Legal Niches

Study: Playing Violent Games Impacts Attitude towards Crime

By pete_gallagher

Inspired by a plotline from the 2003 movie Runaway Jury, University of Southern California researcher Kwan Min Lee, and associates, conducted research under the title 'Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People's Judgments of Violent Crimes?'

The inspiring scene from Runaway Jury involved 'the lawyer for a defendant accused of committing a violent shooting tried to have a hardcore video game player selected as a member of the jury.' The lawyer carried the belief that a hardcore gamer would judge the shooter less negatively because of 'similar, though virtual,' experiences.

52 undergrads were involved in the study—who had never played the game used in the experiment (True Crime)—and were randomly assigned to either a game-playing group or a control group. The game-playing group was tasked with playing True Crime for 2 hours.
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Full post as published by GamePolitics.com on June 02, 2010 (boomark / email).