Recently in assignment #4 Category

                

Does Violent Video Games Lead to Aggression?

One emphasis in this course has been to introduce different approaches to experimental design, such as the discussion on the pros and cons of cross-sectional and longitudinal design in chapter 10, and teaching us to evaluate them critically.  All of the articles used for discussion last week had problems in their experimental designs and in the conclusions drawn from them,  but in particular the two discussing the connection  that playing violent video games causes aggressive behavior both short and long term, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201003/the-broad-view-research-video-games-and-aggression and   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525151059.htm ,were seriously flawed.

The first article discusses the use of Meta-Analysis to show us that video games cause aggression in players.  They discussed both correlational studies and longitudinal studies concluding that people who play violent video games become more aggressive.  While Meta-Analysis may be an improvement on other statistical approaches used to present an overview of the literature, the best criticism I found of it was "garbage in ... garbage out" www.stat-help.com/meta.pdf .  Combining badly controlled studies with poorly defined variables  only amplifies their inaccurate conclusions.  For instance, what defines a violent video game?  Does it need to contain blood; gore, killing etc. or does it just need to contain harm to a subject.  Does it need to involve realistic human characters or do fanciful abstract characters qualify.  Also, the definition of aggression is varied and vague while what constitutes an appropriate control need to be reevaluated.  Possibly a more appropriate control for "violent" video games would be any other competitive sport such as hockey, football etc. instead of the often used non-violent video game.  The topic of whether violent video games are beneficial or harmful is difficult to obtain a conclusive answer to when many of the studies are small with such varied set ups and read outs.

                  The variety of video games is larger than people may realize.  Depending on what you define as violent, you could say a lot of video games or very few are violent.  For example, games like Halo, F.E.A.R., Left4Dead are all very violent games in anyone's eyes, but they all contain characters that aren't real (ex. aliens and zombies) that most people are able to tell the difference from humans.  However, games like Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, and the Getaway are very violent games that contain blood and gore and involve realistic looking human people, while some games contain mild violence, such as World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Tekken.  Depending on how you define violence, it may be difficult to decide what games should be in the research designs discussed in the article.   Yet, often they are lumped together in a study as if World of Warcraft is comparable to Grand Theft Auto; trust me they're not.  Another thing to keep in mind is that people choose video games based on their personality, people who are aggressive may tend to play violent video games.  Therefore, recruiting the people for these experiments needs to be very carefully controlled for.

                The second article is a good example of the care that needs to be taken in what your read out is for a study, what you are measuring.  The researchers make the observation that people are desensitized to photos of violence as a result of video game playing and try to extrapolate this meaningless finding to a response to real life violent situation.  This gives people very little credit for being able to distinguish fantasy from reality.  People who love to watch horror movies hardly ever turn into psychotic killers as a result viewing them.  Much more thought should be put into the design of these experiments and they should be weighed carefully against the numerous benefits video games have to offer as both entertainment and education.   Quite frankly killing off Bambi's mother is probably more traumatizing to children than most video games.    

 

In the textbook it talked about the affects of divorce on children. Some studies showed that divorce may have an affect on children. This demonstrates the principle of causation vs. correlation. It is not known whether children act out of character before the parents were divorced as opposed to after. My parents are divorced and I believe that divorce does have an affect on children. It is a hard situation for anyone to overcome. The article below believes that divorce doesn't necessarily have an impact on children, but in some cases it may.

I grew up with a little brother who watched violent TV shows day after day. He would play video games that involved beating up another character, and he would play with action figures in violent ways. But this is as far as my brother's aggression goes in his every day life.
I remember watching Barney, and the Teletubbies in daycare and I always thought they were boring shows. Of course they taught a kind lesson, but they weren't as engaging as the action television shows my brother was interested in. Therefore, I started watching the same shows, playing the same games, and interacting with my brother's "violent" play.
I personally do not think that viewing this material makes a child want to be violent in real life. I think they can tell the different between what they see on the TV, and what they see on the playground. They may pretend to be like their favorite super hero who fights crime, but to that extent only, if they are guided the right direction by their parents. Parenting has a lot to do with how kids see the world. If a mom or dad teaches their child right from wrong, they can see what is right and wrong in a violent television show, and they will know not to portray the violent actions in their every day life, because of what their "mommy" told them. However, I think if a parent chooses to teach their child about violence, that's all they will know. If they are taught to stick up for themselves in a violent way, they might be the one to actually use what they see on TV shows on the playground, and either hurt themselves, or worse, someone else.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101214112031.htm
This study supports that violent video games do not cause violence in children. It simply states that there are far too many factors that can cause a child to be violent, one being depression. If a child is having troubles with too many things at one time, they may lash out in violence as their way of dealing with it. But playing the violent video games didn't have a correlation with the violence they were involved in 12 months later.

