Trained To Kill David Grossman Analysis

A ponderous medium of media is video games in co-relation to violence. Video games encourage violent behavior in children as they are at a crucial stage of adaptation.

By conditioning the soldiers, they are able to kill other humans with relative ease. “Just as the army is conditioning people to kill, we are indiscriminately doing the same thing to our children, but without the safeguards” (Grossman 2). Grossman claims that media desensitizes the children to violence, and kids often associate it with pleasurable things, making violence not so bad to them. However, as Michael Zarozinski puts it, “Any image that you are exposed to repeatedly will desensitize you to it. Simply being desensitized to violence will not lead to violent behavior. It simply makes one think less of violence when it does occur and can lead to people overestimating their chances of involvement in violence” (1). Regardless, Grossman continues by saying that “When people are frightened or angry, they will do what they have been conditioned to do” (4). He claims that by kids playing games, learning to repeatedly point and shoot, these children are being subjected to operant conditioning and will shoot others when cornered. Grossman gives the example of a murder case in South Carolina. A couple of kids were robbing a convenience store, and the defendant shot the clerk reflexively without consciously deciding to. Grossman says this is due to the fact that the kid played too many video games, conditioning himself to shoot instinctively. The obvious flaw in this logic is that the kid must be in a situation where shooting someone is a viable option.

Some scholars argue however that violence in television, films and video games has in fact the opposite effect. As individuals become ‘saturated’ with violence, it can lead to a catharsis where videogames, television and films become a safe outlet to for aggressive feelings and emotions; as a result, individuals become less violent. Naturally, this argument goes against the idea that children are highly influenced by modelled behaviour as they try to replicate what they see (Freedman 2001). The influence of video games is therefore highly complex to resolve. Poole (2000) therefore argues that videogames may simply be part of many factors that lead to violent behaviour. Videogames as films and television may influence real life violence by having a particular style that is imitated. Pool argues that it is possible that the teenage murderers in America may have imitated the way in which people are killed in the video game Doom, however it is not possible to say that without playing the game they would not have killed their classmates. Research conducted in America reiterates this statement,

The author wants me to believe that Dr. Jay Grossman is perfect and is the best dentist. I say this because even though the claim is implied, the author still provides several reasons as to why readers should choose him as their specified dentist.

Many people agree with the statement that through the media in movies, television shows, and video games, showing violence affects the youth. Even though many agree, some have different opinions of explaining their reasoning behind their thoughts. Grossman is a great example because his reasoning comes from a lot of his personal experiences from a lot of different kind of training from the military. He believes his experiences from classical conditioning is connected to the classical conditioning that the youth experience. Grossman states, “adolescents in movie theaters across the nation, and watching television at home, are seeing the detailed, horrible suffering and killing of human beings, and they are learning to associate this killing a suffering with entertainment”

Savage and Yancey had noticed that while there had been numerous studies on whether video games increase aggression to their peers, no one had tested whether or not they affected criminal tendencies in teens and young adults. After exposing them to a violent television show, the kids were made to take a test to see if violent tendencies were displayed later. Once it was all said and done the results pointed to there not being any correlation with criminality and violent media consummation. (Savage, Yancey 16-17)

General Marshall’s observations revealed that there are two groups of combat soldiers who don’t perform as expected; one being those who intentionally miss, while the other never even fired their weapon. (Marshal 23) As a disclaimer to explain away some of the second group, during an engagement it might not always be a tactical choice to fire one’s weapon. A soldier might accidentally hit his own units, reveal his position, be unable to make a clear enough shot, or be facing suppressive fire from the enemy. (Dark) In the context of the study the second group is looked at over the entire campaign, rather than firefight by firefight. A prime cinematic example of a soldier who can’t fire his weapon comes from the war film The Big Red One where one of the best marksmen in the division during training cannot bring himself to pull the trigger once in combat. This fear of killing sounds absolutely ludicrous for a soldier, but I’ve seen it myself. During combat exercises we were loaded out with real weapons that fired simunition, essentially a paintball projected by gunpowder. In the beginning of the training exercise, not too many people were thrilled about getting shot, as it hurt quite a lot. Most people would take cover and refuse to leave, others would wildly fire about, hoping the aggressors would become discouraged. After several tries at this, nearly all of us got used to the idea of being shot at, and shooting back. It simply stopped bothering us so much. Advanced training

Are violent video games directly correlated to teen violence? This is the burning question many researchers are dedicated to answering. The common form of the question is “Is the increase in violence in games creating killer kids?” The simple answer is no. Instead the opposite has occurred, as games became more violent, the players became calmer. The games create a “safe” outlet for any anger or angst that young people possess. Crime rates in the teen population have lowered and violent teens admit to having little to no interest in violent video games. The games that most people fear are destroying the youth may actually be one of the things helping them grow and become “normal” members in society.

