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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and

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Speaker 1: Rob I've got a question for you to start off

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Speaker 1: with today. I want to know if you, as a

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Speaker 1: child had a toy that I also had. I think

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Speaker 1: it was really common and I got it for Christmas

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Speaker 1: one year, I remember, and what it was was a

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Speaker 1: a plastic alien pistol that when you pulled the trigger,

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Speaker 1: it would play one of a sequence of like five

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Speaker 1: different sequences of sound effects. So the first one would

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Speaker 1: go like do you do? You do you do? And

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Speaker 1: then the next one would go what what what? And

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Speaker 1: the next one would be like I've got that kind

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Speaker 1: of memorized in my brain. Uh. And in the version

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Speaker 1: that I had, there was like a little red and

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Speaker 1: blue clear plastic case over some led lights that would

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Speaker 1: shoot back and forth when you fired the gun. Do

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Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? I don't know what

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Speaker 1: the name of this thing is, so I don't know

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Speaker 1: how to look it up. I I don't think I

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Speaker 1: had the exact one you had, but I must have

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Speaker 1: had like an earlier model because I had one. It

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Speaker 1: was black and red, and it did the exact same

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Speaker 1: sound effects you're discussing here, So I feel like it

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Speaker 1: had to have been the same tech in just a

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Speaker 1: different color, or like a slightly different plastic toy gun. Now,

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Speaker 1: there was one thing I liked about this toy gun,

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Speaker 1: which was that every time you pull the trigger, it

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Speaker 1: would make a different sound effect, which means that it

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Speaker 1: was almost like you could imagine that you had like

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Speaker 1: one of the Stormtrooper blasters from the very beginning of

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Speaker 1: Star Wars, where you have multiple settings. You can set,

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Speaker 1: I guess for the regular blast, and then you can

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Speaker 1: set for stun. Except the problem was you couldn't toggle

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Speaker 1: the sound effects on this thing. They just went in

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Speaker 1: a sequence, So if you wanted to get one sound

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Speaker 1: effect in particular, you'd have to pull the trigger a

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Speaker 1: certain number of time to like run through the cycle

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Speaker 1: and get back there. I think part of that is

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Speaker 1: the toy designers focus on tormenting the parents, because I've

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Speaker 1: noticed this in contemporary toys as well. Um, where my

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Speaker 1: son has a few different lightsabers, and one of the

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Speaker 1: ones he has it seems to at random either do

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Speaker 1: lightsaber noises or play part of the Star Wars theme.

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Speaker 1: But it seems entirely unpredictable, so if the batteries are in,

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Speaker 1: if the device is on, and it seems also confusing

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Speaker 1: about if it's toggled on or not. Like you, you're

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Speaker 1: never sure. Um yeah, you it's a parent listening in

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Speaker 1: from the next room over. You don't know what to expect.

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Speaker 1: It just keeps you completely on edge. I think if

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Speaker 1: you want to calibrate a sound effects toy for maximum

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Speaker 1: parental torment, you should somewhat randomize the sounds that come

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Speaker 1: out and the sequence at which they come out, because

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Speaker 1: that we know that randomized rewards they tend to create

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Speaker 1: more addictive effects. The child will make the sound effects

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Speaker 1: more often for longer durations, and the parents will slow

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Speaker 1: lose their minds. And of course it's also in a

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Speaker 1: in a way ridiculous because when we were kids, but

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Speaker 1: also kids today perfectly capable of creating their own sound effects.

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Speaker 1: You don't need the toy ray gun to go, pu pu,

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Speaker 1: You don't need the lightsaber to go because we can

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Speaker 1: do those sound effects. We do them all the time. Um.

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Speaker 1: In fact, I think I read that that they had

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Speaker 1: to get on to you and McGregor in filming the

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Speaker 1: prequel films, because he kept making those sounds with his

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Speaker 1: mouth during the lightsaber battles. Yeah, I read that somewhere.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but it's it's it's

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Speaker 1: wonderful either way. So he was like Anakin, I have

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Speaker 1: the high ground. M yep, I think so. But I

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Speaker 1: guess this all comes up because today you wanted to

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Speaker 1: talk about toy guns, which I thought was a very

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Speaker 1: interesting topic. Yeah. And in a way, this is a

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Speaker 1: holiday episode because the holidays are about toys under the trees, right,

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Speaker 1: and the holidays at their best or about imaginative escapes,

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Speaker 1: and um, you know, I know in my own experience

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Speaker 1: raising an eight year old, it's it's proven impossible to

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Speaker 1: ignore the specter of the gun. Um. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: it's everywhere, it was, and it was, you know, in

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Speaker 1: our upbringing. So I thought it would be good to

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Speaker 1: look at some of the sort of broad studies and

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Speaker 1: meta analyzes that that look at the idea of toy guns,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, first and foremost, we have to recognize

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Speaker 1: that that actual guns are lethal instruments designed to kill

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Speaker 1: animals and or humans, depending on their exact design. Now,

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Speaker 1: gun ownership itself is obviously a divisive topic, and one

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Speaker 1: can spend a lot of time discussing objections to the

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Speaker 1: legal use of such weapons. And there's there's too much

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Speaker 1: here for us to get into in this episode. But

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Speaker 1: I think we can mostly agree that improper use and

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Speaker 1: misuse of firearms is to be avoided, and in very

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Speaker 1: broad strokes, I'm thinking about guns used in homicides and suicides,

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Speaker 1: guns used in mass shootings and accidental deaths, involving firearms,

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Speaker 1: especially those involving children, right, and of course the the

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Speaker 1: some implication there is that children should not be playing

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Speaker 1: with real guns, even though there's clearly a desire among

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Speaker 1: many children to enact types of play that involve guns

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Speaker 1: or involve surrogates for guns. So so there's sort of

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Speaker 1: a natural accommodation that happens there. It's like, well, kids

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Speaker 1: want to want to pretend to play with guns, Obviously

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Speaker 1: they should not be seeking out and handling real guns,

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Speaker 1: so give them plastic toy guns. Yeah, and of course,

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Speaker 1: especially nowadays, but but I mean this was also president

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Speaker 1: in the minds of parents in the past too. You know,

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Speaker 1: we ask ourselves, are we doing the right thing? Should

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Speaker 1: they have toy guns? Should we take all the toy

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Speaker 1: guns away? Um? So many questions that emerge. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I wonder about this question myself. I mean I can,

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Speaker 1: I can very much see both sides of it. I mean,

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Speaker 1: on one hand, I feel like, well, you know, conflict

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Speaker 1: play is a normal type of imaginative play. Uh. One

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Speaker 1: of the most common types of conflict that children are

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Speaker 1: going to imagine given the world we live in, is

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Speaker 1: conflict with guns. So they will want to act that

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Speaker 1: out and in a way that just seems like part

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Speaker 1: of childhood development. But then on the other hand, like

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Speaker 1: if you watch a child, like, you know, running around

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Speaker 1: pretending to shoot each other, You're like, oh my god, no,

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Speaker 1: something horrible is happening here. This can't be allowed. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it gets increasingly complex the more you think about it,

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Speaker 1: you know, because especially since you're dealing in different worlds,

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Speaker 1: you know, generally speaking, like the child's world and their

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Speaker 1: exposure to guns is almost entirely within this room of fantasy,

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Speaker 1: you know, if you know, if if you're fortunate and uh,

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Speaker 1: and adults live in a broader world of understanding about

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Speaker 1: what guns are and what they can do, and you

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Speaker 1: don't want to just grab them and pull them completely

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Speaker 1: into your bubble. But but then also the question is

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Speaker 1: what should I leave them over there and their bubble,

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Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, it becomes this this this labyrinth, this

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Speaker 1: maze that you try and figure your way out of.

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Speaker 1: So this is what we're gonna basically be talking about

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Speaker 1: in today's episode. But before we go go further, I

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Speaker 1: thought it might be helpful to go ahead and throw

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Speaker 1: out some stats and some numbers, um, just to um,

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Speaker 1: you know, underlie the conversation here. So according to the

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Speaker 1: CDC stats for eighteen, the most recently made available as

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Speaker 1: of this recording, at the tail end of the United

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Speaker 1: States saw thirty eight thousand, three ninety deaths from firearm

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Speaker 1: violence in and that accounted for sevent of homicides and

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Speaker 1: of suicides uh those involved firearms. Additionally, Americans are ten

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Speaker 1: times more likely to be killed by guns than people

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Speaker 1: in other developed countries, according to a two thousand sixteen

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Speaker 1: study published in the American Journal of Medicine. Gun purchases

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Speaker 1: surged over the summer in twenty as did incidents of

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Speaker 1: gun violence we face. And on top of that, of course,

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Speaker 1: we faced increased awareness of police violence against minorities, and,

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Speaker 1: as Craig Jackson pointed out on the conversation, despite lockdown

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Speaker 1: measures in the US, mass shootings in the US sharply rows.

