Catharsis In Video Games

Frequent shootings by people recognized to have participated in playing video games has sparked attention and has brought people in on the debate of video game’s effect on the user. Many users of video games believe that by fulfilling their aggressive desires through violent video games is harmless, and favorable compared to releasing their aggression in the real world. However, empirical evidence consistently proves otherwise that using violent video games as an outlet to achieve a cathartic effect is not only flawed, but counterproductive to the purpose. The malleable minds of the youth that so popularly consume this media easily absorb the negative behavior displayed in such media through observational learning and participation. Parents

However, as the world has evolved over time, so has the media. No longer do people seek catharsis in plays, but in video games. Video games were unimaginable at the time of Aristotle and incorporating this media into his hypothesis is flawed in many ways. The factors of participating and not just spectating give reason to why using video games as a cathartic outlet is invalid if not ineffective. Watching a play requires the viewer to not make any decisions on what happens, they just simply watch, however in video games such as GTA 5, a popular gang-violence action game, the player have the power to kill whoever, steal whatever or do whatever with no consequences. When given the option to do right or wrong the brain goes through many obstacles to fight what they know is right and wrong. So when the player is faced with a moral dilemma in a video game that asks them to do things that could result horrendous consequences in the real world, it teaches the user to shut off this awareness of doing good into wreaking

The consistent results are that they found small to moderate effects of media violence on the user's. Not only are video games not an effective way to “purge” aggressive feelings, but they also create more aggression as the saying goes with the arguments of catharsis,”aggression breeds aggression” (Boyd). Although the users deny they are affected by what they consume and believe it only positively changes their behavior they are wrong. Operant conditioning the way to learn a behavior through reinforcing and punishing. Violent video games are a definite example of this type of learning, as in the video game when the player is asked to complete a violent task and upon completion they are rewarded with experience points, money, and achievements all of which are positive reinforcements to the behavior strengthening it. This continual conditioning from frequent use subliminally teaches the user to be more suceptable to make decisions that are not acceptable in the real world because inside the video game they were conditioned it was normal, and