Video Game Desensitization Essay

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The article that I chose to read and summarize pertained to a study that was conducted to find out whether or not violent video games leads to psychological desensitization to real life violence. According to this article, desensitization is defined as showing less physiological arousal to violence in the real world after exposure to video game violence in the virtual world.
In this experiment, participants completed a questionnaire about their video game preferences and their trait aggressiveness. They were then provided with a choice. The students could choose to play a violent video game or a non violent video game. They played the game for twenty minutes. Afterwards they were shown a ten minute video of violence in the real world. While …show more content…

The experiment demonstrated that violent video game exposure can cause desensitization to real-life violence. Participants who chose to play violent video games were less physiologically aroused by real life violence than nonviolent game players were. They concluded that players who play violent video games essentially become “used to the violence.” Even playing a violent video game for just twenty minutes can cause a person to become less psychologically aroused when viewing actual footage of people being beaten, stabbed, and shot. Desensitization can have some very negative impacts on society. Desensitization could possibly reduce the amount of attention that a certain individual pays to a violent incident involving another person. If they don’t pay attention to the incident then they can’t help the person who very well may need help. Second, the person must recognize the event as an emergency. Desensitization might reduce how seriously another person takes the injury, this decreases the likelihood that the desensitized person may view this incident as an emergency. If they do not view it as an injury then the individual might not feel like they need to help. There is a good chance that the person is in need of help but because the desensitized person doesn’t view the situation as an emergency, then they won’t receive any. According to this study, desensitization could reduce sympathy for the victim, increase beliefs that violence is normative, and decrease negative attitudes towards violence, thereby decreasing feelings of personal responsibility to aid another person in need of

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