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Speaker 1: As of November twenty six, I believe there were five

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Speaker 1: hundred seventy eight mass shootings in the country, already ahead

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Speaker 1: of the total four hundred and seventeen from the year before.

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Speaker 1: So we have to face the fact that if our

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Speaker 1: children are going to be running around pretending to play

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Speaker 1: with guns, you're holding that in your head with the

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Speaker 1: reality of all the terrible things that guns can do

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Speaker 1: and have been used to do, even just in recent memory. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, as as a parent, it is it is

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Speaker 1: at once terrifying and then terrifyingly commonplace to get that

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Speaker 1: that robot call from your school telling you that the

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Speaker 1: school has been locked down because of an incident in

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Speaker 1: the surrounding area, but that everything is cool, and you're

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Speaker 1: you know it, it's it's shocking, and then you're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: everything's okay, And then you you ask yourself, should I

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Speaker 1: feel okay about this? Because I feel like I shouldn't.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, is as far as children and guns go.

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Speaker 1: Some more stats here at two thousand sixteen study published

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Speaker 1: in the New England Journal of Medicine found that death

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Speaker 1: by gunshot with the second highest cause of death in

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Speaker 1: the United States in sixteen among children and adolescents ages

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Speaker 1: one through nineteen. Firearms were the second leading cause of

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Speaker 1: death in two thousand fourteen for American children between ages

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Speaker 1: of one and nineteen, average of eight kids shot per day. Um.

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Speaker 1: If you average that out over the calendar year, and

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Speaker 1: then also saw an uptick in unintentional shootings by children

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Speaker 1: by in March and April. And I believe commentators often

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Speaker 1: you know, link that to the fact that suddenly children

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Speaker 1: were at home more and it gave them greater opportunity

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Speaker 1: to come across guns in the household. Uh. And and

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Speaker 1: of course that opens up the door for misuse and

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Speaker 1: accidental usage of the weapon. I think sometimes people get

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Speaker 1: the feeling when when you're talking about things like certain

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Speaker 1: like safety precautions involving like gun storage, you know, should

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Speaker 1: you keep a gun stored in the home loaded, and

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Speaker 1: questions like that. Um, It's it's strange how people can

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Speaker 1: know what the risks of certain things are but still think, Uh,

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Speaker 1: those risks only apply like statistically to people in general,

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Speaker 1: and I am not like people in general, So I'm

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Speaker 1: okay like that that I the same logic that holds

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Speaker 1: true in general for people and households won't apply to

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Speaker 1: me or to my household. You know, I don't need

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Speaker 1: to worry about that kind of stuff. Isn't it like

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Speaker 1: weird how we can think like that? Yeah? Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: and plus I think we also color our estimation of

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Speaker 1: these numbers based on our own experiences, and are you

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Speaker 1: know the limited nature of our experiences, you know, like

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Speaker 1: I On on one hand, I can lie, I can

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Speaker 1: look back at my own past and say, well, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, I grew up with guns in the household,

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Speaker 1: and and I didn't, you know, have an accident with

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Speaker 1: a gun. I didn't. I don't. I never loaded a

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Speaker 1: gun on my own or anything like that. I I

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Speaker 1: don't think I knew anybody growing up that was engaged

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Speaker 1: in a firearm related accident or the accidental you know,

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Speaker 1: discharge of a fire firearm in the house. But but

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Speaker 1: then again, that's just my limited experience, you know. And

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Speaker 1: you know, and then rationally, I'm not willing to to

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Speaker 1: to roll the dice for my own child based on

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Speaker 1: what I experienced, you know, right, I mean, but there

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Speaker 1: is definitely a natural endency to sort of think of

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Speaker 1: yourself as an exception to whatever the statistical rule is,

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Speaker 1: and to elevate the importance of anecdotes in your own

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Speaker 1: life over the you know what the risks actually are exactly. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So as far as the stats go, we could we

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Speaker 1: could keep going on and on about this and torture

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Speaker 1: in the numbers, but and they're ultimately a number of

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Speaker 1: different directions. One could go into discussing these numbers, the causes,

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Speaker 1: the possible solutions. But one question that always comes up,

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Speaker 1: sometimes in good faith, sometimes as the distraction, is what

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Speaker 1: about guns in childhood play? And and one of the

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Speaker 1: reasons again, like we've been discussing that this is so um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there's something we end up meditating on so much,

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Speaker 1: is that, you know, I found that guns and media

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Speaker 1: and subsequently in play are almost impossible to avoid because

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Speaker 1: while you can curate what your kids watch and and

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Speaker 1: ultimately this is even harder than I expected it to be.

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Speaker 1: They're still going to interact with other kids, and there's

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Speaker 1: always going to be a kid on the playground that

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Speaker 1: turns a stick into a weapon, turns a stick into

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Speaker 1: a gun or a sword or a spear or what

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Speaker 1: have you, but very often a gun. And even they

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Speaker 1: don't have access to sticks, they can make the finger

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Speaker 1: guns and blast away. Right. Yeah, again, I think this

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Speaker 1: comes down to like this difficult question that people have

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Speaker 1: over like how much is it reasonable to try to

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Speaker 1: control your child's experience of the world. Um, like you're

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Speaker 1: always going to be balancing that. I mean, when you

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Speaker 1: talked about media for some reason, the thing that immediately

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Speaker 1: popped into my head is like, what happens once a

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Speaker 1: child discovers YouTube? Like how do you do you just

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Speaker 1: like set a child loose on YouTube? Or like how

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Speaker 1: do if if not, how do you prevent that from happening? Uh?

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Speaker 1: I don't you know, it just seems like it's it's

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Speaker 1: mind boggling to me. Yeah, yeah, it is. You know

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Speaker 1: what we have. We can certainly go on about about

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Speaker 1: that on that topic as well, but but of course

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Speaker 1: sorry that that's ancillarity your main point, which is about play. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's absolutely clear. Probably everybody who's

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Speaker 1: been around kids for any amount of time or was

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Speaker 1: once a child themselves, probably remembers or has observed the

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Speaker 1: natural emergence of violent and inflict play among kids. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't seem like something Uh it's hard to rule this out,

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Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like something that like parents have

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Speaker 1: to instruct their children how how to do it. Seems

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Speaker 1: like it just kind of comes naturally out of the

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Speaker 1: child brain that like, we need to enact some kind

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Speaker 1: of imaginative violent conflict. Yeah, and then the gun being

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Speaker 1: an inevitable part of the conflict media, they absorb it

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Speaker 1: just becomes a part of it, and it's a you know,

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Speaker 1: you can try and sort of steer your children towards

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Speaker 1: things like lightsabers and ninja turtles, you know, but even

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Speaker 1: in those genres, a lot of guns, you know, there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of are those are very ultimately very shooty

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Speaker 1: properties as well. So you know, unless you you know,

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Speaker 1: just want your your you're just gonna feed your kid

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Speaker 1: pop patrol over and over again and never let then

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Speaker 1: move on to something else. Yeah, what do you do?

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Speaker 1: It's funny how many of these properties I can think

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Speaker 1: of several offhand. You know, Batman, uh, Star Wars whatever,

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Speaker 1: have this sort of moral hierarchy of weapons selection where

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Speaker 1: the most morally virtuous characters never use guns. They will

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Speaker 1: use like hand to hand combat. They do still use

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Speaker 1: weapons of various types lightsabers and all that. But then

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Speaker 1: as you go down the the hierarchy, down the ladder

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Speaker 1: of moral virtue into more ambiguous and then ultimately evil characters,

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Speaker 1: the propensity for firearms and firearm analogs gets higher and higher. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that is interesting, and and I I suppose I like that.

