--Original published at CurtisCollegeBlog

I for one grew up in a household that usually did not allow me to play these games. I only really played sports games for the most part, but sometimes with my dad’s approval I would get a wrestling game. I was never a violent child, in fact I would only act violent if I felt threatened. Also, my roommate loves the shooting games, he’ll play them all day long. I have never once envisioned him going out and actually killing people. Just because him and I weren’t negatively affected doesn’t mean other kids aren’t. I like to think most people take their anger out with video games, not store up rage via video games.

Personally, I don’t think violent video games should be banished. They probably can’t even be banished, that would be a pretty hard task considering most of the best selling games are violent. I think instead of banning these games, parents have to take a more active approach in their child’s video game lives. For instance, my dad would always play games with me when I was younger. A parent could use this to monitor how their child reacts to games. With better parental supervision, I think kids will be less likely to turn violent from playing games.

--Original published at Nadia's Blog

Some may believe that video games are not the best activity for a child to be playing. This may be because it is not a healthy way to stay active, and this is becoming more and more common. Less children are spending time outside, and more time on technology. Along with this, many video games are promoting violent behavior. I believe that violent video games are becoming more and more graphic and they are not promoting a healthy mindset for younger individuals.

Primarily, these video games are now increasingly popular within younger individuals, and are able to make a larger impact on them since their mind is still developing. For example in Piaget’s developmental theory, the preoperational stage (3-7), these children are still not able to see things from another persons perspective. This is the age group where children begin to play these violent video games, and they are lacking the understanding that they are physically harming another human being and are not aware of their actions. Although, the video game is not actually real life and no human is actually being killed, the point of the games are usually to kill all the people, which is clearly not a positive message and allows these children to believe that hurting another human is acceptable. This can clearly have a larger impact later on in a child’s life if they continue to play these video games. Relating this back to the attachment theories, individuals who were abused or had non involved parents later on showed that these individuals had more problems in the future, this could be a similar situation where the children are being exposed to violence at a young age where it will later on impact what type of person they will be when they are older.

As most of us know, children are easily influenced and tend to believe what someone older than them might say. Knowing this, we can assume that violent video games most definitely have an impact on younger children into their later lives. It is now increasingly becoming worse as technology advances, and the visuals are more graphic and making the situations more realistic. Overall, the video games are not having a positive influence on children and I do believe that there should be age restrictions on who may play what game in order to ensure that a child is aware of how harmful these actions can truly be.

--Original published at marybraun99

I chose to watch the clip relating to BF Skinner, and free will. With operant conditioning, you are either punished or rewarded for your actions. You learn through reinforcements. Relating to Skinner saying that we are not actually free, and it is only an illusion I would agree with. I am currently in a sociology class, where one of the main questions is “How free are we?” We watched the Truman show, which if you are not aware stars Jim Carrey, where he was born into a TV show all about him. He lives in a world that is not even true, his whole world was made by other people, all of his life decisions were made by somebody else. He lost his dad when he was a young boy on a fishing trip, where his father drowned, but nearly 20 years later his dad tries to come back to his life, helping him to understand that his world is not what he thought it was. The water he was in was not real water, which created a fear of water for Truman. When Truman manages to escape from this world, he goes on a boat and gets to the end of the set. One of the producers says “we accept the world we are presented with” which shows us that no matter where we are in life, we accept what is happening. We don’t question the weird things that happen, or the things that seem out of place.

Now, I included this in why I agree with BF Skinner because when you are trained with positive or negative reinforcements, it doesn’t just go as far as the pigeon with treats, but it goes with us with society. If we do something wrong in society we are punished with a negative response, but when we do something positive we are rewarded with maybe more friends, or not being bullied. We are conditioned into how to think. Most people do not look at it this way, but society shapes the way that we act. Most people are different in private than they are in public, which proves that we feel we need to act a certain way in public, but nobody questions why society has put these restraints on us. There is always a reason why we are doing what we are doing, and it is usually never just because WE want to do it, it is because we are hoping to be praised, or get a reward out of it. When people act the way that they do in private in public, some people may look down on them, because that is not how society taught us to act. We were always taught there will be social consequences if you act out in public.

