The Effects Of Violence In Video Games

Submitted By adriennecooper1
Words: 1586
Pages: 7

Part 1: Introduction I have enjoyed playing video games, and competing with my brothers and friends since I was a little kid. Back then, my parents were never worried that the violence in video games such as Battlefield and Hitman had any negative impacts on my mental health, or caused any problems for me at school. I don’t consider myself a violent person, but I am expected to be aggressive when playing football. When I think of where my aggression comes from when playing football, I don’t think that my aggression comes from any deep rooted connection with violent video games. Instead, I would say my aggression comes from my own determination and drive to run the football. However, after discussing this topic in class, I became more interested in taking one side of the argument and learning everything I could about that. Because there is no way to be sure that my aggression doesn’t come from video games, I wanted to research what it would take to conduct an experiment to put my mind to rest. That being said, I don’t think violent video games cause aggressive behavior directly, because I think that there are too many variables that would disprove the idea that the two are directly linked together. As more and more realistically violent games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto
IV gain popularity in teens of today’s society, the question of whether or not the games have a direct influence on teen behavior has risen significantly. Video are accessible all around the world, at stores nearest you, and even online. 67% of households use video games and 25% of these gamers are under the age of 18. Video games are so popular among teens that they game reportedly 8 hours per week. An entire population of game consumers are affected, and this causes for very strict regulation by The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)

throughout the year. Not only do they provide a strict overall rating for the content, but they even provide warnings for the consumers on what kind of content to expect. Part 2: Research Question Do violent video games affect aggressive behavior in male teens?
I will be focusing on male video gamers because they are the majority video game consumers in today’s society.
Because there have been so many issues with teens becoming more aggressive, I will be looking specifically into male teens ages thirteen to nineteen. For this particular assignment, I will be defining aggression as an increased level of hostile energy, along with threatening behavior or acts such as violent attacks or verbal outbursts in any given environment to guide my research. It is important to define what aggression means for this question because there are many different ways aggression can be interpreted and defined. I am trying to make sure I include all behavior that is out of the ordinary, but it also has to be considered hostile and violent. Otherwise, any change in behavior could be seen as aggressive or linked to the violence in video games, which would skew the results of my research and provide false ideas that have nothing to do with video games. Part 3: Theory The theory that I have chosen for my research question is the social learning theory. The social learning theory is the idea that learning is not purely based on behavior, but rather is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context. It is important to note for this assignment that in the social learning theory, learning can occur by observing a behavior and by observing the consequences of the behavior. Learning involves observations, and reinforcement plays a role in learning­ though not entirely responsible for learning. These ideas relate to my research

question because violent behavior in games such as COD and GTA are rewarded with points, coins, or extra ammunition. Because the negative behavior is being positively reinforced, it causes the person to experience the situation as a