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Speaker 1: There may be problems with it if I an analyze

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Speaker 1: it too much, but on the surface, I like that

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Speaker 1: that I that idea that the lightsaber is the civilized

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Speaker 1: weapon and the blaster is the uncivilized weapon. So I guess,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's complicated there because also the Sith lords

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Speaker 1: primarily use lightsabers, like the most evil of the most

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Speaker 1: evil also is shoe blasters and and will only you know,

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Speaker 1: you can do a lot of damage with the lightsaber.

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Speaker 1: You can be a bad guy with just a laser sword. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I have reservations at times when I am ambushed by

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Speaker 1: my my son with the lightsaber, because even though I'm

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Speaker 1: not being you know, shot at in all way, you know,

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Speaker 1: he is trying to dismember me. So but it's dismemberment

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Speaker 1: that comes from a place of love. Yeah, Yeah, um,

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Speaker 1: and you know, well, I think we'll actually come back

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Speaker 1: to to some of that in a bit here, but

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Speaker 1: but let's go ahead and talk about just the topic

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Speaker 1: of aggressive play, because that's, you know, very broadly what

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Speaker 1: we're talking about here. Um, you know, getting out of

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Speaker 1: the media portion of this and getting more into like

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Speaker 1: what children are doing when they're engaging with their toys

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Speaker 1: and each other and their imagination. As Jeffrey Goldstein of

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Speaker 1: the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands pointed out in

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Speaker 1: Aggressive Toy Play published in and the Future of Play Theory,

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Speaker 1: aggressive play includes mock fighting, general rough housing, and fantasy aggression.

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Speaker 1: And we can further think of imaginary battles and war

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Speaker 1: toys as being part of war play. Part quote. Aggressive

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Speaker 1: toys and war toys are those that children use in

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Speaker 1: play fighting and fantasy aggression, including but not limited to

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Speaker 1: toys that resemble what pens And naturally this covers a

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Speaker 1: great deal of territory. You know, an old timey you know,

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Speaker 1: silver toy, cowboy pistol. You know that there's a there's

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Speaker 1: a weapon, uh toy, a bright orange ray gun. It

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Speaker 1: looks like nothing you would actually use in a real

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Speaker 1: world combat. Scenario, same case, a tiny blaster and a

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Speaker 1: Lego Mini Mini figures hand yep that applies Lego blocks

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Speaker 1: formed roughly into the shape of a gun. The same thing,

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Speaker 1: stick finger guns, you name it. All of that kind

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Speaker 1: of falls under the same uh loose category here, So

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Speaker 1: basically like most of the toys I remember having as

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Speaker 1: a kid. That might be overstating it, but it is

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Speaker 1: weird also that I wonder how much of this has

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Speaker 1: changed generationally. I'm sure people were having this debate when

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Speaker 1: we were kids, But I just remember having lots and

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Speaker 1: lots of explicit weapon and even gun toys as a child,

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Speaker 1: and all my friends having the same stuff. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I remember making guns like I would watch like a

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Speaker 1: James Bond film and I think it was what from

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Speaker 1: Russia with Love? And there's the whole thing we has,

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Speaker 1: like a rifle that folds up in a suitcase. So

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Speaker 1: I somehow got my hands on an old suitcase and

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Speaker 1: I had like a pipe that I had in there,

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Speaker 1: and like some sort of capsule that I was pretending

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Speaker 1: was the the bullet you know. Um, Yeah, it's just

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Speaker 1: it was so so easy to get excited about those things. Well,

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Speaker 1: I think you you should be proud of any child

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Speaker 1: who shows ingenuity of that kind. What did you also

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Speaker 1: make yourself a like a Robert Shaw garatt wire? Oh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that that suitcase had so many interesting bits of spycraft

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Speaker 1: in it. But um, I can't remember what all I

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Speaker 1: had in it. You know, it was it was the

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Speaker 1: imagination was like it, So it wasn't too impressive. Okay. Now,

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Speaker 1: generally speaking, studies have shown and continue to show that

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Speaker 1: that boys display more aggressive play than girls and their

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Speaker 1: various theorized reasons here, But it doesn't mean that it's

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Speaker 1: only boys by any stretch. The sex differences, though, seem

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Speaker 1: to have been observed across cultures. Uh. Now, given you know,

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Speaker 1: the cultural landscape of everything, I imagine this is an

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Speaker 1: area where we're going to continue to see analysis of

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Speaker 1: where we are with this and where we're going with this. Uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, because there were a number of of sort

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Speaker 1: of loose ends I could have gone after when I

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Speaker 1: was looking at this, and originally, like, there's a whole

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Speaker 1: thing about like gender marketing in a gun weapons, you know,

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Speaker 1: particularly like in nerve toys. So there's a lot to

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Speaker 1: consider just in this category as well. But these seem

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Speaker 1: to be the trends that have played out over time,

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Speaker 1: and these are the trends that are often, uh at

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Speaker 1: least brought up in any kind of study regarding aggressive

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Speaker 1: play and gun play among children. Yeah, it seems pretty

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Speaker 1: clear that the aggressive play is uh present regardless of gender,

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Speaker 1: but it's more common in boys. Now. Goldstein pointed out

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Speaker 1: that warplay usually begins around age two and occurs once

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Speaker 1: a week with at least a couple of other kids.

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Speaker 1: I love this detail because I know what he's saying.

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Speaker 1: But it also makes me imagine like a child keeping

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Speaker 1: a schedule and you're like, hey, do you wanna do

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Speaker 1: you want to watch a movie this Wednesday? As I'm sorry,

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Speaker 1: I got warplay? Um, you know Keith and Toby are

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Speaker 1: are are already, Um, yes, is for that, so I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna have to pass. I like that, And it also

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Speaker 1: makes me think of, um, remembering back to my own childhood,

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Speaker 1: how thin sometimes the boundary was between something that was

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Speaker 1: explicitly war or violence play and something that was a

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Speaker 1: thinly disguised or leaky surrogate for war violence play, some

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Speaker 1: kind of game that was like almost a war that

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Speaker 1: would you'd easily sort of like slip into it being

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Speaker 1: a violent war. Do you know what I mean? Oh? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean I think one of the most you know,

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Speaker 1: obvious examples, of course, sports itself. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 1: several times away, like what every day you would go

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Speaker 1: to pe class, and you know, maybe you're square dancing

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Speaker 1: or doing that thing with the with the parachute where

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Speaker 1: you dance around in circles with it. But a lot

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Speaker 1: of times you're playing games, sports games, and those are

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Speaker 1: essentially wars. Those are wars that are that are carried

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Speaker 1: out in a mostly nonviolent way with some rule limitations,

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Speaker 1: but they kind of fulfill the same role that warfare plays. Um.

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Speaker 1: And then you know, on on top of that, you've

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Speaker 1: got all sorts of things, all sorts of games. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you could, if you really wanted to stretch things, you

389
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Speaker 1: could say a game of cards as a war, I

390
00:20:16,960 --> 00:20:19,919
Speaker 1: mean any kind of competition, right, yeah, And but I

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Speaker 1: mean in a in a closer literal sense, I mean,

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Speaker 1: I remember a lot of the games we came up

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Speaker 1: with as a child, when you're not playing like a

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Speaker 1: pre created game that has its own rules and all

395
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Speaker 1: that external to you, but you're doing some kind of

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Speaker 1: Calvin Ball thing. When kids do all the time that

397
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Speaker 1: you come up with some original game in your head

398
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Speaker 1: and you play with your friends. A lot of those

399
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Speaker 1: games I recall, we're basically just like half a step

400
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Speaker 1: removed from being a cage match. You know. It's like

401
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:48,600
Speaker 1: it's a game that maybe involves a ball or you know,

402
00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:52,360
Speaker 1: some kind of abstract item or rules in some way,

403
00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:56,639
Speaker 1: but it could easily just devolve into a battle royale. Yeah. Well,

404
00:20:56,680 --> 00:20:58,040
Speaker 1: I guess a part of it is when you see

405
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Speaker 1: kids play, A lot of it comes down to this

406
00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:02,960
Speaker 1: sort improv that they're doing. They're all bringing a certain

407
00:21:03,040 --> 00:21:05,480
Speaker 1: energy and certain ideas to what they're playing and how

408
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Speaker 1: they're playing. And so you know, the right combination of

409
00:21:08,800 --> 00:21:11,600
Speaker 1: kids might be just concerned with building a house for

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Speaker 1: a mouse or doing an archaeological dig in the dirt.