     Dating is not as romantic as it sounds, from what we have learned in the past few weeks. It can actually be manufactured, that is, it can be altered by some research results and scientific methods.  There are several useful terms that can be used before attending or arranging a date. Proximity means people are more easily to be attracted by those who are sharing the same physical traits, for example, living in the same country or state. Similarity is people who might be more attracted to each other if they share the same religion, education, social class or behavior style. Reciprocity means that during the date, if one side is receiving some type of positive messages, they might need to show the same thing back in order to get this relationship continuing smoothly.
     

     I actually find this topic interesting so after the discussion session I have searched for related information. I have found a funny article named "Valentine's Day dating tips from lovestruck scientists". There are seven doable tips for people who are going to date. "Wear red" is one of them. According to the article, "red is hypothesised to serve as an aphrodisiac for men because it carries the meaning of sex and romance" while "women also preferred men wearing red clothes, or in front of red backgrounds." Although I may never know what would be the exact underlying reason, it could be worth trying the trick for the next date.

     Dating is a large portion in human's life because that is the foundation of building a family. If getting married is the final, then every date is the test. Therefore, the purpose of the scientific method is to help people to get a higher score on the test. Check  it out, maybe that is how the romance starts. 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/feb/14/valentines-day-dating-tips-scientists

Many times in our textbook, our authors compare different psychological concepts in eastern society and western society. In this chapter, the example is used that four-day-old infants with sheets placed over their heads. American babies fought to take have the sheet taken off, but Japanese babies were less likely to fight. This chapter gives a word to the differences of societies: western societies have individualistic cultures, and eastern societies have collectivist cultures. Among other things, in general, I think of individualistic cultures with having a higher income inequality than collectivist cultures. This is because individualistic cultures value achievement and independence, while collectivist cultures value group harmony.

Intuitively, a hardworking society where people cooperate but also compete is better than a society that exclusively competes. Don't get me wrong - I believe in capitalism. But working together, perhaps reducing our income inequality, could help our society.

As I researched this subject, I realized that this intuition is based in fact.
As income inequality increases, the following get worse: life expectancy, math & literacy, infant mortality, homicides, imprisonment, teenage births, trust, obesity, mental illness, and social mobility. This holds true both among countries and among states in the USA.

I especially like how the speaker in this video, Richard Wilkinson, mentions that based on how low social mobility is compared to other countries, Americans hoping to live the American dream should move to Denmark. Social mobility is a measure of how much your father's income matters on how much you will make. A high social mobility means that children's income is not necessarily based on how much the parents make.

A higher income inequality nation will have people that are more preoccupied with superiority and inferiority. People will worry more about how they are seen by others; fear of judgement increases. All the data in this video aren't picked and chosen. All the data in this video is all the data available from any country that has recorded these measures.

One of our themes is causation vs. correlation. While this can be argued, the highest driving factor seems to be income inequality. I'm sure some bidirectional arrows can be drawn, but reducing our income inequality would almost surely result in a better society.

"An egg can be cooked by placing it between two activated cell phones."

According to the Lilienfeld text, the facial feedback hypothesis is a theory that we our likely to feel the same emotions that our face is showing. Robert Zajonc hypothesized that when we are making faces that show emotions such as smiling or frowning, those positions change the temperature in our face. These temperature changes "feedback" information to the brain which changes our mood to the corresponding facial feature. 

  Violence in respect to development is an interesting and debatable issue. Christopher Nave of University of California, Riverside authored a study that looked at changes in personality over decades. The people were originally tested back in the 1960's and were rechecked after 40 years. The general results indicate that the core of the personality is formed by as early as 1st grade. This would suggest that violence and aggression shown to children after their personality has formed will have a smaller impact than on those who are still forming their personalities.
  In class we talked about a young age group, those of about 4 years of age, specifically in the video we watched. In most of the reports that we were required to read for class, see
WK #9: DEV on the class blackboard learning system, the subjects were between 10-14 or considered to be young adults. Using Piaget's theory of cognitive development as a general outline as well as simple observation we can tell that what people are going through and learning are vastly different at these alternate points in development. Young adults are also starting to mature and enter puberty, and these are bound to have an additional impact.

  A specific incarnation of plasticity of the mind is suggested by the article The broad view of research on video games and aggression. Simply stated, the more violence and aggression a person sees the less of an affect it will have on them. Does this make a person more likely to commit aggressive acts on other people in society? To this I submit another article that was required for class, Could Violent Video Games Reduce Rather Than Increase Violence? This article shows data that suggests that this transition does not occur.

