Aidan3

The flip-side here is bias in it's many forms, particularly confirmation bias and attribution errors. People believe all sorts of things, often in the face of alarming evidence to the contrary. Then we have the issue of getting the intended result, but with a lot of unintended results. For e.g, it's fairly easy to punish growling or barking, and then things might tick along nicely for a year or two, then the dog is pushed a little too far and bites "without warning". So I think we should be careful with results alone as an indicator that the advice is sound or appropriate. I think practitioners should have a good understanding of the arguments for and against a particular approach and be able to support their decisions with evidence (whether they share that with the client or not, usually not although I have clients who are interested). That does require some formal training or at least a good degree of honest self-education. There were no formal qualifications in dog training when I started learning about it, and even the internet wasn't much help. You couldn't go to an obedience club and learn anything resembling a scientific approach to behaviour modification. Yet there were lots of people figuring it out and I think that is because we had to use scientific principles rather than methods.

I find that quite strange. Would you not pay anyone for anything if they didn't have a qualification? I think it's irresponsible to ask to be paid to pass on specialised information if you don't have any training in that area. How do you know you are passing on correct information? Isn't the whole point of a qualification to say that you have been taught some kind of specialised skill or have access to specialised knowledge? I don't have any formal qualifications and I expect clients to pay However I agree with the sentiment. These are dogs and peoples lives and they deserve genuine expertise supported by evidence.

Won the battle but not the war I guess. It is at least something. It will be harded to get without a distributor. The makers of the games will have to find someone else to host/distribute the game now. Apparently they tweeted that it would be back shortly.

Apparently it's not dead and buried yet.

I didn't use a single stereotype, let alone that one. Who is doing the stereotyping here? I grew up playing Duke Nukem and Doom and my brother is an avid gamer (a computer scientist with a PhD in artifical intelligence, you know he's going to love his games!) I started making violent (text-based) computer games when I was 8 years old. I'm possibly the least violent person on my rugby team, including the wingers Violent, evil children are out there. I've spent a few nights in pubs in Launceston so I'm not sure how you've missed them I doubt that computer games alone could cause that, and I've never said they would. You seem to be confusing sensationalist media reporting with science and conflating my argument with that. So where are these unbiased studies you are talking about? The ones all by the same author on the pro-gaming website you linked to? The ones that rely on self-report survey and correlational data which can't possibly determine causal links? Researchers inevitably have some bias. Anderson certainly does, as does Olson. Whether someone is methodologically biased or not is of greater concern and that is what I look at. It's a non-sequiter to look at someone's data and then label the researcher as biased simply because of their data.

I would have thought if the OP was worried about that then she probably wouldn't have been using an e-collar?

http://phandroid.com/2011/04/26/dog-wars-n...et-was-it-vick/

That's the problem with factors in multi-factorial problems. You have to make a decision where to draw the line. You wouldn't expect video games to be a large factor and I don't think anyone really expected to find that video games would turn people into serial killers, but they did investigate whether it was a factor or not and the evidence tells us that it is. So if ministers are looking at it and saying "it's only a small factor" then I hope they understand the limitations of the research and are taking into consideration the range of violent materials available to kids these days and are tracking the changes in attitudes towards violence. The study where they interviewed high-school shooters can at best show us whether violent people are attracted to violent video games, so I'm not sure why that was even reported in that article or to the ministers involved? People have been killing each other since the dawn of man. When I was a kid there were rules about how to fight. If you got into a fight there were boundaries. Then, at 16 I was attacked by a large group of kids with weapons; bike chains, baseball bats, pipe, even knuckle-dusters. Where do they get those ideas from? That is not normal behaviour. Thankfully, someone in a car saw what was happening and I managed to jump into their car, they probably saved my life. But that's fairly normal now, kids use weapons, they keep going when someone is on the ground or incapable of further defending themselves. If you're female, you can't leave a drink unattended in case someone spikes it. How did we end up with that many deviants? If we think we can blame one thing, we're really missing the point. It's not just video games, or just parents, or just movies. The question for me is how do we maintain healthy social norms amidst all these factors? I would argue that we should control an industry where there seems to be a race to see who can hit the bottom first. We live in a bystander society where people are afraid to say "that's not cool", men in particular.

