Do Violent Media Make Viewers Comfortably Numb?
A few people have been sending in the news of a recently published study from two professors who have a long history of publishing anti-video game research. The study looked at how people reacted to staged violence after playing violent and non-violent video games — and the “headline” version of the results of the study is that violent media makes viewers “comfortably numb” to the pain of others. That’s the story being pitched by the professor. Basically, the story is that those who watched violent movies or played violent video games responded to the staged violence slower than those that interacted with non-violent media. Except… the more you think about it and the more you look at the details the less this seems interesting. The speed with which people respond to a staged violent incident (and for the first part of the video game trials, the researchers admit that many subjects admitted they didn’t believe the staged fight seemed real, so they had to make it seem “more real”) isn