Overall, I agree with Skinner that free will is an illusion, and it is not truly there in our lives. We would need to “break free” from it in a sense.

--Original published at JanellesCollegeBlog

I chose to respond to the first option for this first impression blog post. In this video about Skinner’s experiment, it walks through him training pigeons to respond to written or colored cues that give the pigeons food for responding in a certain way. For example, if the pigeon pecked the board that had “Peck” on it, it was rewarded with food. Also, when the pigeon turned after seeing the board that said “Turn” on it, it was correctly rewarded with food. The other experiment that Skinner conducted was that the pigeon was rewarded with food if they pecked a colored board a certain amount of times. They could get the pigeon on a schedule for how many pecks the pigeon had to give in order to get food. Skinner connects this reward system with people who gamble. From these experiments, Skinner concluded that by rewarding pigeons with food at certain points, you condition them, and although it seems like they might have free will about when they eat, they really do not because the experimenters are the ones controlling the schedule.

I disagree with Skinner’s assertion that there is no such thing as free will. In the case of the pigeons, I agree that there is no such thing as free will because there were outside forces controlling the feeding schedule of the pigeons, but in real life, people still have choices and decisions that they can make with their own mind. I think in certain situations like gambling, people can be controlled by conditioning and outside forces that offer staggered rewards, but I also believe that people have the free will to do what they want. For example, everyone has the free will of how they will spend their time. Individuals can listen to music, go to the movies, study, go to eat/where they want to go to eat. We all have the free will in life to make these decisions and we have to deal with the consequences of these decisions. Although there are outside forces that affect the decisions that we make, they are still ours. Free will is a concept that humans made up, but it is also a real concept that everyone has and uses every day of their lives.

--Original published at Manda's College Blog

Violence in the media has been controversial for decades, but over the last 20 years there has been increasing attention to the amount of violence in video games. The rise of first-person shooters and games with graphic displays of blood and gore has led to criticisms of the video game industry and claims that children are becoming more violent as a result. What is your perspective on violent video games? What do you think about calls to have them permanently banned?

Reading this prompt the words that went through my head where government censorship. The government is known for in the past to try to censor things to the public only to gain some sort of control and to blame the “product” but not blame the people committing said action. Example, back in the 1960’s during the Vietnam War, it was the first war to be covered by the news media on television, thats when people watching were exposed to the horrors and death the soldiers serving went through. It may have been a plan to have more Americans enlist for their country, but it worked for one and for two violence was still just as bad as it is today. Now the Government has censored the news to where we don’t see any type of violence or deaths our soldiers experience in the Middle East, but theres still violence in our country. My point is that despite the government trying to censor violence even back then, Kennedy was assassinated, the Manson murders was one of the most gruesome murders, and racism was so bad to where blacks and anyone who was for Civil Rights were physically and verbally attacked. Today, not knowing the horrors of our soldiers experiencing war in the Middle East we don’t see, but theres still violence. So if it’s not on the news, who and what can the people blame other than themselves? Let’s blame video games.

I think about those children in the Middle East or those countries around Africa that are trained to shoot guns and decapitate Americans or Christians and I think to myself, were they influenced by Mario Kart or Grand Theft Auto? Ummm I think their parents/guardians/who ever “owns”/kidnaps them has trained them to do so.

So America not being exactly like that, we tend to play the blame game. Parents seem to not want to look at themselves when their child has done the unthinkable, so they want to blame anything but them. Video games sounds like the perfect scapegoat, believe me, I heard a lot of good points. But with 90% of kids, teens, and even adults playing video games on a daily basis, violence doesn’t come across to those people. Actually, many studies were made that video games that contain violence released aggression and stress to the child or adult. Its a escape from the daily activities of school, work, or whatever negative emotion you’re feeling. Video games actually are known to keep kids off the streets, or off drugs etc. I believe people need to look that the persons environment, parental influences, and if they are likely to inherit a mental illness of some sort. If the person is doing nothing but playing violent video games where the parent doesn’t do anything about it, the child could gain some sort of mental illness or even physically illness with lack of sleep, social stimulant, activity, motor development etc. And take in mind where the child lives, does he/she live in the poverty stricken cities of Chicago? Is this child not even living with their parents? Honestly, the possibilities are endless.

