Should Violent Video Games Be Banned? Playing Doesn't Affect Empathy

Playing violent video games like "Call of Duty" doesn’t affect empathy in the long run, according to scientists. Researchers compared a group of gamers' emotional responses to those of others who didn’t play frequently and found that their ability to empathize wasn’t hindered by violent video games.

Researchers at the Hannover Medical School in Germany studied a group of males who played first-person shooter video games for at least two hours daily for the past year. Those subjects were compared to another group of gamers who had not played violent video games or any video games on a regular basis.

Each participant underwent an MRI scan while being presented with images designed to produce an emotional response. They were also asked questions on various subjects to determine how empathetic their responses were. The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, found that there was no difference in levels of empathy between frequent gamers and non-gamers.

“The research question arises first from the fact that the popularity and the quality of video games are increasing,” Gregor Szycik, the study’s lead author, said in a press release. “Second, we were confronted in our clinical work with more and more patients with problematic and compulsive video game consumption.”

Szycik said what made the study different was that it dealt with long-term effects of violent video games, as opposed to immediate, short-term effects like many other previous studies.

Scientists have been studying the matter since the 1980s, though violence has become increasingly prevalent and more realistic in video games. A report issued in 2015 by the American Psychological Association found said that playing violent games was, in fact, linked to increased aggression. The APA called on the video game industry to design games with more parental control over the volume of aggression they contained.

More research was needed to confirm the study’s findings, Szycik said.

“We hope that the study will encourage other research groups to focus their attention on the possible long-term effects of video games on human behavior,” he said. “This study used emotionally provocative images. The next step for us will be to analyze data collected under more valid stimulation, such as using videos to provoke an emotional response.”