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Speaker 1: But then there's gonna be a kid that comes up

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Speaker 1: and he's gonna bring the finger gun, you know, kind

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Speaker 1: of like a Michael Scott in the office in every

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Speaker 1: improv scene pretends to have a gun. Well, that scene

415
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,400
Speaker 1: in the Office highlights a great thing about about play actually,

416
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Speaker 1: which is that you know, occasionally in an improv scene,

417
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Speaker 1: if somebody were to bring a gun into the scene

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Speaker 1: that would be fun and interesting and it would liven

419
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Speaker 1: things up and oh, what are we gonna do now?

420
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Speaker 1: But the problem comes because he introduces a gun into

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Speaker 1: every improv skit. And I think the same thing could

422
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Speaker 1: probably be said of play, Like, you know, it's normal

423
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Speaker 1: for children to enact imaginative conflict play, but when when

424
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Speaker 1: some kid wants to turn everything into an imagine violent conflict,

425
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Speaker 1: then it's like, Okay, that's not fun anymore. Yeah, yeah,

426
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Speaker 1: And then I don't remember it was explicitly stated or

427
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:04,359
Speaker 1: if it was even implied, but I'm looking back on it,

428
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Speaker 1: I kind of feel like it was the same gun

429
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:09,760
Speaker 1: scenario that he would bring, which also ties into some

430
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:11,879
Speaker 1: of the points that are made in one of the

431
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:20,520
Speaker 1: sources we looked at for this episode. So anyway, the

432
00:22:20,680 --> 00:22:23,480
Speaker 1: big question here is not whether kids engage in aggressive play,

433
00:22:23,560 --> 00:22:26,359
Speaker 1: because they do, but it's rather about what is it

434
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:30,199
Speaker 1: for and indeed, if it actually leads to more aggressive behavior.

435
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:33,359
Speaker 1: And Goldsteam points to a trio of studies from the

436
00:22:33,440 --> 00:22:36,680
Speaker 1: ninety nines that that indicate that war games and video

437
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:40,919
Speaker 1: games with violent themes increase the frequency and duration of

438
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:45,240
Speaker 1: aggressive play, but the connection to actually aggressive behavior that

439
00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:48,160
Speaker 1: that's a different story that's ultimately a lot more complicated. Yeah,

440
00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:50,040
Speaker 1: I guess this is the big question that a lot

441
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:52,320
Speaker 1: of parents are probably worried about, Like if they watched

442
00:22:52,359 --> 00:22:56,359
Speaker 1: their kids doing doing aggressive play. What they're worried about

443
00:22:56,400 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: often is does this mean my child is going to

444
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 1: grow up to be a violent person. Yeah, And we

445
00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:05,760
Speaker 1: may think about this sometimes as adults when we play

446
00:23:05,760 --> 00:23:09,240
Speaker 1: our video games and and whatnot, especially if you're playing

447
00:23:09,240 --> 00:23:11,200
Speaker 1: a game that actually gives you like a kill count,

448
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:14,240
Speaker 1: which could be a little sobering at times, and you're like,

449
00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:17,280
Speaker 1: oh my god, I sure did pretend shoot a lot

450
00:23:17,320 --> 00:23:20,240
Speaker 1: of people, am I? Okay? So anyway, that that's the

451
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:22,240
Speaker 1: whole area we'll have to consider coming back to in

452
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,879
Speaker 1: the future. But uh, I've got a good place to

453
00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: go from here would be to travel back to ninety

454
00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:32,960
Speaker 1: seven and consider something that we know as the weapons effect.

455
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:38,280
Speaker 1: So back in sixty seven, American social psychologist Leonard Berkowitz

456
00:23:38,320 --> 00:23:42,600
Speaker 1: and co author Anthony Lapage conducted a randomized study using

457
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:47,159
Speaker 1: male college students. Now, each test involved two participants, but

458
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,760
Speaker 1: one of these participants was always a secret accompliments accomplice

459
00:23:50,760 --> 00:23:54,200
Speaker 1: of the testers, so you only really have one random

460
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:58,400
Speaker 1: individual one you know, purer college student that's in here,

461
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,840
Speaker 1: in is being test it. The other person is just

462
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:03,959
Speaker 1: is actually a part of the study, but pretending to

463
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: be a test subject. So the subject in the accomplice

464
00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 1: would take turns engaging in a mundane task, such as

465
00:24:11,880 --> 00:24:15,240
Speaker 1: the example that that I saw listed was listing ideas

466
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 1: to help sell used cars, and the first point a

467
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:23,320
Speaker 1: gun at the buyer. No, no, no, the gun. The

468
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:27,000
Speaker 1: gun comes in later. But but so the the actual

469
00:24:27,040 --> 00:24:28,879
Speaker 1: assignment here has nothing to do with guns. It's just

470
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:32,919
Speaker 1: something mundane and you know, and ultimately I think non violent.

471
00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 1: So first the accomplice gives the subject feedback on their work.

472
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:41,280
Speaker 1: And they give this feedback with between zero and ten

473
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:47,880
Speaker 1: small electric shocks. Okay, okay, yeah, so that's again that's

474
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:51,919
Speaker 1: the fake test subject shocking the actual test subject. But

475
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:55,040
Speaker 1: then it's the actual test subjects turn to shock back.

476
00:24:55,840 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: Uh So this was the basic test for regression. How

477
00:24:59,080 --> 00:25:02,720
Speaker 1: many shocks would they retaliate with? How aggressive would they be?

478
00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 1: And here's where the weapon came into play. Sometimes there

479
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 1: was a gun or guns on the table. I believe

480
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:13,719
Speaker 1: it was a shotgun and a revolver um, and in

481
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 1: other cases, they would have a badminton racket and some shuttlecocks,

482
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 1: and there was also a control group that had no

483
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,800
Speaker 1: items on the table at all. The actual subjects were

484
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,480
Speaker 1: told that these were just part of another study and

485
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 1: we're just items to be ignored, which of course sounds

486
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 1: kind of comical in and of itself. Um but but

487
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: but I mean the big thing is, it's impossible to

488
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: ignore those weapons, right, I mean, there's a there's it's

489
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,440
Speaker 1: it's kind of impossible to ignore anything that is there

490
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: on the table, like the shuttle cocks and the badminton racket,

491
00:25:43,840 --> 00:25:46,560
Speaker 1: but especially the pistol and the shotgun. It's kind of

492
00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:49,160
Speaker 1: reminds me of in Madmen were for a long time,

493
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,240
Speaker 1: Pete Campbell just carries a rifle around the office and

494
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: no one seems to think it's that big a deal.

495
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: Oh man, I forgot about that episode, but that comes

496
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:04,439
Speaker 1: up and said pull episodes. It's like a fixture. Huh. So,

497
00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:07,360
Speaker 1: as you can imagine the idea, here is what happens.

498
00:26:07,400 --> 00:26:10,960
Speaker 1: How does just the mere sight of weapons, the mere

499
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 1: sight of some guns, how does that affect, uh, the

500
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:17,560
Speaker 1: individual's aggressive response? And so this is this is what

501
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 1: the results were provoked participants who saw the guns were

502
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: more aggressive than the other participants, and the authors called

503
00:26:25,000 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: this the weapons effect, and they argued that it meant

504
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:29,960
Speaker 1: that the mere sight of a gun made us more aggressive,

505
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 1: not more aggressive without provocation, minds you, and certainly not

506
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,119
Speaker 1: so provoked that they say, grab the gun or anything

507
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: like that, but more aggressive within the boundaries of the

508
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:42,719
Speaker 1: study parameters. Okay, so what they're claiming is to have

509
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: found that when you see the gun, it's not that

510
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: you pick up the gun and kill somebody with it,

511
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:48,880
Speaker 1: but when you see the gun, it's going to make

512
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:53,000
Speaker 1: you make your shape, your cognition to give more shocks

513
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: to this other guy and to be more vengeful. Right,

514
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:57,439
Speaker 1: And you know, this kind of lines up with a

515
00:26:57,480 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: lot of studies that we've that have been conducted in

516
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:01,919
Speaker 1: that we've looked at in the past about just how

517
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,439
Speaker 1: random or even you know, not so random things in

518
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:10,000
Speaker 1: our environment, symbols, etcetera, can affect the way that we

519
00:27:10,119 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: think and behave, you know, be it religious iconography, or

520
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 1: eyes staring at us from something. You know that that

521
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: all all of these things, all all of this is

522
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:24,080
Speaker 1: stimuli that can affect the manifestation of the mind. Oh yeah,

523
00:27:24,119 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: So if, for example, you take that study that found

524
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: that people might be more generous in putting money into

525
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:32,280
Speaker 1: like a collection box if there are some eyes painted

526
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: on it, or or less likely to steal money from it.