In the end I believe it’s up to the one who raises you to provide balance. I see no consequences in playing any type of video games; Ive personally grew up playing Resident Evil, Final Fantasy and the very first Call of Duty on PC. The worst development I gained from playing this games since I was young is that I still buy these games. I use the games just as an escape and also a bonding mechanism with my partner and his children. I don’t believe the government should have any more control over something so petty such as video games and should actually focus on more productive things.

--Original published at Max'sPHY105blog

For this week’s first Impression Post, I decided to comment on Option 2, the prompt about violence in video games. This prompt addresses first person shooter video games and that they lead to violence among people who play them. This is a topic that has always been on my mind, since I play games like these on my leisure. I have talked about this with my parents as well. My dad tells me that video games were not as graphic as they are today during the time period he grew up in. The games he grew up with as a child were games such as Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Missile Command, Space Invaders, etc. These game did not have three dimensional objects and people like you see in video games today and could not be as graphic. I have also talked about this with my mother. She told me that the original purpose of first person shooter video games was for desensitizing real solders so that they are not hesitant to actually shoot someone when they head out on a battlefield. Studies have shown that this is what such video games do. However, I feel that violent video games do not have to be desensitizing if the player does not allow it. If the player can be careful and aware of what he or she is seeing, and make every attempt to not let it encourage him or her that the violence is not as bad as it really is. I do this every time I play such video games and my dad told me that I do not appear to be very easily desensitized by the violence in these games.

I understand that their is a positive correlation between violent video games and violence among children, but I feel that their are some facts that are not being taken into consideration. First of all, did I just say that violent video games cause violence among children? Does this mean that children of age 5 or less are being allowed to play M rated first person shooter video games? This is probably a confounding variable that leads to conclusions of increased violence resulting from first person shooter video games. I know that there are children who play such video games because I have talked to kids of age 8 and 10 who talk about playing these video games. From my understanding, their are 4 basic video game ratings; E for Everyone, E 10+ or Everyone ages 10 and up, T for Teen, and M for Mature. When I was a child, I grew up playing only video games rated E and few games rated E 10+. It was not until I was a teenager before I began playing video games rated T and I never owned a rated M video game until I was 18. Maybe their is more violence resulting from video games because parents do not talk video games ratings into consideration and let their children play whatever they want at whatever age.

Another confounding variable I see in video games leading to violence is the amount of time people spend playing such video games. I have talked about this with my dad. He told me that their are people to play first person shooter video games 6 hours a day and are not annoyed when they hear about a mass shooting talking place somewhere in the world. I can see how this happens. I never play any video game for 6 hours. I usually only try to fit in 1 hour in my work days. Also, some people constantly play first person shooter video games every time they play a video game. I do not do this. When I play video games, I play one game an hour a day and when I finish that game, I start playing another game. I usually try to avoid playing two first person shooter video games in a row. Maybe video games lead to violence because, people always play a first person shooter video game for a very long length of time every day. Maybe if more people could at least cut the amount of time they play such video games, their would not be as much violence from violent video games.

There are becoming more and more calls to have violent video game permanently banned because they lead to violence among people who play them. I disagree with these calls. All video games are rated. I feel that this is all that is needed. If people would take these ratings into consideration while they are playing the video games, there would not be as much violence resulting from violent video games. I feel this way because I do this all the time. If violent video games must be taken away from those who cannot handle them, the solution is not to take them away from everyone, even those to can handle them. One solution might be to put juveniles on probation from playing violent video games if they commit a violent crime. This might work as the majority of people who play violent video games are juveniles. Whatever action is taken, violent video games should not be banned from those to are cautious to what they see in these games.