Do Video Games Kill Summary

It is human nature to believe that you are less susceptible to being fooled than anyone else. Many people believe themselves to be practical, logical, and unbiased. Karen Sternheimer, the author of “Do Video Games Kill,” and world renowned positive psychologist Dan Gilbert, the author of “Immune to reality” challenge this idea. The human psychology has a keen ability to be fooled, whether it be the psychological immune a system or flawed research. Karen Sternheimer used “Do Video Games Kill,” to show the underlying nature of human psychology. “The video game explanation constructs the white, middle-class shooters as victims of the power of video games, rather than fully culpable criminals. White, middle-class killers retain their status

This trickery is a defense mechanism and works as an immune system for the brain and is “perpetrated unconsciously.”134 There was a horse Clever Hans that could answer questions about anything by tapping. A psychology student named Oskar Pfungst “noticed that Clever Hans was much more likely to give the wrong answer when Osten was standing in back of the horse than in front of it, or when Osten himself did not know the answer to the question the horse had been asked.”133 As it turns out, Clever Hans was just very good at reading his master. His master was fooled and so was everyone else. As Gilbert put it, “When we expose ourselves to favorable facts, notice and remember favorable facts, and hold favorable facts to a low standard of proof, we are generally no more aware of our subterfuge than Osten was of his.”134 Humans tendency to “cherry pick” data could be rooted in human nature. The immune system doesn’t always work or trick humans. For example, Gilbert talked about an experiment where, “participants were applying for a good paying job of scooping ice cream and making funny names for it.” Half the participants were going to learn their fate solely by a judge and the other half a “jury where only one juror had to say yes for you to get the job.”135 “The two groups expected to feel equally unhappy if they didn’t get the job,” but that wasn’t the case. The members who were rejected by the jury were much unhappier. The human psych defense could come up with a rationale when one person rejected them. With this being said, twelve people rejected them and it’s much harder to come up with a psychological defense for this. One’s psych can only trick them to a certain degree. There was another interesting study Gilbert touched on. “Volunteers in one study were students who were invited to join an extracurricular club whose initiation ritual required