Violent images 'blunt' emotional responses in teens - Study

The debate rages on about whether or not games are harmful or helpful. Last month, a study took the latter position, concluding that players of first-person shooters had improved decision-making skills. Today, though, a report comes out that takes a much dimmer view of games, and violent games in particular.

The study was performed by National Institute of Health researchers and published in the Oxford journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. It took 22 boys aged 14 to 17 and showed them four-second clips of violent scenes from 60 videos taken from television, games, and other electronic media. The clips were categorized into three types--low, mild, or moderate, with nothing deemed "extreme" being shown to the youths.

While the videos were being shown, their brains were being scanned with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, which monitored their brain functions. They also had electrodes attached to their non-dominant hands to measure moisture levels as they viewed the clips, since sweat can be a sign of stress.

The results? The lead researcher, Dr. Jordan Grafman, said that, "The important new finding is that exposure to the most violent videos [in the study] inhibits emotional reactions to similar aggressive videos over time and implies that normal adolescents will feel fewer emotions over time as they are exposed to similar videos."

The paper elaborated, explaining, "that aggressive media activates an emotion-attention network that has the capability to blunt emotional responses through reduced attention with repeated viewing of aggressive media content, which may restrict the linking of the consequences of aggression with an emotional response, and therefore potentially promotes aggressive attitudes and behavior."