Link between video games and violence might be user frustration

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in games on (#3HP)
story imageA recent study out of the University of Rochester investigating the link between violence and video games suggests that it's gamer frustration and not game content that may lead to feelings of aggression. The study found that games with poorly-designed controls or excessive difficulty led to player frustration which, in turn, led to feelings of aggression, and this was independent of whether the game's content was violent or not. This study is an interesting and potentially important addition to the long-running debate on the possible connection between video games and aggressive behavior. A further analysis is available here .

[Ed. note: so, if your word processor frustrates you , does that lead to violence too? Because it seems like it might .]
Reply 5 comments

In Response to Editor's Note (Score: 2)

by songofthepogo@pipedot.org on 2014-04-09 16:28 (#118)

Ed. note: so, if your word processor frustrates you , does that lead to violence too?


Not so much "does", perhaps, as "could". From my understanding of the article, it's entirely possible. In the article Richard Ryan, co-author of the study, is said to state, "That experience is not unique to gaming", leaving wide open the possibility suggested above. In short, one could simply say frustration leads to aggression. Hardly surprising, really, to anyone who's experience frustration and hardly unique to video games.

Re: In Response to Editor's Note (Score: 3, Informative)

by songofthepogo@pipedot.org on 2014-04-09 16:32 (#119)

Ooof ... s/experience/experienced. I'd've perhaps caught that if I'd previewed, but for some reason I am unable to preview in Firefox. I get a "record not found - table [comment] id [0]".

Re: In Response to Editor's Note (Score: 4, Informative)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-04-09 18:05 (#11D)

Woops, side effect of raising the default moderation score to 1 for non-AC comments.

Should be fixed now.

Re: In Response to Editor's Note (Score: 2, Insightful)

by nightsky30@pipedot.org on 2014-04-10 12:21 (#11J)

Indeed I think the link between frustration and aggression is demonstrated all around us each day. With some people, it may be a political debate(sadly), a tough time debugging some code, or perhaps getting headshot one too many times in CS:S. I think politics have definitely caused aggression and ultimately harm/death to some of those involved. We've seen this throughout history. When dealing with inanimate, non-sentient(sometimes this appears arguable) things such as a bug in a computer application, we may be tempted to take a bat to our dev box, or perhaps we just get a bit irritated and snarky with those around us. It isn't their fault though. It's not so much that we want to channel the anger at them as it is we need an outlet for the frustration. That outlet should be something else constructive. In the last case, the adversary is a human being, much like politics. However, with the advent of the internet, the online adversary is somewhat anonymous and the interaction is not as personal. With that comes trolling and uncooth AC's. Perhaps without the ability to identify the outlet for their frustration (the specific online individual grieving them), people ultimately bottle up their anger and then start taking out their frustrations on innocent people in the real world.