Grand Theft Auto inspires Thai murder

[Firestormalpha]

To pritchke,

the only reason there's even been so much debate is that the 18yr old claimed he was influenced by the game. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to keep the games out of the hands of crazy people, because we usually don't know they're crazy till they pull something like this guy did.

The beheading on the bus and shooting in the Unitarian and other churches are essentially unrelated because the perps. don't blame any kind of game for their issues.

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NOT to pritchke.
Additionally I find it sadly amusing how some people raise sensationalistic claims and inuendo in an effort to dodge the issue at hand, primarily because they don't like the direction it's going.

[Chewbacca]

Barely worth replying. It's apparent to me many GTA opponents have never played through any of the recent GTA games. Some even like to play fast and loose with the facts like pretending that it is somehow proven GTA causes some sort societal harm. No Ma'am!


The Irony of coming to a video game website and crying out for a video game to be banned. I cried a little.

[Firestormalpha]

You make my point beautifully Chewie. As sensationalist as I could ever hope for. I don't recall anywhere in this thread that anyone declared the need for a ban on any games. The need for better regulation in a system that obviously is flawed, yes. That, perhaps the creators of games might entertain some notion of self-regulation in releasing content into a system that is KNOWN to be flawed in it's regulatory powers, yes. But I haven't seen anywhere that someone has said BAN GTA or anything of the sort, aside from Cerek's post at the beginning. As for why GTA is linked as part of the problem, read the bloody article!

[Chewbacca]

So the sociopath who stabbed somebody while stealing their taxi is an expert on whether or not video games cause harm to society? It must be true because he said so? Classic. LOL

Your wrong FSA, I'm no sensationalist. I do appreciate the irony though.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Chewbacca The Irony of coming to a video game website and crying out for a video game to be banned. I cried a little.

Actually it's the best place to bring it up.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Chewbacca So the sociopath who stabbed somebody while stealing their taxi is an expert on whether or not video games cause harm to society? It must be true because he said so? Classic. LOL

Nope. He's the latest evidence, not the expert.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Firestormalpha You make my point beautifully Chewie. As sensationalist as I could ever hope for. I don't recall anywhere in this thread that anyone declared the need for a ban on any games. The need for better regulation in a system that obviously is flawed, yes. That, perhaps the creators of games might entertain some notion of self-regulation in releasing content into a system that is KNOWN to be flawed in it's regulatory powers, yes. But I haven't seen anywhere that someone has said BAN GTA or anything of the sort, aside from Cerek's post at the beginning. As for why GTA is linked as part of the problem, read the bloody article!

Well said mate. Very true, and hear hear.

[Chewbacca]

What system is flawwed how?

Are crimes committed before GTA also caused by GTA through some mysterious time warp?

Which parts of the brain are altered by GTA thereby causing anti-social behavior?

What processes are used to determine a cause and effect relatioinship between GTA video games and societal violence? What independent experts and associations agree with these processes and their findings?

Have any of you actually playyed through a GTA game?

Anyone have more than hot air?

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Chewbacca What system is flawwed how? Are crimes committed before GTA also caused by GTA through some mysterious time warp? Which parts of the brain are altered by GTA thereby causing anti-social behavior? What processes are used to determine a cause and effect relatioinship between GTA video games and societal violence? What independent experts and associations agree with these processes and their findings? Have any of you actually playyed through a GTA game? Anyone have more than hot air?

We've all played GAMES Chewbacca.
We're all well aware of the effect playing any game can have on us.

But here's some stuff:

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...k154.alexandra

We review three areas of research and theory relating to the involvement of motor processing in action observation: behavioural studies on imitation learning, behavioural work on short-term visuomotor interactions, and related neurophysiological and neuroimaging work. A large number of behavioural studies now indicate bi-directional links between perception and action: visual processing can automatically induce related motor processes, and motor actions can direct future visual processing. The related concept of direct matching (Rizzolatti et al., 2001) does not, however, imply that observed actions are transduced into a corresponding motor representation that would guarantee an instant and accurate imitation. Rather, studies on the mirror neuron system indicate that action observation engages the observer's own motor prototype of the observed action. This allows for enhanced action recognition, imitation recognition, and, predominantly in humans, imitation and observational learning. Despite the clear impact of action observation on motor representations, recent neuroimaging work also indicates the overlap of imitation learning with processes of non-imitative skill acquisition.

http://lasa.epfl.ch/research/neural_...otor/index.php

Introduction Humans' capacity to imitate has been extensively investigated through a wide-range of behavioral and developmental studies. Yet despite the huge amount of phenomenological evidence gathered, we are still unable to relate this behavioral data to any specific neural substrate. Specifically, we address the principle of ideomotor compatibility , by which observing the movements of others influences the quality of one's own performance and develop two neural models which account for a set of related behavioral studies (Sauser et al., 2006).