In their research of violent videogames and the effect on children, they have found that “the simplistic belief that exposure to media violence will lead directly to individual violence is clearly wrong.” (Kutner, Olsen, 2008) I am going to ask you to look deeper than this. I assert that although violent video games are thought to encourage real world violence, they actually help to prevent it.

There are indicators that links playing violent video games to increasing aggression in young people. Teenagers who are expose to violent games are more supposable to increase the likelihood of experiencing aggressive thoughts, in which turns into the likelihood of engaging in physical aggression against another person. Furthermore, violent video games produce an emotional desensitization to aggression and violence to the youth (Anderson). Based on the observation teenagers are exposed to when they are playing violent video games, they will reenact almost immediately in real life if the situational contact is sufficiently similar to the ones in the games. Therefore, consumption of violent video games produces negative behaviors that are controlled by negative

In another study, researchers observed whether operant conditioning could take place from exposure to violence in video games (Carnagey & Anderson, 2005).

“On the other hand, considering a specific violent video game may have the reverse effect and actually reduce perceptions of negative effects if it is difficult to generate arguments for negative effects of the specific game” (Ivory, Kalyanaraman 4). Although you may believe that violent video games increase the youth violence rates, in actuality some violent video games can have separate effects on youth depending on the child for instance, one child could become more violent whereas another child will not have the urge to be violent.

On average, an American encounters approximately 200,000 violent acts before the age of eighteen. However, these exposures do not influence an individual to exhibit violence. Concerns regarding whether television and video game brutality has a negative effect on the public by promoting cruelty, dates back to the 1950’s and is still prevalent today. Studies and research conducted on the issue are unable to prove that the two variables have any correlation to each other. In fact, statistics demonstrate how the amount of violent crimes has decreased significantly throughout time, despite the growing video game popularity. Lastly, in society, people look for anything to transfer the blame, especially in regards to a situation that may threaten an individual’s community. As a matter of fact, by reviewing the extensive research the conclusion was drawn stating, exposure has no effect on barbarity. Therefore, television and video game ferocity does not have a negative effect on the population.

When we talk about juvenile violence in the 1990’s, we must remember the scenario. Violent teens were all over the place and the number of murders committed by teenagers had nearly doubled in the past ten years and even politicians were freaking out a little warning about how violent teens were going to take over society (Regoli, Hewitt, and Delsi, 2014). Okay, maybe it was not that dramatic, but it was a scary time. Between 1996-1999 there were at least ten school shootings (Bartol and Bartol, 2014). However, could violent video games and movies be enough to provoke violent behavior from the juveniles engaged in them? Social learning theory has been referenced countless times by theorists trying to understand where people learn behavioral habits and morals from, and I do not think this is any different. I believe that having so many negative influences constantly expressing violent behavior could be enough to contribute to violent thoughts that lead into violent actions. However, I do not believe that the mere presence of violence in the media is enough to promote someone to be violent in school. Like mentioned above in question one, we cannot link behavior back to one cause. But, even as recently as 2013, 77% of parents blame violent video games being the root cause of violent behavior (Freeman). Our text references multiple studies about whether violence in the media causes violent adolescents, but the final determination is that it can promote aggressive

As evidence has shown, children view many violent scenes while watching television, movies, or playing video games, but the question still remains: What psychological effect does violence in the media have on children? Research over the past 10 years has consistently shown that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between media violence and real-life aggression (Strasburger 129). Violence in the media can lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the various programs. Of course, not all children who watch television, or movies, or play video games develop aggressive behavior. However, there is a strong correlation between media violence and aggressive behavior. A study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry, examined how children's television viewing practices are related to aggressive behaviors. The results revealed that children who reported watching greater amounts of television per day had higher levels of violent behavior than children who reported lesser amounts of television viewing (Singer 1041). Witnessing violence is an important determining factor in violent behavior. The media serves as a means for children to witness violence. According to Bandura's Social Learning Theory, children imitate behavior that they see on television, especially if the person performing the behavior is attractive or if the