527
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: If there's some eyes painted on it. What's the effect

528
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:41,679
Speaker 1: if there's just a gun sitting beside it? Yeah, or

529
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: the collection play, yeah, has a gun? Like what if

530
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: the what if the santa that is collecting coins with

531
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: the bell, what if he also is packing a heat

532
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:53,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if you saw this,

533
00:27:53,640 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: but actually the one of the authors here, Leonard Burkwitz,

534
00:27:56,840 --> 00:28:00,040
Speaker 1: is associated with an anti metaboli that he used to

535
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:04,320
Speaker 1: communicate the results that he said he found here, and

536
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,680
Speaker 1: anti metaboli was yes, it's true that the finger pulls

537
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: the trigger, but sometimes the trigger also pulls the finger. Yes, yeah,

538
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,159
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a big one, and that of

539
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: course has been been echoed a lot, because as you

540
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 1: can well imagine, um, this is at there's an argument

541
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 1: that definitely plays into the various discussions that have taken

542
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:30,360
Speaker 1: place over the subsequent decades regarding weapons in society. Now,

543
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:33,200
Speaker 1: I will say that one thing we know that this

544
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: is basically going to be one example of a study

545
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 1: on what's known as priming, right, the priming effects of

546
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: like seeing objects and how that affects cognition. And there

547
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: are a lot of questions about priming studies, I mean, UH,

548
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:48,320
Speaker 1: and some priming effects really do seem to hold up

549
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,680
Speaker 1: under subsequent testing. Some priming effects that people have found

550
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: UH in studies of decades past have really been undermined

551
00:28:55,120 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: by like failed replication attempts or later analyzes. So part

552
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 1: of the question would be, how does this UH supposed

553
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: priming effects discovered in the sixties hold up under scrutiny

554
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 1: and under review of all the subsequent research. Yeah, exactly,

555
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:13,040
Speaker 1: because it's one thing for one study to observe this

556
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:15,640
Speaker 1: back in the late sixties, but how does it hold

557
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: up over time and with different experiments, etcetera. So I

558
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: was looking at effects of weapons on aggressive thoughts, angry feelings,

559
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior a meta analytic review of

560
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,160
Speaker 1: the weapons effect UH literature. And this was by Benjamin

561
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:36,240
Speaker 1: at All, published in two thousand eighteen in the Personality

562
00:29:36,280 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: and Social Psychology Review. In it, as the title implies,

563
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 1: the authors looked at various later experiments into the so

564
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 1: called weapons effect. Uh. Yeah, because basically, there have been

565
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: numerous versions of this experiment over the last fifty three years.

566
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: And this isn't even the first meta analysis all of them.

567
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:56,320
Speaker 1: It's just one of the it's either the most recent

568
00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: or the most recent one that turned up when I

569
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: was looking around. But these were big takeaways that Benjamin

570
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,320
Speaker 1: at all Um put out there. First of all, weapons

571
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:10,000
Speaker 1: do appear to increase aggressive thoughts and hostile appraisals, although

572
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: their effect on aggressive behavior is currently less clear. Uh,

573
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,320
Speaker 1: that's a that's a direct quote from the paper. But

574
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: they also say that the relationship to that for the

575
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:23,080
Speaker 1: relationship to become more clear, we need quote higher powered

576
00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:29,440
Speaker 1: studies with provocation manipulation, provocation manipulation. The hairs on the

577
00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:31,479
Speaker 1: back of my next stand up at those two words.

578
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,520
Speaker 1: But yeah, So what they're saying is that when you

579
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 1: look at all of these studies over the years and

580
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: you do a meta analysis, meaning you sort of like

581
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: average all the results together and look at them in total, Uh,

582
00:30:43,280 --> 00:30:47,160
Speaker 1: it does seem pretty clear that the seeing weapons around,

583
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: the presence of weapons or weapon imagery, it makes people's

584
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 1: thoughts more aggressive and it increases people's tendency to perceive hostility,

585
00:30:57,200 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 1: but there's not necessarily evidence that it makes them act

586
00:31:00,520 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 1: more aggressive in an external way. Right. Yeah, it's an

587
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 1: area whereas this is often the case, more more research

588
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: is required. Yeah, And I gotta say, I think this

589
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:13,680
Speaker 1: is one realm where a meta analysis is very important

590
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: rather than just looking at one study here or there.

591
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,760
Speaker 1: Because I don't have any way to prove this, but

592
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 1: I have a pretty strong gut feeling that, like guns,

593
00:31:22,920 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: psychology research is an area of research where there are

594
00:31:26,480 --> 00:31:29,360
Speaker 1: probably some people messing around in this field with some

595
00:31:29,440 --> 00:31:32,120
Speaker 1: kind of political acts to grind one way or another.

596
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:34,760
Speaker 1: And so you probably could get some individual studies that

597
00:31:34,800 --> 00:31:38,680
Speaker 1: are less subjective than one would hope. Yeah. Yeah, And

598
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 1: and likewise there's plenty of room for cherry picking from

599
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 1: these studies as well, Like if you don't like the

600
00:31:43,680 --> 00:31:45,760
Speaker 1: idea of the weapons effect, then yeah, you can definitely

601
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:49,480
Speaker 1: find some some studies that fail to replicate it, right uh.

602
00:31:49,520 --> 00:31:52,600
Speaker 1: And and meta analysis is helpful for multiple reasons. There

603
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:54,840
Speaker 1: was another thing that they looked into. One of the

604
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: major factors tempering their findings here is a question of

605
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:02,600
Speaker 1: publication bias in the literature on the weapons effect. So

606
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: I'll briefly explain what they called the naive meta analysis,

607
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: which basically just means you average together all the results

608
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:13,160
Speaker 1: of the studies they looked at without doing any like

609
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,720
Speaker 1: correcting for potential biases and the results. You just take

610
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: the results at face value and put them all together,

611
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: look at them against one another, and see what you find.

612
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 1: And they found that this naive mean definitely confirmed that

613
00:32:25,680 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 1: merely quote seeing a weapon can increase aggressive thoughts, hostile appraisals,

614
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: and aggressive behavior. But they also ran a meta analysis

615
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 1: using techniques that are designed to detect signs of publication bias.

616
00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: Publication bias, of course, is not a problem just with

617
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: this subject. It's a major problem affecting the quality of

618
00:32:46,240 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: all kinds of scientific literature, I think, especially in the

619
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,880
Speaker 1: social sciences. And it basically goes like this, Studies that

620
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: find a significant result are more likely to be published

621
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,440
Speaker 1: than studies that test for something and find no evidence,

622
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:03,720
Speaker 1: also known as a null result. And this is actually

623
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 1: a problem because it leads to biases in the existing literature.

624
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: If Alice doesn't experiment and finds some interesting hypothesis is confirmed,

625
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: and then Bob doesn't experiment, that does not yield any

626
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:20,320
Speaker 1: kind of solid conclusion, and then Alice publishes and Bob

627
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:23,600
Speaker 1: does not this, and then this kind of keeps happening.

628
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: This can give us an inaccurate picture when we try

629
00:33:26,360 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: to run a meta analysis on the existing literature. UH.

630
00:33:29,880 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 1: And this publication disparity could also potentially pressure researchers to,

631
00:33:34,560 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: uh perhaps unconsciously, probably unconsciously most of the time, lean

632
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:43,960
Speaker 1: into study designs and manipulations that would try to get

633
00:33:43,960 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: a significant result showing something something interesting that you can

634
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,360
Speaker 1: report apart from just saying like, yeah, we looked and

635
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 1: we didn't find anything. And this is why it's important

636
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:58,520
Speaker 1: to publish and reward well executed studies that receive a

637
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:01,959
Speaker 1: null result. And I understand the difficulty with that, Like

638
00:34:02,040 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: I try to remember to mention them on the show

639
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: when I come across them, but I admit it's a

640
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: lot harder to make a good podcast talking about a

641
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:13,560
Speaker 1: bunch of studies that just didn't find anything interesting. So,

642
00:34:13,640 --> 00:34:16,759
Speaker 1: you know, it's definitely something that modern science is struggling with.

