On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

by Dave Grossman

Operant conditioning firing ranges with pop-up targets and immediate feedback, just like those used to train soldiers in modern armies, are found in the interactive video games that our children play today. But whereas the adolescent Vietnam vet had stimulus discriminators built in to ensure that he fired only under authority, the adolescents who play these video games have no such safeguard built into their conditioning. And, finally, social learning is being used as children learn to observe and imitate a whole new realm of dynamic vicarious role models, such as Jason and Freddy of endless Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, and Hannibal the Cannibal, along with a host of other horrendous, sadistic murderers. Even the more classic heroes, such as the archetypal law-abiding police detective, is today portrayed as a murderous, unstable vigilante who operates outside the law.

Time and again it has been proven that videogames literally have nothing to do with gun violence in the US, this now obsolete theory was put forward by books like these.