Submission + - CT Killings Reignite Debate on Violence in Video Games (foxnews.com)
Velcroman1 writes: The Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre has inspired fresh talk about the affect that violent video games like "Call of Duty" and "Grand Theft Auto" are having on children and young men like Adam Lanza, who was known by his friends to be a gamer. “It’s impossible to say what caused any given person to commit a horrific act like this,” said Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University and one of the country’s leading experts on video game violence. “But we can say whether violent video games increase aggression and they do.” Bushman’s latest study, published two weeks ago in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, showed that people who played a violent video game for three consecutive days showed increases in aggressive behavior and hostile expectations each day they played. While gamers often scoff at such studies, the evidence is overwhelming, Bushman said. “It’s like smokers saying tobacco isn’t harmful. The scientific evidence is clear,” he said. “A single cigarette won’t cause lung cancer, but smoking over weeks or months or years greatly increases the risk.”