643
00:34:16,800 --> 00:34:19,360
Speaker 1: But it's also a good thing that researchers are aware

644
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 1: of it, looking out for it and trying to come

645
00:34:21,560 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 1: up with ways of detecting the bias when it occurs.

646
00:34:25,280 --> 00:34:28,839
Speaker 1: But anyway, with regards to this particular literature, what what

647
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:32,280
Speaker 1: did the researchers find? How how does publication bias affect

648
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 1: the weapons effect? Well, it looks like it does not

649
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 1: erase it, but it does appear to reduce the magnitude

650
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: of it and to affect some of the conditions in

651
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 1: which it applies. So to read from their discussion section quote,

652
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: the naive meta analysis showed that the weapons effect is

653
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:52,480
Speaker 1: quite robust. It occurred inside and outside the lab for

654
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 1: many different kinds of weapons e g. Guns, knives, spears, swords,

655
00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 1: hand grenades, for real and toy weapon, for males and females,

656
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 1: for college students and non students, and for people of

657
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: all ages, regardless of whether they were provoked. For some distributions,

658
00:35:09,160 --> 00:35:11,840
Speaker 1: the weapons effect was also robust to the influence of

659
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: publication bias and or outliers. Yet for other distributions, the

660
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: weapons effect was not robust. These phenomena. The results from

661
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:23,319
Speaker 1: the sensitivity analysis, and that's the the analysis they ran

662
00:35:23,400 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 1: to look for publication bias, showed that a publication bias

663
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:30,120
Speaker 1: had a small to moderate impact on the cognitive and

664
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 1: appraisal outcomes. Given the difficulty in triangulating around a likely

665
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: true effect size for affective and behavioral outcomes, for instance,

666
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:43,719
Speaker 1: we recommend interpreting their mean estimates with considerable caution. So,

667
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:45,959
Speaker 1: as best I can tell from these results, it looks

668
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: to me like the weapons effect is probably real on

669
00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:51,839
Speaker 1: average with regards to cognition how it affects what we're

670
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 1: thinking about, But the size of the effect maybe a

671
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:59,319
Speaker 1: good bit smaller than some studies have suggested. So so

672
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 1: maybe a gun on the table makes your cognition a

673
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 1: little more violent. Yeah, they also write that quote. Overall,

674
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the weapons effect may even be increasing

675
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:11,919
Speaker 1: over time, although that may be due to the fact

676
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:14,719
Speaker 1: that much of this research has focused on cognitive and

677
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 1: appraisal outcomes since the nineteen nines. That's a really interesting observation.

678
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: So so there are a couple of things here. It

679
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: could be an artifact of just how the studies have

680
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 1: evolved in their methodology and things like that. But if

681
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 1: that is real, I wonder what would explain that If

682
00:36:30,080 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: there's actually a more cognitive priming from the presence of

683
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:36,440
Speaker 1: weapons now than there were like fifty years ago, what

684
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 1: would that mean, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. Um you know,

685
00:36:41,200 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 1: ultimately in the paper they acknowledge that that, yes, technically

686
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,400
Speaker 1: the the the adage is true, guns don't kill people.

687
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:51,960
Speaker 1: People kill people. But the research does indicate that guns

688
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:56,000
Speaker 1: are are not neutral stimuli. Right, So you can say,

689
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:58,920
Speaker 1: even even if it's not, even if the magnitude of

690
00:36:58,920 --> 00:37:01,479
Speaker 1: the weapons effect is kind of in question, it does

691
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: seem to be there these it's not neutral stimuli, right.

692
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 1: And so I think this would be a counter to

693
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:10,399
Speaker 1: anybody who who wants to argue, like, oh, a gun

694
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: is just a tool, you know, it's like whatever. No,

695
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:15,239
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if there's a gun in the room

696
00:37:15,280 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 1: and people can see it, like their brains are going

697
00:37:17,560 --> 00:37:21,719
Speaker 1: to start behaving somewhat differently, right, And and I think

698
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: on on some level, I think most people realize that, like,

699
00:37:25,280 --> 00:37:26,600
Speaker 1: isn't that one of the reasons you have the gun

700
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:29,440
Speaker 1: on the wall right for people to see it, or

701
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 1: in the back of the truck or what have you.

702
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,360
Speaker 1: But again, the extent of which weapons actually influenced aggressive

703
00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: behavior that remains debated and in need of further study. UM.

704
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:42,080
Speaker 1: I mentioned already that you can find some cases where

705
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:46,080
Speaker 1: they were not able to replicate the weapon's effect in studies. Um.

706
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:48,759
Speaker 1: And then there there's some other interesting cases as well,

707
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: study from Click and mcelreth that even turned up a

708
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,359
Speaker 1: reverse weapons effect, which at least suggests that there there's

709
00:37:56,360 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: a lot more going on than an ABC sort of

710
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:01,879
Speaker 1: reaction to seeing a weapon. Uh. But it's also worth

711
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 1: noting that it's pretty much impossible to fully conduct a

712
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: real world test of the weapons effect, as it could potentially,

713
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:12,560
Speaker 1: you know, concern aggressive behavior. Uh. But it's it's still

714
00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: an ofsential stopping point in considering such topics as gun control,

715
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: of violent media, and toy guns. Yeah, totally. I mean,

716
00:38:20,239 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 1: I think this is a very interesting and fruitful realm

717
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:26,719
Speaker 1: of research. So yeah, more more on gun psychology. Absolutely.

718
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,400
Speaker 1: It certainly made me think more about how many you know,

719
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: manifestations of the gun I encounter in just an average day.

720
00:38:35,239 --> 00:38:37,960
Speaker 1: You know, like all my hobbies seem to in some

721
00:38:38,120 --> 00:38:40,799
Speaker 1: at some level or another involve the gun. Like I'm

722
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,840
Speaker 1: painting these little miniatures, and and yeah, there's like I

723
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:45,560
Speaker 1: was just I was counting the other day while I

724
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:47,319
Speaker 1: was at my laptop. My painting stuff was on a

725
00:38:47,320 --> 00:38:51,680
Speaker 1: tray next at my laptop, and I counted like I think, uh,

726
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: counting both physical models and illustrations. In some instructions, there

727
00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:01,240
Speaker 1: were like two lightsabers and something like fifteen total blaster weapons,

728
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: you know. And then like if I'm playing a video game,

729
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: there's often some sort of a blasting weapon or a gun.

730
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:08,880
Speaker 1: If I'm reading a book, there's often some sort of

731
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 1: conflict at the heart of it. You know, it's often

732
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,400
Speaker 1: going to have laser guns or some weapons going to

733
00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: show up at some point or another, or it's gonna

734
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,320
Speaker 1: be swords and whatnot, and even magic wands and wizard

735
00:39:19,360 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: spells or ultimately some version of the weapon. Well, yeah,

736
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: I mean this comes back to something I was talking

737
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: about at the beginning, which is that when we let

738
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,840
Speaker 1: our imaginations run wild. I mean, when we play, whether

739
00:39:29,880 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: that's as children or adults, and you know, whatever the

740
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:36,680
Speaker 1: adult uh mental operations are that we call play, a

741
00:39:36,719 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: lot of what we're gonna be doing is imagining potential

742
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:42,880
Speaker 1: or hypothetical conflicts. And those don't have to be violent conflicts.

743
00:39:42,920 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: You sometimes people imagine arguments, people imagine you know, political

744
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: squabbles and all that, but almost every good story is

745
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 1: about conflict of some kind. And one of the major

746
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: types of conflict is violent, deadly conflict. Yeah, just to

747
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,279
Speaker 1: drive this home, I'm recording in a closet as usual. Well,

748
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: and I just counted eleven weapons. Uh on on packaging

749
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 1: or images or books. Uh you know that the only

750
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 1: thing that's not not a weapon in an illustration that

751
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 1: is I'm looking around is a box, a boxed game

752
00:40:14,160 --> 00:40:18,240
Speaker 1: of Ticket to Ride and a VHS of Jerry McGuire.

753
00:40:18,680 --> 00:40:21,320
Speaker 1: And that's it. There are no guns in Jerry McGuire.

