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Artikel van Nature Reviews Neuroscience 12, 763-768 (December 2011)
Does playing video or computer games have negative effects on brain and behaviour?
D.B & C.S.G.: There is no question that the same characteristics that make many games effective teachers of perceptual and cognitive skills can also be harnessed to produce maladaptive effects on brain and behaviour. There is an extremely large body of research demonstrating a relationship between playing certain types of violent video games and increases in measures of aggressive thoughts. However, the subtleties regarding the size of the effects reported in published research are often sorely lacking in popular treatments of the topic. Violent video games alone are unlikely to turn a child with no other risk factors into a maniacal killer. However, in children with many risk factors, the size of the effect may be sufficient to have practical negative consequences
M.M.M.: Intensive game-play practices have been shown to have several negative effects on cognition. First, ... Second, ..., Third, action games with anti-social (violent) content — which are particularly addictive and provide particularly strong motivational bases for driving positive cognitive changes — have been shown to reduce empathy, to reduce stress associated with observing or initiating anti-social actions, and to increase confrontational and disruptive behaviours in the real world. These effects can be expected to increase as the images and scenarios in action games become more realistic. The increasingly heavy use of video games and related virtual-reality simulation environments for training combat military personnel provides clear testimony of their effectiveness for inuring the 'player' against the social challenges and stresses associated with observing or voluntarily initiating aggressive and violent behaviours. Although we can appreciate the value of such training for soldiers, policemen or emergency room technicians, there is a serious question as to whether or not intensive exposures to such scenarios contribute positively to empathy and human understanding in the greater society.
D.A.G.: There is evidence that games can have negative effects, which makes sense when one considers that most of the effects reported are learning effects at their core. As stated by Donald Hebb in 1940, neurons that fire together wire together. Whatever we practice repeatedly affects the brain, and if we practice aggressive ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, then we will get better at those. This is not to say that violent games necessarily cause violent behaviours, because human aggression is complex and multi-causal. But it does suggest that when we practice being vigilant for enemies and then reacting quickly to potentially aggressive threats, we are rehearsing this script. In fact, this is what has been shown in several studies: playing violent video games increases what is called a 'hostile attribution bias', a perceptual and cognitive bias to attribute hostile intentions to others' actions. When people with such a bias are bumped into in the hallway, they assume that it was done with hostile intent rather than by accident, and the most automatic response is to retaliate in some way. The most comprehensive meta-analysis conducted to date included 136 papers detailing 381 independent tests of association conducted on 130,296 research participants. The analyses found that violent game play led to significant increases in desensitization, physiological arousal, aggressive cognition and aggressive behaviour. By contrast, pro-social behaviour was decreased.
This is not to say that there isn't some disagreement about this question in the scientific community, for example over how to interpret the size of the effect and whether it is of sufficient practical significance. On which side of the debate an investigator falls seems, in my opinion, to depend on whether they care most about criminal level violence or low-level aggression. The evidence that playing video games induces criminal or serious physical violence is much weaker than the evidence that games increase the types of aggression that happen every day in school hallways. As a developmental psychologist, I care deeply about this everyday aggression (verbal, relational and physical), whereas critics of the research seem to be mostly interested in criminal violence.
Toch een behoorlijke consensus over enig negatief effect van games op antisociaal gedrag. Ik denk dat je zaken als deze vooral genuanceerd moet bekijken (itt de amerikaanse media). Een videogame zal niet eigenhandig iemand een seriemoordenaar maken maar kan misschien wel samen met andere factoren er voor zorgen dat een persoon meer antisociaal gedrag vertoont. Dit vormt geen reden om videogames te verbannen, maar het is wel iets waar rekening mee moet gehouden worden imo.
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