http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/finaltics.pdf

Game theory is a mathematical language for describing strategic interactions, in which each player’s choice affects the payoff of other players (where players can be genes, people, companies, nation-states, etc.). The impact of game theory in psychology has been limited by the lack of cognitive mechanisms underlying game- theoretic predictions. ‘Behavioural game theory’ is a recent approach linking game theory to cognitive science by adding cognitive details about ‘social utility functions’, theories of limits on iterated thinking, and statistical theories of how players learn and influence others. New directions include the effects of game descriptions on choice (‘framing’), strategic heuristics, and mental representation. These ideas will help root game theory more deeply in cognitive science and extend the scope of both enterprises. Behavioural game theory is useful for studying social motives that occur in strategic interactions, such as altruism, fairness, trust, vengeance, hatred, reciprocity and spite. An important part of behavioural game theory is to build precise models of how these forces work, derived from data and other considerations (e.g. evolutionary stability). A familiar game is the prisoners’ dilemma (PD) In a PD, players are collectively better off if they all ‘cooperate’, but players privately prefer to ‘defect’, whether others cooperate or not. (Contributing to ‘public resources’, which benefit each player less than their private contribution, are a close relative of PD.) Many experiments have shown that players cooperate in a one-shot PD about half the time and contribute about half of their endowment in public resources games [20, 21]. Players who cooperate typically say they expect others to cooperate, which is consistent with the idea that cooperation is reciprocal (or ‘conditional’) rather than simply altruistic or rooted in moral principle (and also consistent with attribu- tion theory [22]). Giving players a chance to punish low contributors, at a cost to themselves, raises group contri- butions close to the optimal level at which everyone contributes players have a chance to talk about what they plan to do, even if they won’t see each other again after talking [21], which suggests that promising or empathy are important influences on behaviour. sacrifice money to punish others who were unfair). Conclusion Behavioural game theory has progressed rapidly since the term was coined 10 years or so ago [53]. It extends the cognitive plausibility and empirical accuracy of game theory, expressing ideas in mathematical models that permit rapid progress. Further innovation will be helped by data from cognitive science, such as measurement of response times, information acquisition, and findings from fMRI. It will also be aided by studies of special populations (such as children, people with autism, and people in small- scale societies), and by input from cognitive scientists about mental representation and strategic heuristics, especially when games are complex. Many questions remain about the neural mechanisms underlying strategic thinking and heuristics, learning, and social utility (see Box 5. Questions for Future Research). Better theories of how people behave will also help in the design of robust economic institutions (like auctions and incentive struc- tures in companies) [54,55]. The future is, as always, unpredictable, but the closer links that are being forged bargaining experiments.

[Yorick]

Originally Posted by Chewbacca What processes are used to determine a cause and effect relatioinship between GTA video games and societal violence? What independent experts and associations agree with these processes and their findings?

I'm detecting more than a little aggression from you Chewbacca. Have you been playing GTA

http://www.apa.org/science/psa/sb-anderson.html

Myths and Facts Myth 1. Violent video game research has yielded very mixed results. Facts: Some studies have yielded nonsignificant video game effects, just as some smoking studies failed to find a significant link to lung cancer. But when one combines all relevant empirical studies using meta-analytic techniques, five separate effects emerge with considerable consistency. Violent video games are significantly associated with: increased aggressive behavior, thoughts, and affect; increased physiological arousal; and decreased prosocial (helping) behavior. Average effect sizes for experimental studies (which help establish causality) and correlational studies (which allow examination of serious violent behavior) appear comparable (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Myth 6. There are no studies linking violent video game play to serious aggression. Facts: High levels of violent video game exposure have been linked to delinquency, fighting at school and during free play periods, and violent criminal behavior (e.g., self-reported assault, robbery). Myth 7. Violent video games affect only a small fraction of players. Facts: Though there are good theoretical reasons to expect some populations to be more susceptible to violent video game effects than others, the research literature has not yet substantiated this. That is, there is not consistent evidence for the claim that younger children are more negatively affected than adolescents or young adults or that males are more affected than females. There is some evidence that highly aggressive individuals are more affected than nonaggressive individuals, but this finding does not consistently occur. Even nonaggressive individuals are consistently affected by brief exposures. Further research will likely find some significant moderators of violent video game effects, because the much larger research literature on television violence has found such effects and the underlying processes are the same. However, even that larger literature has not identified a sizeable population that is totally immune to negative effects of media violence.