Violent video games have also been shown to do different kinds of potential harm to their players. Brad J. Bushman Ph.D., from “Psychology Today” delves deeper into the realm of violent video games and states some very valid points on how these games can be worse than other media outlets. Bushman starts by explaining that video games are active whereas an activity such as watching television is passive, you learn more when you’re actively involved with an activity than you do by just watching. His next point is that violent video game players have a higher chance of identifying with that character, due to the game’s first person perspective. “If the game is a first person shooter, players have the same visual perspective as the killer. If the game is third person, the player controls the actions of the violent character from a more distant visual perspective.” (Bushman, 2012) He also goes on to state that with violent …show more content…
By hearing phrases such as “Nice shot!” after you kill an opposing player, it rewards the player who received the kill. Rewarding a behavior increases the likelihood of the behavior to happen again, but when watching television or a movie is taken into account, the reward is not directly applied to the viewer’s behavior. To reinforce this argument about violent video games, a study was conducted. The experiment went as follows, kids were randomly assigned to play a violent video game, or watch another child play it. Later, their aggression levels were measured during their real life experiences during a free play session at school. The results showed that boys who played the violent video game were more aggressive during the free play time that those who simply watched. Another aggression test between violent video games and real life violence performed by the University of Sussex. They took 40 participants and split them into two groups of