Dont worry about that. If I had a 4 year old kid he'd be watching Bugs Bunny and Road Runner. And waste the opportunity to embody the wholesome gender roles he could expect of his future Snow White or Little Mermaid? No wonder society is going down the tube...

I know, that's understood :D Anderson is the most cited researcher in this field, the link I posted earlier (in response to Hardy's Angel) would give you a good overview to open a discussion with him. There is also a related body of research into violent television and movies, there's a good overview here: http://www.lionlamb.org/research_articles/01C392.pdf It's really not as simple as watching slasher flicks and turning into Jigsaw (apologies to DOLer, "Jigsaw"), which is why he's probably not worried about you. If you had 4 year old kids watching slasher flicks I'm sure he would have some concerns though! For many reasons... don't do that

They do, they did, and they probably always will! But there are lots of reasons why people don't go and chop people up into little pieces. Dogs don't have the same protection. You can bet if this were a game that involved child exploitation there would be even more of a ruckus, which raises even more questions. It would only be a game, wouldn't it? It wouldn't really hurt anyone, would it? What could be wrong with people trading simulated child exploitation material?

In some parts of the US and some other countries, there are normal people who don't have a problem with dog fighting. I think we tend to assume that only deranged individuals could be involved with dog fighting, but unfortunately this is not the case. The only thing stopping some people from dog fighting is that it's not socially acceptable or legal. The dogs want to fight, don't they? They see another dog, they want to fight, they get all geed up. Who are we to say they shouldn't do it if they want to? What's stopping us? A few bleeding heart lefties? Those pussies get upset about computer games! No-one is making any claims that (a) all individuals who play violent computer games become violent or (b) that violent computer games will cause violent behaviour regardless of any other factor. But imagine you're someone who doesn't really see the problem with dog fighting and thinks it's just a bunch of hooey dreamed up by bleeding heart lefties to make them feel better for not being able to fix the more serious problems that plague society. This game comes out and no-one says anything. No-one has this discussion. Michael Vick doesn't say anything. Where in the range of social acceptance does dog fighting sit if that was the case?

I didn't say that it was, I said some researchers believe the evidence to be conclusive. What researchers believe is of minor importance compared to the evidence they report. The vaccine example is a straw-man argument. Science is always being challenged, if it wasn't it would be worthless. The exact opposite effect would be a finding that violent video games produce pro-social and benevolent behaviours. An insignificant finding could mean anything. See http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2003/10/anderson.aspx That's a good point, but if it is a factor, it's something we can easily do something about without drawing significant resources from other areas.

Errmm, actually that's not true, and it's really not that simple. Some researchers regard the evidence that violent video games cause aggression as being conclusive, what implications that has are a little harder to determine. I really don't think we can pin all violent crime in Australia on bad parenting. Just because you had good parents, played violent video games and didn't end up committing violent crime doesn't really tell us anything about it at all.

I'm a big fan of horror/thriller genre - hasnt turned me into a serial killer and there are quite a few members on here who are the same. What's to say an App about dog fighting is going to turn someone into a crim? Different social groups. No-one would support or facilitate your career change. No-one would be a willing participant. It would be very difficult to prove a causal link, but we do know there are correlations.

So what happens if Dan has left his stuff lying around and you don't try to reprimand him? Nothing, the dog's happy, Dan's happy, the socks stay on the floor lol until a week later when Dan comes crying about having no socks... ETA I could take a sock right now, throw it on the ground in front of the dog, and it's not like he'll get sad about it. Only time he might is if we start to play with him and get him riled up, well sometimes he looks for something to put in his mouth like a toy. Sometimes he sees the sock out of the corner of his eye and he'll go for it, and maybe touch it and then jump back because his brain has finally caught up. He'll look very cautious then and watch us to see what we're going to do. Put a sock in the middle of the lounge room floor before you go to work. I'm interested to see what happens when you come home. Tossing a sock on the floor in front of him is an incomplete picture. If he does or he doesn't do anything it won't prove anything, but I'd still be interested to see.

