back in 2012 there was a study done by a
PhD candidate at Brock University on
whether video games affected empathy
this was a fairly small study done with
a hundred and nine eighth-grade students
I have some issues with a study what it
actually shows is a correlation between
video games and lack of empathy rather
than causation and I think it's a little
hasty to jump to certain conclusions
kids in the study who said they liked
violent video games more than any other
kind showed less empathy than other
children but I'm willing to bet that
people who say I like really violent
books or movies or TV shows probably
also register less empathy than those
that don't
it seems as reasonable to me to draw the
conclusion that less empathetic people
tends to like more violent games as it
is to draw the conclusion that violent
games make people less empathetic still
I don't want to beat up on the
researcher I think the study was done in
good faith and it's even titled violent
video game playing moral reasoning and
attitudes toward violence in adolescents
is there a connection highlighting that
it's a study of correlation rather than
causation even if that line gets a
little bit blurry in the conclusions
they draw at the end but for some reason
over the last few months this study has
come up again and again
with BBC articles featuring titles like
violent video games leave teens morally
immature and be DRS fabulously titled
researchers playing too much GTA
actually can make you a sociopath in
fact it seems like the BBC gloss of this
study has been making the rounds James
has been asked about it at conferences
and confronted with it when speaking
with politicians but for all that it's
not really this study that I want to
talk about today I've already covered my
issues with it and I think anybody doing
even a cursory reading of the study
itself will find that it doesn't in any
way show or really even attempt to show
a direct causal link between violent
video games and a lack of empathy in
fact if that's an argument you really
want to make there are other more robust
studies that you could turn to although
I think the conclusions they draw are
also debatable what I actually want to
talk about today is rather the gaping
hole the glaring absence that always
seems so blindingly clear when such
studies are brought up and that's where
are all the studies on the positive
effects of games on empathy almost
anybody who's played video games for an
extended period of time can relate at
least one empathetic experience they've
had
within the game we can almost all point
to a time when a game made us better
understand the pain that we'd perhaps
never felt in our lives and how that
helped us be more sensitive to other
suffering from that pain and that's the
magical thing about games they let us
walk a mile in somebody else's shoes
they let us take on a life that we'd
never actually be able to experience in
this world and in doing so helped us
understand a little bit about it James
once told me about this memory he had
playing Final Fantasy 4 as a young kid
when Palamon poram died at that point he
had never lost anybody in his life he
remembered wanting them back trying
everything he could to get them out of
that stone but nothing he did could ever
bring them back and as silly as it
sounds in a tiny way he understood he
could feel compassion for friends of his
who had lost somebody in a way that he
hadn't been able to before more recently
he was playing cart life and he
remembered seeing that his character was
hungry using his traditional video game
logic he thought oh I'll just open up
the map and it'll tell me where I can go
to find food but when he opened up the
map there was nothing just a map in a
language that he could barely read he
had only a few dollars in his pocket he
didn't know where to get a decent cheap
meal or how to take public
transportation
he couldn't even really ask anybody
because of the language barrier that
moment stopped him
it made him empathize on an instinctual
level with something that he had only
before really sympathized with on an
intellectual one or even just a few
weeks back he was playing this war of
mine and one of his characters was out
scavenging and he heard a conversation
happening between a soldier and a young
woman on the other side of the door he
overheard the soldier threatening the
woman coercing her into sex he stood on
the other side of the door undetected
unnoticed his first thought was that he
could try to rush in and try to save her
his second thought was that he only had
a shovel and that he had left three
people at home who were depending on him
to bring back food and medicine if he
let the soldier drag off this woman and
rape her he could almost certainly
ensure that his little surrogate family
would live for a few more days gathering
the supplies they so desperately needed
while the soldier was distracted by this
terrible act this choice wrecked James
he had to put the game down for a while
all of a sudden he better understood
people trapped in these desperate
situations circumstances didn't appear
so black and white as they had before he
is forever thankful that he hasn't
experienced anything like that in his
life
and of course his understanding of the
horror and the suffering of even having
to make such a choice is still miniscule
but it helped bring about in him empathy
and understanding
so while study is like the Barack
University one are bandied about to
defend the idea that video games strip
us of our empathy I'd like to raise the
question where are the other studies
where are the studies asking whether
video games can make us more empathetic
where are the studies asking just in
some small fraction whether living
somebody else's life rather than simply
seeing it on a screen or reading about
it on a page might in fact be even more
beneficial in helping us to understand
one another if any of you out there
happen to be PhD students or professors
and looking for research to do I'd like
to gently nudge you in this direction
and if any of you have done such studies
please please send them our way
we'll see you guys next week