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Columbine High School Shooting Research Paper

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Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook.
All of these locations house a similar underlying connection: violent video games. Following the April 1999 Columbine High School shooting, the April 2007 Virginia Tech rampage, and the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, considerable debate has emerged regarding the impact of hyper-aggressive, violent video games as a causal agent for such murderous behavior by young adults. In a videotape recorded before the Columbine shooting, Eric Harris, one of the two teenager shooters, expressed enthusiasm for the planned shooting, saying it would be "like [profanity] Doom.” Seung-Hui Cho, the twenty-three year-old who killed thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University was a big fan of violent …show more content…

The social learning theory of highly-reputable psychologist Albert Bandura has been applied to understand the correlation of aggression and video games. Bandura’s theory emphasizes the importance of observation of human behaviors, ideas, and personalities of one’s environment. Bandura claims that human beings are more likely to act aggressive after observing models that commit aggressive acts. However, the only way that humans will emulate the aggression seen in the model (e.g., video games) is if the act goes unpunished or rewarded—a component saturated by video games. In the case of violent-oriented games, the gamer is rewarded directly. Whether it is receiving an extra hundred points aiming from the head of a zombie or simply receiving a kill streak when you kill a certain amount of people, the promotion of rewarded, violent behavior are highly identifiable in violent games. Additionally, the aggression-enhancing effects might be too powerful for a teenager’s mind that is unable to recognize the difference of “video game life” and real life. Players who are consistently and directly punished for violent behavior learn that this violence is not acceptable and, therefore, reconstruct their behavior to gain rewards. However, beholders who play games that reward violence may consequently learn that violence has a positive consequence of extra points, more achievement medals, and higher status among peers. Teenagers transcend this belief of rewards and violence when they put down the controller and live their life. Developmentally, teenagers are less able to discern reality from fantasy and are more likely to be emotionally and cognitively affected by the violence they observe, which can result in the increased likelihood of committing a violent

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