  The findings show that video games and tv shows can increase aggressive behavior. However, there is insufficient evidence to show at which age ranges it is most likely to produce an individual that will commit more aggressive actions against others. As children are in the early stages of development I would predict that there would be a greater change in their brains than in those of young adults for each hour watched. There are fewer frames of reference for younger audiences, such as it is alright to shoot fictional characters in a video game but not a real person, versus the learning to prepare for the world ahead that toddlers and young children are likely incur regardless of which show that they are watching. From this, I would hypothesis that children that watch violent acts(from tv, video games, role models) while young would be more likely to play violent video games than children that watch a consistently smaller number of violent acts because their formed world view suggests that aggression is more heavily required skill.

  If there have been studies that relate to this suggestion please let me know!

    The Mozart effect is about the supposed enhancement in intelligence after listening to classical music. When this idea appeared, this led to many parents to expose their children to classical music in hopes to achieve what the effect is supposed to do. Some findings show that the Mozart Effect is nothing but a parsimonious explanation for increased "intelligence" because of a boost in short-term arousal. Other findings show that the effect is nothing but a coincidence. Many began to be skeptical to this effect so scientists began to challenge the idea.  

http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/violence/effects_media_violence.cfm

     Some children experience separation anxiety when a parent leaves them in the care of another.  This phenomenon begins after the child masters the idea of object permanence; that something exists even when he/she cannot see it.  Once the child understands that Mom is gone from view, and I miss her and want her back, the crying begins. 

     I have two children, dissimilar in many ways.  The second is a boy, easy-going, happy, and has never cried when left in the care of someone else.  He is thrilled with every new situation he encounters, and has virtually no anxiety.  My eldest child is a girl, tightly-wound, uneasy in strange situations, and happy but anxious at times.  I have extensive experience with the onset of separation anxiety, because from the age of 15 months until age 3, she cried every time I left her.  Whether I went to the gym, out with friends, or even to the grocery store, the receiving caregiver had a tough job ahead.  My husband was in the military, which meant that he was gone a lot.  We lived far from family, so there were no weekly visits with Grandma to keep her from being afraid to let me leave.  The two of us were together 24 hours per day, and she didn't have to worry about being away from me.  However, once I did start leaving her again, she had developed a sense of where I was (or wasn't!), and she definitely had something to say about it.

     I used to loathe leaving her, because I could hear her crying, and felt guilty.  However, according to "The Strange Situation" (Ainsworth, et al., 1978) outlined on page 386 of our textbook, it seems that her behavior upon my departure was somewhat normal.  Whenever I returned, she was elated and showered me with affection.  She was the classic example of secure attachment, which makes this mother feel relieved.  My son's reaction might be more worrysome according to Attachment Theory, that he wasn't sad to let me leave.  However, he was just so happy and flexible, that he too was well-adjusted, but doesn't fit into the 4 attachment categories in our text.  He was thrilled upon my return as well; he just fared better in my absence than did his sister.  Kids can be so different from each other, even when they have the same two parents.  Many things factor into the differences (gender, birth order, parenting styles, personalities), and an outcome of the differences that is easy to see is the difference in manifestations of separation anxiety.

 

            There has always been the myth that people of different backgrounds are attracted to different physical traits when searching for mates. This seems to make sense because of the differences of physical preferences within and across cultures. According to the Lilienfeld text, African American men tend to find women with a large body size more physically attractive than men of European cultures. However, this is only partially true because many studies have shown that people tend to agree at significantly higher than chance levels about who is, and isn't, physically attractive. The way that researchers prove that physical attractiveness is programmed into our brains upon birth, is by studying the behaviors of infants. Studies have shown that babies less than one week old will stare longer at adults who are considered attractive by other adults. These babies have not developed manners or experienced cultural influences, so they are incredibly hedonistic and will stare at what they find to be the most appealing. This is proof that standards of physical appearance are innate, meaning they exist since birth.

           

            A better understanding of the innate nature of physical attractiveness standards will help us understand social influences on interpersonal attraction between people of different cultural backgrounds. It teaches us that friendship, dating, and mate choices aren't random, but rather rely on attraction levels between people. By understanding that these standards are innate, we can comprehend and predict interpersonal interactions.

