Violent Games Emotionally Desensitizing

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ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2011) — After excessively violent events, shoot 'em up games regularly come under scrutiny. In Norway, several first-person shooter games disappeared from the market for a while after the killings. Does intense fighting on a flat screen display also result in aggressive behavior in real life? Researchers from the University of Bonn found brain activity patterns in heavy gamers that differed from those of non-gamers.

The study's results have just been published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

"First-person shooter" games have been discussed in connection with violence over and over. Participants take on the role of a shooter fighting opponents in a war-like situation using different weapons. The Norwegian killer is said to have participated in such worlds intensely before he killed dozens of people in Oslo's government district and on the vacation island of Utoya.

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Psychologists, epileptologists and neurologists from the University of Bonn studied the effect of shoot 'em up game images and other emotionally charged photos on the brain activity of heavy gamers. "Compared to people who abstain from first-person shooters, they show clear differences in how emotions are controlled," reported lead author Dr. Christian Montag from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bonn.

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One question raised while interpreting the results is whether the users showed altered brain activity due to the games, or whether they were more tolerant of violence from the start and as a consequence, preferred first-person shooter games. The researchers from the University of Bonn were able to suggest an answer to this question based on the fact that they took into account various personality traits such as fearfulness, aggressiveness, callousness or emotional stability. "There were no differences between the subjects and the control group in this area," reported Dr. Montag. "This is an indication that the violent games are the cause of the difference in information processing in the brain."

From the results, Dr. Montag has concluded that emotional desensitization does not only occur while playing computer games. "We were ultimately able to find the decreased control of emotions in first-person shooters for the real images, too," he said. That is why he thinks these responses are not just limited to these virtual worlds.

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