Resolves once we have better sociological and psychological data and there's a decent consensus.
Some argue that playacting at violence can get them into a habit of resolving disputes that way, or that seeing graphic scenes desensitizing them and makes them less averse to causing such things themselves, or that movie hereos using violence glorifies it. Others argue that perhaps violence in media could deceases a person's chance of committing violence, by satisfying their violent urges in a fictional setting, or letting them see how horrible the aftermath is. Or maybe it just doesn't matter.
If there's a difference between specifics, I'll resolve based on the overall effect. e.g. if video games increase violence but movies have no effect, I'll resolve to "increases violence". If movies increase the chance but video games decrease it in about equal measure, I'll resolve to "no effect".
This is about the causal effect, not correlation. If people who are violent in real life are more likely to enjoy violent games because that's what they're used to, that doesn't matter.
Related questions
@EvanDaniel Like, it distracts them from crime for 2 hours, then their rate goes back to normal? I guess that's technically a decrease, and it is measurable, but it's so minor that it would be easy to counterbalance with some other minor effect leading to an increase.
@IsaacKing Yes, precisely that. There's some data that crime rates drop on big opening weekends (but I don't know how good it is / whether it replicates). If true, I'd expect you'd see similar effects from video game releases.
@EvanDaniel Well it will only count for this market if the drop is steeper for violent movies than nonviolent ones. If the criminals enjoy all movies equally, that doesn't count.
@IsaacKing Yep, that's what I assumed.
The estimated effect of exposure to violent movies is small in the morning or afternoon
hours (6AM-6PM), when movie attendance is minimal. In the evening hours (6PM-12AM),
instead, we detect a significant negative effect on crime. For each million people watching a
strongly or mildly violent movie, respectively, violent crimes decrease by 1.3 and 1.1 percent.
The effect is smaller and statistically insignificant for non-violent movies. In the nighttime
hours following the movie showing (12AM-6AM), the delayed effect of exposure to movie
violence is even more negative. For each million people watching a strongly or mildly violent
movie, respectively, violent crime decreases by 1.9 and 2.1 percent. Non-violent movies have
no statistically significant impact. Unlike in the psychology experiments, therefore, media
violence appears to decrease violent behavior in the immediate aftermath of exposure, with
large aggregate effects. The total net effect of violent movies is to decrease assaults by roughly 1,000 occurrences per weekend, for an annual total of about 52,000 weekend assaults prevented.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w13718/w13718.pdf
@IsaacKing I thought it would be about people who play video games that are violent becoming more or less violent, not the rates of violent crime on the specific time those games are released.
@ShadowyZephyr Causal stories are frequently weird! Figuring out why something reduces something else is messy, and I think "think A substitutes for thing B" is a very ordinary such mechanism.
Here's a similarly messy question and discussion that I think has a lot of the same complexities: https://manifold.markets/MartinRandall/why-is-ice-cream-consumption-correl
Anyway, I was very unsure what would / wouldn't count, hence all my questions.
The example above seems correlational and not proof of causation. Also, it could just be that movies distract criminals in that day, but maybe after the movie if it is a movie about crime they’re more likely to do crime later. It should be about the effects overall, not just the day the violent games are played.
The example above seems correlational and not proof of causation. Also, it could just be that movies distract criminals in that day
Distracting someone for a period is causal, even if the effect doesn't persist after the distraction ends!
maybe after the movie if it is a movie about crime they’re more likely to do crime later
The paper I linked to specifically discusses this and rules it out. Whether it's a good paper that will replicate or whether it has problems or something I'm much less clear on; I haven't read it closely and it's not my area of expertise. But it does address that specific question.
@EvanDaniel Ok, I was just making a theoretical example for the analogy that could be applied to video games, not trying to argue about whether it is actually true or not.
And, distracting someone for the period is causal, yes. But it could be something else that correlates with movie release that isn’t a movie that causes it. (Again, that is unlikely for this example, but if you extrapolate to video games it might not be)