Perhaps, contrary to the established opinion, computer games are not only not related to the manifestations of aggression in adolescents, but also cause them to be soft and particularly sensitive to following the norms of morality.
At least, such unexpected conclusions were made by scientists from the University of Colorado on the basis of a six-month study of 2,000 Americans aged 11 to 20 years. According to their observations, the violation of generally accepted rules of behavior and the manifestation of violence in shooting games or strategies causes players to feel guilty, which, in turn, makes them think about how they behave in real life. Moreover, they do this, according to the observations of experts, much stronger and more often than their non-playing peers.
The study participants were offered games, each of which suggested a violation of a particular moral norm: in addition to the active use of physical violence, the “heroes” violated the law, cheated, and ignored the interests of virtual friends and partners.
All participants passed a psychological test twice, which allows you to determine the level of propensity for deviant behavior and aggression – once before the game session, and the second time-after (the test questions were different, but the essence of the survey remained unchanged). It was then that it turned out that after computer games, the views of teenagers became much more moderate, and the judgments – traditional.
“Surprisingly, it’s a fact: it seems that violent games keep people from being aggressive in real life,” he says.Matthew Grizzard, one of the organizers of the study. According to him, it is still too early to draw final conclusions, but at least now “we know for sure that everything is not so clear.” And although he understands that he will meet resistance from the scientific community and worried parents who are already used to blaming computer games for their children’s aggressiveness, Grizard is still confident that sooner or later computer hobbies will be rehabilitated.
Grizard’s Russian colleague, psychologist Anna Novinskaya, calls the results of the University of Colorado research “very interesting.” Nevertheless, she points out a number of weak points of the study: for example, the game session is too short, and now most experts are inclined to believe that games negatively affect the psyche only with long-term computer addiction. In addition, it would make sense to repeat the test and a few days after the game, — adds Novinskaya: to check how long the effect on a person has this virtual sense of guilt. “But in any case, it’s great that such research is being done,” she says. – The more we talk about this problem, the more likely we are to be able to overcome it.”