Encouraging violence - Video games and aggression

THIS weekend, as anyone who watched ceremonies in London marking the Japanese surrender 70 years ago will confirm, real, life-challengeing violence leaves a lifelong impression and haunts those who witness it forever. 

Veterans, most in their late 80s or 90s now, recalled the horror of war and lost comrades rather than the victory they achieved. The price, not the outcome, haunted their memories.

It was not recognised, or accepted by military authorities, until World War I that prolonged exposure to carnage and mayhem can have a deep psychological impact and destroy a person’s emotional stability. Hunderds of men suffering from shell shock were executed as cowards before this new realisation changed perceptions. Hundreds of thousands more were sent home broken, distressed men unable to resume a normal life.

It seems therefore bizarre that it has taken so very long to have it confirmed that playing violent video games is linked to aggressive and callous behaviour and that that the habit “increases aggressive behaviour, aggressive cognitions and aggressive affect, and decreases in pro-social behaviour, empathy and sensitivity to aggression”. The comparison between war veterans’ experiences and a half-formed adolescent playing Call of Duty may seem stretched and incongruous, but for anyone who falls victim to that teen’s artifically stoked aggression that difference is academic.