Each time a mass shooting occurs in the United States, people try to determine the cause or lay the blame. This process follows script. Some blame the guns. Those who love guns offer thoughts and prayers while saying, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Some make the rounds to discuss whatever “theory” they are currently selling. Those who study the workings of the mind present their latest theories. And, of course, there is the ritual blaming of violent video games and violent movies.
While I have written often about video games, movies and violence I have my own small part in the scripted play as I am writing about them again.
The Platonic form of the argument for the corrupting power of art is, of course, Plato’s case that poetry can corrupt the soul and cause people to give in to lust, anger and humor in ways that they should not. In the case of mass shootings, the idea is the same: exposure to violent content in video games and movies is alleged to cause people to engage in real violence, such as a mass shooting at a movie theater or school.
The idea that violent video games and movies can affect people is not implausible. In fact, I have two standard arguments for this. First, repeated exposure to fictional violence can condition a person to it as normal. People build their concept of normal based partially on what they often experience. So, if fictional violence becomes a normal part of a person’s life, it makes sense they might become desensitized or accustomed to violence and more likely to give in to violent impulses. Censoring such violence, one can argue, would reduce the exposure to virtual violence and they would presumably be less likely to be violent.
My second standard argument is based on the idea that violence of movies and games is a curriculum of virtual violence teaching that violence is an effective and acceptable solution to problems. Popular video games such as the Halo series and World of Warcraft are focused on violence, albeit in the context of science fiction and fantasy. There are also popular first-person shooters, such as the Call of Duty series, that involve violence against virtual humans rather than aliens and orcs. There is also the infamous Grand Theft Auto series of games in which you play a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons. In the case of movies, violence can abound. Given the lessons taught by these movies and games, it is reasonable to think people exposed to them might be more inclined to choose violence, perhaps in emulation of the games or movies. As such, perhaps some blame can be placed on video games and movies.
While a reasonable case can be made to be suspicious of violent video games and movies, the extent of the influence must be determined by working out if there is a causal connection.
Obviously, exposure to violent movies or games is not a necessary condition for a violent behavior. A necessary causal condition is a condition that is required for the effect to occur and without the necessary condition, what it is necessary for cannot be the case. For example, the presence of oxygen is a necessary causal condition for human life.
While humans have been engaging in violence since there have been humans, movies and video games are recent inventions. As such, exposure to them cannot be a necessary cause of violence. If they were necessary for violence, there would have been no violence until they were invented.
Naturally, it could be claimed that any violent art (such as the Odyssey) or violent games (like chess) can cause people to be violent, and these are old. However, the obvious counter is that humans were killers before they were artists and gamers.
Equally obvious is that violent movies or video games are not a sufficient cause of violence. A sufficient causal condition is such that it will bring about its effect by itself. For example, decapitating a human is sufficient to cause death.
Millions of people (including me and many of my friends) have played violent video games without ever having engaged in acts of significant violence, such as murder or mass murder. Also, billions of people have seen violent movies without engaging in such violence. As such, exposure to violent movies or video games is not a sufficient condition. Otherwise the world would resemble Hobbes’ state of nature.
As might be imagined, sensible people do not claim that such exposure is a necessary or sufficient cause of violence. However, there are other types of causal connections.
One plausible causal connection is that video games and movies are a contributory cause. That is, exposure is one more straw on the camel’s back. On this view, seeing such virtual violence would not cause someone to be. However, it contributes to the person’s tendency towards violence and is a causal factor. As might be imagined, determining the weight of a contributory cause can be challenging—especially if the contribution is weak.
Sorting out such weak casual factors usually requires large scale studies (or experiments). In such cases, the goal is to determine the effect of the alleged cause on the population in question. When talking about causation in a population, the bar is set low (but sensibly so). To claim that cause C causes effect E in population P is to say that there would be more cases of effect E in population P if every member of P were exposed to C than if none were so exposed. This does make sense. After all, if C does bring about a difference, even a tiny one, it would be a causal factor.
On the face of it, it is not implausible to claim that exposing everyone on the planet to violent video games or violent movies would result in some (more than zero) increase in violence. However, this is no doubt true of many other things—even seemingly innocuous things like cookies or Taylor Swift’s music.
Even if it is assumed that such exposure can have a causal role in violence, there is an obvious concern about the extent of the casual role and to what extent (if any) this warrants controlling people’s exposure to these violent movies and video games.
As noted above, people who were never exposed to violent video games or movies have engaged in violence over the centuries. Also, most people who have been exposed to violent video games or movies have not engaged in unusual acts of violence. As such, the causal connection (if there is one) seems extremely weak.
Since such exposure could play a causal role, it might be tempting to censor violent works. After all, reducing the chance of violence might be worth infringing on the freedom of expression and the freedom of consumption.
Obviously, human societies tolerate harmful things based on the perceived benefits of those things. For example, although tens of thousands of people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States alone, we tolerate these deaths because of the alleged benefits of cars. As another example, we allow drugs with terrible side effects to be legally sold presumably because of their benefits. We also tolerate war because of the alleged benefits. We do, of course, ban some things because of the harm they do (or could do). For example, people usually cannot legally sell contaminated food. As a silly example, I cannot legally own biochemical weapons.
Sorting through the various things that are banned or illegal, it seems we are generally willing to tolerate great harm provided that there are some benefits (typically involving profits). Consistency would, of course, require us to apply the same principle to violent movies and violent video games.
As such, one way to look at the matter is to imagine that violent movies and video games were pharmaceuticals, foods or automobiles and apply the same standards used to assess whether these should be banned.
As noted above, billions of people are exposed to violent video games or movies. These people typically enjoy them and most of them seem unharmed. In fact, people seem to be far more danger from the junk food they typically eat and drink while watching movies or playing video games. They are, obviously, vastly less dangerous than automobiles in terms of deaths caused—even if we assume that movies and games cause people to behave violently. Video games and movies are also big money makers.
Violent video games and movies also seem to have fewer negative side effects than many legal medications—even those sold without prescriptions. Also, there are reasonable grounds to believe that people can, as Aristotle argued, experience emotional catharsis by being exposed to the arts. As such, while some people might experience negative side effects from such exposure, other people might be “medicating” themselves by exhausting their violent impulses in art rather than reality.
As such, if censoring video games and movies would be warranted because of the alleged harm, then consistency would require that we also ban many other things that are clearly far more dangerous. After all, if the goal is to prevent harm and death, it hardly matters whether those who die do so because of a bullet, a car, a pill, or a Big Gulp.
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