754
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:27,879
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the cinema of peace. That's true. Now,

755
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: there was one really strange thing that I was reading

756
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:32,799
Speaker 1: in the meta analysis you brought up a minute ago.

757
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: This is yet another thing that could just be a

758
00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: sort of like artifact of the existing research that isn't

759
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: really robust, doesn't actually mean anything, but it could be

760
00:40:41,960 --> 00:40:44,960
Speaker 1: a real discovery. And if it is, it's very intriguing

761
00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:48,080
Speaker 1: to me. So to read from their paper quote, one

762
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:51,879
Speaker 1: counterintuitive finding in our analyses concerned the comparison of real

763
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:57,040
Speaker 1: weapons and images of weapons. Specifically, the magnitude of the

764
00:40:57,120 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: effect for images of weapons was larger than for real weapons.

765
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,280
Speaker 1: Although there is no particular theoretical reason why there should

766
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: be a difference between real weapons and images of weapons.

767
00:41:09,640 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: The difference was significant in the naive meta analysis, and

768
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: the difference remains significant after taking publication bias and potential

769
00:41:18,320 --> 00:41:23,560
Speaker 1: outliers into consideration. Perhaps participants were more suspicious when they

770
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 1: saw real weapons. I mean, that seems sensible to me. Yeah,

771
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:30,040
Speaker 1: uh so, maybe you're saying more so. I think the

772
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 1: idea more suspicious is that people's genuine reactions were maybe

773
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: tempered in an experiment where there's a real gun on

774
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 1: the table because they feel like something's wrong here. You know,

775
00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: that I'm being provoked or like, you know that they

776
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:48,200
Speaker 1: detect the priming, they start to understand what the experiment

777
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 1: is testing for which they shouldn't in a well designed experiment. Um,

778
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:55,040
Speaker 1: and that affects what they actually report in the end.

779
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: That's possibility. Another thing is just that, yeah, it emerges

780
00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:02,640
Speaker 1: as some other strange artifact. But if that were a

781
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:05,120
Speaker 1: real effect, I would wonder what could explain that. I mean,

782
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:09,640
Speaker 1: would people actually be more primed to think host to

783
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 1: to like perceive hostility, and to think aggressive and violent

784
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:16,839
Speaker 1: thoughts when they look at a picture of a gun

785
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:19,280
Speaker 1: rather than when when they see a physical gun sitting

786
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 1: in front of them. Yeah, I mean I guess. I mean,

787
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:23,719
Speaker 1: the the obvious answer that comes to mind that might

788
00:42:23,719 --> 00:42:26,160
Speaker 1: not actually line up all that well is just you know,

789
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:28,120
Speaker 1: it is it is reality. It is a thing that

790
00:42:28,160 --> 00:42:30,399
Speaker 1: I can pick up and it will become it would

791
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: become a part of my body schema, you know. And

792
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: it is also something that can can I have used

793
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:38,400
Speaker 1: the right way or the wrong way, depending on how

794
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:40,560
Speaker 1: you want to look at it. Uh, could hurt me,

795
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: whereas the picture of the gun is not going to

796
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: hurt me. So you're saying that maybe the picture what's

797
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 1: the logic there? You're saying, maybe the picture of the

798
00:42:48,800 --> 00:42:51,360
Speaker 1: gun is just like would give you more freedom to

799
00:42:51,560 --> 00:42:55,840
Speaker 1: explore dangerous aggressive thoughts because there's not actually something you

800
00:42:55,880 --> 00:42:59,000
Speaker 1: need to be cautious about in your environment. I don't know,

801
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:00,760
Speaker 1: like I said, I don't know if this this actually

802
00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:05,799
Speaker 1: has any any meat to it. Yeah, but uh yeah,

803
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:07,919
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, certainly we can we can sort

804
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:10,920
Speaker 1: of bring in our own, um, you know, personal experience,

805
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 1: like the difference between seeing a picture of a gun

806
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: and seeing somebody, say with a gun. You know. But

807
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:19,480
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I guess now that I think about it, Okay,

808
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: So I can imagine, like I watch a scene of

809
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 1: violence in a movie and I can get like, I

810
00:43:24,840 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: can get pumped up about it. I'm like, yeah, time

811
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:30,320
Speaker 1: to fight. If I were to watch the same scene

812
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:34,000
Speaker 1: of violence play out in physical reality, like on the street,

813
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:36,040
Speaker 1: I would be like, oh my god, I've got to

814
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 1: get away from here. So, like maybe the physical reality

815
00:43:40,560 --> 00:43:45,920
Speaker 1: of the weapon um produces a different a different cognitive response,

816
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: because like when it's just an image, you're more likely

817
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:52,719
Speaker 1: to start fantasizing about violence, and when it's a physical reality,

818
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: you're more likely to respond with hesitation and caution. All that. Yeah,

819
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: all right, well at this point, let's get back into

820
00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:08,880
Speaker 1: the discussion of aggressive play versus aggressive behavior with children.

821
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: A really great, great source that I enjoyed reading for

822
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:15,759
Speaker 1: this is an article that popped up on Slate and

823
00:44:16,800 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: from Melinda Winner Moyer, a science journalist science author who

824
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:24,319
Speaker 1: I feel like you've probably if you've definitely encountered her

825
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:26,279
Speaker 1: work before. She's been published in a number of different

826
00:44:26,320 --> 00:44:29,359
Speaker 1: major publications. She's written some books on parenting, and this

827
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: particular article is titled It's Fine for kids to play

828
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,120
Speaker 1: with pretend guns, which I suppose that kind of gives

829
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: away the overall answers that she presents in the article.

830
00:44:38,280 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: But it's a great article, and it touches on some

831
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:43,319
Speaker 1: of the key gun safety principles and modern parenting, you know,

832
00:44:43,480 --> 00:44:46,800
Speaker 1: such as not only properly storing guns and AMMO separately

833
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,960
Speaker 1: in a household, but also inquiring about gun safety at

834
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:52,239
Speaker 1: any house that your child might be going over to.

835
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 1: Uh and how uh. You know, parents have have been

836
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:57,839
Speaker 1: pushing to just sort of make this a regular and

837
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,719
Speaker 1: not weird part of our discourse where you know, as

838
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:02,399
Speaker 1: as not weird as it can be, you know, it's

839
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:06,640
Speaker 1: just something you ask, something you inquire about. Um. And

840
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: you know this, added with the reality that gun safety

841
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,880
Speaker 1: education is only so effective in preventing children from handling

842
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: or playing with real firearms, you have given the opportunity,

843
00:45:16,680 --> 00:45:19,879
Speaker 1: which which is interesting to note because again coming back

844
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:22,480
Speaker 1: to how we think about our own lives versus the statistics,

845
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: it's easy to think, well, well, my child knows the

846
00:45:25,239 --> 00:45:28,439
Speaker 1: difference between a real gun and a fake gun, or

847
00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:31,000
Speaker 1: my child, I've gone over some of the safety tips,

848
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I've even a roll and roll the

849
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 1: child in some sort of class. They're going to know

850
00:45:34,280 --> 00:45:37,800
Speaker 1: how to be safe with a gun. But it doesn't

851
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:42,120
Speaker 1: look like the research actually lines up with this, um

852
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 1: and there have been some very recent studies on this

853
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:48,279
Speaker 1: to back it up. Study from Rutgers University found that

854
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 1: gun safety programs do not prevent children from handling firearms.

855
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,320
Speaker 1: And then there was also a presentation at the American

856
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:59,239
Speaker 1: Academy of Pediatrics there two thousand eighteen National Conference and

857
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:03,279
Speaker 1: Exhibition UH that found that most children surveyed couldn't tell

858
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:06,839
Speaker 1: real guns from toy guns. Yeah, I was reading about

859
00:46:06,880 --> 00:46:10,640
Speaker 1: that one. Actually, that's a and and here's a question

860
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:14,160
Speaker 1: came up in our children who see movie characters using

861
00:46:14,200 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: guns more likely to use them. Well, this particular study

862
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: published in UM Jam of Pediatrics found that children who

863
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 1: watched a PG rated movie clip containing guns played with

864
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: a disabled real gun longer and pulled the trigger more

865
00:46:28,719 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 1: often than children who saw the same movie not containing guns.

