Psychologists Produce First Study On Violence Desensitization From Video Games, ScienceDaily Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: Research (...) has proven for the first time that exposure to violent video games can desensitize individuals to real-life violence. (...) In this paper, the authors define desensitization to violence as "a reduction in emotion-related physiological reactivity to real violence." Their paper reports that past research -- including their own studies -- documents that exposure to violent video games increases aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal and aggressive behaviors, and decreases helpful behaviors. Previous studies also found that more than 85 percent of video games contain some violence, and approximately half of video games include serious violent actions.