DoctorSteve03

The irony is fantastic.

I think media outlets have (unintentionally or intentionally, depending on the source) sent the wrong message as they've worked to make games/violence research findings digestible for the general public. There's a compelling argument for a correlation between violent gaming and arousal, but there's a similar correlation between arousal and any violent media (e.g., evening news, music, religious texts, movies), and arousal due to media violence typically dissipates within 10-20 minutes of exposure. More importantly, there's a transfer barrier between game worlds and the real world that makes a causal link between violent behavior and real world lashing out pretty unlikely. (Note that this isn't to say there isn't and can't be any causal relationship, especially re: games plus misogyny, sexism, and "bad language," but the evidence about violence in particular is unconvincing.)

I actually wrote an editorial about this topic just after the Newtown tragedy--it might be a better summary of my thoughts than I can squeeze into a comment here.

Sure thing!

1. Most unexpected thing--by far--has been how little existing educational psychology/learning sciences research there is about storytelling for learning. It's something that educators have taken as a given for hundreds of years without really understanding how/why stories are compelling (and, I'd argue, necessary) for sharing information across generations.

2. Favorite game is tough because there's such diversity across genres, platforms, etc., but I'd say my "old school" go-tos are probably Chrono Trigger and LoZ: LTTP. I'm currently playing Hyrule Warriors, GTA: V, MH4U, and Hearthstone, and I played WoW for quite a long time (I haven't touched it since halfway through Mists of Pandaria, though).

Great question!

• Games give us the opportunity to explore personality traits, morals, ethics, and cause/effect in ways we can't in the real world. They can be a window into ourselves.
• Designed appropriately, they can support positive social interaction and collaboration that can feed into the development of positive individual traits (i.e., "people skills"). This includes the development of communities of practice.
• They can foster creativity (at least in the mini-c and Little-C sense), especially with respect to tabletop RPGs.
• They can tell stories that we couldn't have told the same way a few decades ago (e.g., Telltale's Walking Dead).
• They have mechanics that can be leveraged toward the adoption of particular goals.
• They can spur interesting conversations about new ideas and approaches to education/instruction (after all--games are exceptionally good at teaching, and their one of few teaching devices that kids will pay for).

I think it's a different kind of question.

Social norms are relatively easy to teach and reinforce through mentorship and immersion. With respect to games, you have characters that demonstrate sexist or misogynistic perspectives in both positive and negative ways. I think GTA: V is especially interesting here because the game is intended (I'd argue) to draw attention to the ridiculousness of sexism, misogyny, and other cultural -isms by showing them at work. Other games, though, don't take that approach and reinforce real world sexist, misogynistic, racist, and other attitudes. If you have a particular attachment to a character and their worldview, it's possible they could model attitudes and perspectives that could lead you to certain unpleasant attitudes and perspectives in day-to-day life. It all comes down to how those attitudes are reinforced in the game. All in all, games do a pretty decent job of demonstrating parallels between real world social interaction and game world social interaction (which is a problem re: sexism/misogyny/racism).

What makes violence a different animal is that physically acting out isn't veridical to what players do during play. Firing a gun, stabbing someone, running them over with a car--none of these are directly simulated when you use a controller. The vast contextual differences between the game world and real world just make transfer unlikely to occur. It's not impossible, but it doesn't fit with what we know about the rarity of far transfer.

TL;DR: It's probably easier for us to learn social skills/attitudes from games and harder to learn and act out violent behaviors.