Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Video Games and Violence


I haven't read any detailed reports of this incident yet, but this post about a teacher (Kennet Santana) who tackled an armed student caught my attention, both because of the courageous actions of the teacher AND because the story was reported on a technology blog. The blogger wonders about possible connections between the students' actions and video game violence. Do you talk about this research in your classes? The discussion could fit well in either the social chapter (aggression section) or possibly in the developmental chapter (Kohlberg? Cognitive maturation?). The APA published a 2003 interview with Dr. Craig Anderson debunking myths about what psychologists know about the influence of video games on real-world violence which might be a good resource for helping students keep this discussion research based.

1 comment:

Steve Jones said...

Great post, Rob. I hadn't seen anything about this at all before I read this. And of course there's nothing here to link this to video game play other than the speculation of the Gizmodo writer. I'll be interested to follow this story as the interview the student.

On a related note, there was a local case in North Carolina where a jury just found a student guilty who had killed his father and then advanced to his high school intent on causing another Columbine. If anyone's interested, more of that story can be found here http://bit.ly/XvQwi