So what if Dan is lying and the dog is innocent? Do you get a different response from the dog? We have to be a little bit careful when having this sort of discussion. We're talking about one dog, and we're talking about one person's interpretation, and we're talking about something that probably doesn't happen very often. So the probability of things occurring by chance or error alone are fairly high, but I'm still interested.

I dont play computer games so I really dont know but someone brought up with dog fighting is going to do it regardless of whether or not a game is available Possibly, but once you build up those social cues that something is acceptable or thrilling it changes the probability of it happening. Dog fighters really are just, in most other ways, just normal people. They play sports, go to college, use mobile phone apps etc At the moment it's seen as not a socially acceptable thing to do in most places. If there are games out there, youtube clips, facebook groups etc that glorify dog fighting (and there are), that changes the social norms. Psychology has never really been able to draw any conclusions on video games and music because it's not an individual problem that you can reduce to a laboratory setting. This is contentious stuff and I would err on the side of caution. I'm not a big believer in restrictive censorship. For the most part I think art and media can allow people to indulge in fantasy in a reasonably safe way. There are social checks and balances in place. I'm just not convinced that this is safe, it doesn't have the same checks and balances. I'm can just imagine kids playing this game, then getting involved in dog fighting because it is available and they will find social groups that encourage it. You don't have to look too hard either. You could say this could happen with, say, BDSM, but with BDSM you have consenting adults (usually) who are playing a role. There are boundaries, even if they are stretched well beyond societal norms. It's a bit different when you have unconsenting animals who are playing for life and death.

So what happens if Dan has left his stuff lying around and you don't try to reprimand him?

Thats the tone in the voice thats making the dog cringe. What you haven't addressed with presenting this video is when Jacqui walks into her house and her dog is displaying guilt right away, with nothing being said. That's right, it is the tone of voice - what this demonstrates is that the dog didn't need to do anything naughty to look "guilty", he has just learned how to do appeasement gestures and they don't have to be connected to any "knowing" about being "naughty". As I said earlier, you could repeat the experiment until the dog has learned to expect punishment then the dog will begin to look guilty before the owner says anything, just because the treat is missing.

One way to explain it is that he's learned to offer appeasement gestures if the glove is moved, a hole has been dug etc The fact that we can get them to display these same "guilty" behaviours when they aren't guilty tells us something about this behaviour. It's a circular argument - in order to be "guilty" he must know that something is "naughty". How do we know that he knows it's "naughty" - because he's acting "guilty". But if he acts guilty, but we know that he hasn't in fact done something naughty - then how do we explain that? Do dogs have a desire to be naughty, or do they seek revenge because they are angry at being left alone? Again, we have to rely on circular arguments to explain these things when there are other explanations that don't require assumptions.

Sure for sure but I was thinking more along the lines of the average Joe who plays stupid computer games I visit another forum based in the US, some of the members have clearly been brought up around dog fighting and the only thing they see wrong with it is that it's illegal. They are "average Joes who play stupid computer games", so I wonder how big a step it would be for them? A game that glorifies dog fighting is probably a small thing on it's own, but in combination with other things it's a bit of a concern.

There are no significant sections of the community who encourage beating people to death or running over old ladies as social norms. The people who are involved with dog fighting see it as an acceptable social norm amongst their peers.

Dogs who are reprimanded for things after the event often learn to offer appeasement gestures a lot to avoid trouble. Dogs who are reprimanded at the time of the event learn to avoid trouble by not doing the thing that got them into trouble. If you are seeing appeasement gestures, your dog does not understand what he did wrong.