evoked by media exposure can increase the intuitive foundations upon which human beings make moral judgments… This is particularly relevant for video-game play, where habitual engagement with that media is the norm for a small, but considerably important group of users.”

That, of course, would go against many who claim that violent video games are the downfall of our society and that they caused the second world war.  We’ll keep an eye out for the actual research and report back on its methodology, so stay tuned….you 4 readers!

Check out the University of Buffalo’s piece on the study!