            

Growing up in a high school of diverse cultural backgrounds, I have seen many intercultural relationships first hand. Anecdotal evidence provided by these experiences usually supports the findings stated in the article. My friends and I would almost always agree on the attractiveness of girls, regardless of their cultural backgrounds. However, I do not believe that attractiveness completely relies on physical characteristics. Social behavior must play a role in attractiveness, leaving me wonder if the different behaviors of people of different cultures could change the interest level of mates. If this were true, it could be claimed that overall attractiveness is in the opinion of the beholder because culturally different norms and behaviors could also define attractiveness.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200804/all-stereotypes-are-true-except-ii-beauty-is-in-the-eye-th

The development of sexual orientation has been a long time issue among psychologists.  Every person has different views on why people choose the sexual orientation they do.  Whether a person decides to be gay or straight is up to them, but most of them don't even realize why they are attracted specifically to a certain gender.  There are some people that are even ashamed of their sexual orientation.
Attached is an article that I found that really breaks down what psychologists have found out about where and even when decisions about sexual orientation start.  Decisions about sexual orientation may even begin without the person knowing, or subconsciously. 
Psychologists have come up with a model about the development of homosexual identity, and it is broken down into four stages.  I will just touch base on each of the stages, if you would like to know the full details you may read the article.  The stages break down as follows; stage 1:sensitization, stage 2: identity confusion, stage 3: identity assumption, and stage 4: commitment.  This stage model expresses that the first stage can be achieved as early as before puberty, with the others following during adolescence. 
I found this interesting because I feel like it could maybe help some people who are confused about their sexual orientation understand at least where it is coming from.

Link:  Development of Sexual Orientation
www.education.com/reference/article/development-sexual-orientation/

In 1993, an article in the journal Nature reported a fascinating discovery: if college students listened to a Mozart piano sonata for ten minutes, instead of a relaxation tape or no sound at all, they performed significantly better on a spatial reasoning task. From this seemingly unremarkable beginning, the Mozart Effect--the supposition that listening to classical music makes your children smarter--was born.

 

Appealing as this remarkable finding might sound to parents desperate to help their children get ahead in this competitive world, it has serious drawbacks when we consider the principles of critical thinking. First off, the study was conducted on college students, not babies or children; for the findings of the original study to apply to boosting babies' intelligence without testing any babies, researchers would have to find extraordinary evidence to support such an extraordinary claim. Replicability was also an issue: later researchers found the results of the original Mozart Effect study almost impossible to replicate, and those who could replicate it found that listening to Mozart barely increased IQ scores and lasted virtually no time at all. Finally, studies conducted in years following the Mozart Effect study found a simpler explanation for the study's findings. Listening to Mozart had the same effect on a later study's participants as listening to a scary story: it increased mental alertness, and improved their spatial reasoning ability, but not for long, and not in such a way that it improved their overall IQ.

 

In the case of the Mozart Effect, the principles of critical thinking have revealed that the extraordinary claims it makes do not have extraordinary supporting evidence, that the findings have been almost impossible to replicate, and that Occam's Razor has revealed a simpler explanation: that being alert helps spatial reasoning. However, this hasn't stopped The Mozart Effect from spawning a huge baby-genius-creating industry, nor has it stopped humorists from wondering about what would happen if the Mozart Effect applied to other composers.

 

Lilienfeld, Scott. Pyschology - From Inquiry to Understanding. Custom Edition for the University of Minnesota. Boston, MA: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2010. Print.

Even after our discussion on violent media I was still a bit unconvinced as to the scope of impact it has. The article I found to be most convincing was found in Psychology Today and was titled "The broad view of research on video games and aggression."  This article is written by a blogger named Art Markman and in my opinion he does the best job of presenting a holistic view of the issue of all the articles we were supposed to read. Markman begins his discussion of the issue by summarizing how psychological studies work and some of the biases that may be a part of the results. I was intrigued to hear that one of the biggest biases comes from using the meta-analysis technique. Meta-analysis scours published literature looking for well designed studies addressing a common question. These studies are then analyzed to present a broader understanding of the question. Where the bias comes in is that of the published data, the studies that show a correlation are more likely to get published than those that show no connections. Thus of the published data, most of it leans towards correlations even when there may be other studies which contradict this.

                Markman then focused on a March 2010 study by Craig Anderson, Brad Bushman, and others which was a meta-analysis study focusing on 380 studies that involved over 130,000 participants. The general conclusion of the analysis showed that violent video games increase aggressive behaviors both in the short and long term. It also indicated that aggressiveness was triggered in both men and women. And looking at different cultures, Americans as opposed to Japanese were more affected in the long term.

                Based on this study I would say that "Yes" violent video games to trigger more aggression because this finding isn't based on just on study but on multiple. I do have some concern about the method the data was collected and it would put me at ease if another meta-analytical study was done to incorporate the un-published studies.  Also, I would like to have seen a more comparison of the yes and no studies to see why they decided there was a correlation even though there is contradictory evidence out there.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201003/the-broad-view-research-video-games-and-aggression