Desensitization Theory Essay

The people today are exposed to many scenes of violence in the media, all forms of media have become more graphic, realistic and violent over the years(Bushman & Anderson,2001). But this is especially for video games. In past video games the graphics, characters were more cartoonish. Today the graphics and characters seem to be more realistic. Which would make them seem like people can copy them. The desensitization theory proposes that repeated exposer to this violent behavior results in habituation of negative or emotional responses people seem to experience when they see blood and gore.(Bechtoldt-Balddacci, Pasold & Baumgartner, 2004; Rule & Ferguson, 1986) This theory is supported by research showing that the violent media exposers are associated with the emotional and violence of real violence. The effect of violent video games on kids or people that cause them to harm another individual, has been a hot topic for a while as video games continue to gain more and more popularity. A large scale study in the United States has been shown that 88% of the youth aged 8 to 18 years play video games. (Gentile 2009) In most cases they play 3 or 4 times a week on average and the average amount of time spent on playing video games is about 13.2 hours. Although it has been hard to

First no study has matched a violent and nonviolent video game on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action simultaneously, and thus, the violent content has not been isolated. Consequently, it is unclear whether the violent content alone is the reason for the aggression. Second, previous experimental studies have tended to use a measure of aggression that may also measure competiveness, leading to questions about whether violent video games are related to aggression or competiveness. Third the effect of video game competition on aggressive behavior has not been