In the wake of the El Paso mass shot this past summertime , President Donald Trumppointed the inculpation towards"gruesome and gruesome television games , " fence they glorify violence and desensitise people to killing . Not only has this link between video games and violence been wholly disproventimeandtime againover the past two decennium , but a new study also suggests this story is laced with many premiss about race .
late research has found that tidings report and the populace are more probable to blame TV games as a cause of aggregated shootings if the culprit is white . If the culprit is African - American , however , video games are significantly less likely to be consider as a factor .
report in the journalPsychology of Popular Media Culture , research worker from Villanova University in Pennsylvania sifted through 200,000 news articles about 204 pot shootings over the past 40 years . The pile shooting were defined as hold three or more victims , not including the taw , that was n’t associated with gangs , drug , or organized offence .
By their workings , video game were eight time more probable to be mentioned when the shooting hap at a school day and the perpetrator was a white male compared to when the shooter was an African American male .
fit in to the researcher , this dissimilar interpretation of like issue lumps Africa - American culprit with more responsibility for their offence .
" When a violent act is carried out by someone who does n’t match the racial stereotype of what a violent person look like , people tend to try an external explanation for the violent behavior , " lead researcher Patrick Markey , a psychology professor at Villanova University , said in astatement . “When a white child from the suburbs commits a dread fierce routine like a school shot , then masses are more likely to mistakenly pick video game than if the tike was African American . "
In another part of the enquiry , 169 college educatee – 65 percent female and 88 percent white-hot – take a fake newspaper clause describing a fictitious mass shooting by an 18 - year - old male who was depicted as a hardcore TV game lover . Half were show a mugshot that show the culprit as white , while the other one-half saw a mug shot of an African American shooter . They were then given a questionnaire that explored the factors that could have been behind the shooting .
The mathematical group who read the article with the photo of a white gun for hire were importantly more likely to blame video games as a agent in the schooling shot liken to participant who saw the hired gun as African American . The questionnaire also let out that people who did n’t play television games were more likely to name fierce video games for school shooting .
