Does controlling or experiencing violence in video games cause violence, aggression, or other acts of malice outside of the game? This is the main question that I discuss with my guest this episode, Christopher J. Ferguson, Ph.D. He is a prolific researcher and commentator on the topic of video game violence, and he shares his thoughts about the state of the research and whether or not we should be worried about letting kids watch violent TV or games.
Plus, we have a side conversation into the topic of misogyny and other stereotyping in video game culture and whether being exposed to those elements is equivalent to seeing or controlling video game violence.
Christopher J. Ferguson
About the podcast:
More about Christopher J. Furgeson’s research
Audio Credits
- Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
- Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
- Level Up! by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
- Over Under by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0.
Really interesting stuff. I really liked the comparison between the moral and parental decisions and arguments vs the actual science, psychological & societal arguments and I could not agree with the comments by both of you more.
When I did have some caregiver responsibility around videogames, it definitely made me look at a lot of them differently, and I always screened games too. It was a bit odd for me as I kind of grew up very close to the trajectory of maturity in video games themselves, so I was a teen as teen level maturity games kind of became introduced, and was already an adult as more adult orientated titles came along.
Also interestingly my parents (who are both psychologists) were always ok with me playing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and their ilk, and disregarded some of the public reactionary outcries at the time, but again, talking with them about it in later life, it was very much that they believed we were mature enough at the time to handle them – and the cartoonish violence was actually really easy for us to distinguish between anything real. These days of course things are so much more graphical – but then now we do have 18/Mature rated games to assist parents with their levels of mature content.