866
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 1: Not super surprising. Kids love to act out scenes from

867
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: movies that they've liked. Yeah, and I bring us up

868
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: to that. I think it's all good information to have

869
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 1: in your head regarding your expectations of even your own

870
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 1: perfect child. You know, Um, this is just kids. Statistically

871
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: based on these studies, now Alayer goes goes on from

872
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: all this, the points out that you know, first of all,

873
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: aggression play is of course normal and especially noted among boys. Uh.

874
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: And and in in boys and among boys, you know,

875
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: in individual boys, but then also when boys play together

876
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:06,879
Speaker 1: in two thousan In a two thousand thirteen study from

877
00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:11,760
Speaker 1: Fair and Russ Early Education and Development is the publication,

878
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 1: the researchers found that preschoolers who engaged in oral aggression

879
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,359
Speaker 1: play such as having one stuffed animal bite the hell

880
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,959
Speaker 1: out of another stuffed animal. Uh, these children were less

881
00:47:21,960 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 1: aggressive in the classroom. And the speculation here is the

882
00:47:25,280 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: more violence that kids incorporate into their pretend play, the

883
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: more they may learn to control violent impulses in real

884
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: life and control their own emotions. And uh and you've

885
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: seen even stronger emphasis on all of this. Two thousand

886
00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: thirteen paper by Heart and Tannic published in Children Australia

887
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: even speculated that we may be interfering with a child's social, emotional, physical,

888
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: cognitive and communicative development if we try to prevent them

889
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 1: from play fighting and engaging in this kind of like

890
00:47:55,960 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: creative play aggression. Now, there's some caveats here that Air

891
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 1: points out. First of all, if a child is actually

892
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: hurting other kids during play fighting, then there may be

893
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: some impulse control issues there. It might be something that

894
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: requires further attention. It also might be of concern if

895
00:48:11,200 --> 00:48:15,359
Speaker 1: there is no imagination involved in the process, if it is,

896
00:48:15,400 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 1: as Moyer puts it, a case of a child simply

897
00:48:17,760 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 1: hitting one toy with the other over and over again.

898
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: So narrative ultimately seems to be important. Part of all

899
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:27,400
Speaker 1: of this also makes sense. Yeah, so the creation of

900
00:48:27,520 --> 00:48:30,959
Speaker 1: violent or war narrative seems to be key, Moyer says,

901
00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:34,800
Speaker 1: because mirror imitation, let's say, recreating a key battle scene

902
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:38,160
Speaker 1: from Star Wars is not engaging in the sort of

903
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:41,840
Speaker 1: play that actually works out problems. And I have to

904
00:48:41,880 --> 00:48:44,360
Speaker 1: say I found this pretty interesting, you know, from a

905
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: personal standpoint, but also just looking at toys, because there

906
00:48:47,560 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 1: are a lot of toys and play sets out there

907
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:53,480
Speaker 1: that that aim that that sell themselves on providing you

908
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:56,080
Speaker 1: with the tools to just recreate pivotal scenes in a

909
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 1: lot of movies. Um, it's certainly the case with say

910
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:00,920
Speaker 1: Star Wars and Lego for example. You know you'll find

911
00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: sets that are all about like key duels, key action scenes,

912
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: but it may not be that wrote. Reproduction of key scenes,

913
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: that's important, But the creation of different narratives, well, I

914
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: gotta say, and unfortunately this is just anecdotal again, but

915
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:18,399
Speaker 1: you know, in my memory of childhood, there was a

916
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:22,359
Speaker 1: ton of recreating with toys and just out of pure

917
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: imagination play in both cases just recreating scenes directly from movies,

918
00:49:27,080 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 1: but also a lot of times I feel like that

919
00:49:29,840 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: type of play would evolve. So you would start by

920
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:36,400
Speaker 1: recreating a scene in a movie with legos or with toys,

921
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 1: and then it would turn into what happens next, and

922
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,799
Speaker 1: then from there you just sort of branch out. Yeah, yeah,

923
00:49:43,840 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: I I definitely see this in my own son, Like

924
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:49,480
Speaker 1: I remember him building this, putting up a battle scene

925
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 1: with legos and he was like, Dad, this is the

926
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:54,359
Speaker 1: second battle of Genosis, and I was like, all right,

927
00:49:54,480 --> 00:49:56,839
Speaker 1: and uh, but then it it did evolved from there

928
00:49:56,880 --> 00:49:59,440
Speaker 1: to where now it's it's a different battle scene every

929
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:01,520
Speaker 1: time I go in into his room, and they're often

930
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 1: these little side things he's set up where it's like

931
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: Clone troopers camping and looking after an animal or some

932
00:50:08,200 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 1: other like. It's it's kind of an interesting puzzle to

933
00:50:10,520 --> 00:50:13,800
Speaker 1: try and put together the narratives that he's clearly playing

934
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:16,120
Speaker 1: out in all of these little scenes. Are they ever

935
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:18,759
Speaker 1: looking over a baby Yoda. We don't have a baby

936
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 1: Yoda yet, so maybe maybe by by the time Christmas

937
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 1: rolls around, they'll be a little baby Yoda Yoda for

938
00:50:24,560 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 1: them to interact with. What do you think? What do

939
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 1: you think the next Star Wars baby is going to be.

940
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: So we've had baby Yoda, I'm thinking about baby Darth Maul.

941
00:50:31,840 --> 00:50:34,319
Speaker 1: Can you get a baby Darth Maul? Well, yeah, you

942
00:50:34,360 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: could definitely have a baby of his species. I mean

943
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 1: on the Clone War series you had a baby hut

944
00:50:39,440 --> 00:50:43,920
Speaker 1: you had a hutlet and that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,

945
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 1: I guess I gotta watch this. Yeah. I said that

946
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:49,359
Speaker 1: a bunch of times on the show. Now, my son

947
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 1: informs me that in some Star Wars lego show there's

948
00:50:52,360 --> 00:50:55,360
Speaker 1: a baby Wampa that's super adorable as well. So I mean, really,

949
00:50:55,560 --> 00:50:57,640
Speaker 1: you make a baby out of anything in the Star

950
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,160
Speaker 1: Wars universe versus going to be adorable. But you at

951
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:02,320
Speaker 1: that Wampa. It's cute. When it's a baby, it starts

952
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:03,880
Speaker 1: to grow up. You can't just flush it down the

953
00:51:03,880 --> 00:51:06,920
Speaker 1: toilet like an alligator. Don't do that to alligators. By

954
00:51:06,920 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 1: the way, don't buy baby alligators, but or baby wampath. Now,

955
00:51:12,600 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: now this isn't to say that parents can't or shouldn't

956
00:51:15,800 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: enter into this sort of thing, that they shouldn't interrupt

957
00:51:19,200 --> 00:51:21,880
Speaker 1: or maybe not interrupt, but but at least, uh, you know,

958
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:25,880
Speaker 1: converse with their child about these sort of holy experiments

959
00:51:25,880 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: and conflict play. Um and Moyer sites Diane Levin, an

960
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,560
Speaker 1: early in education specialist at at Wheelock College in Boston

961
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: UH and the author of the war play Dilemma. Levin

962
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: says that you can you can ask follow up questions

963
00:51:39,600 --> 00:51:43,759
Speaker 1: to statements about, say, killing bad guys, with questions like, well,

964
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:45,839
Speaker 1: what did the bad guy do? Is there anything else

965
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:48,759
Speaker 1: that can be done besides killing the bad guy? Uh?

966
00:51:48,800 --> 00:51:51,640
Speaker 1: You know, there are conversations you can have about conflict,

967
00:51:51,680 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: in the nature of conflict and how this imagined conflict

968
00:51:55,280 --> 00:51:58,400
Speaker 1: lines up with real life. Plus they point out that

969
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:01,920
Speaker 1: trying to prevent things like unplay, you know, are likely

970
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: to backfire anyway, making it more desirable, So it's best

971
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:07,759
Speaker 1: to engage in conversations about it, like it's better to

972
00:52:07,800 --> 00:52:09,719
Speaker 1: have the conflict play is allowed, but it's something we

973
00:52:09,760 --> 00:52:12,560
Speaker 1: can have conversations about. So that we can you know,

974
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:16,520
Speaker 1: you can have these these important conversations about how real

975
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:20,439
Speaker 1: conflict works and the ramifications of violence in the real world. Yeah,

976
00:52:20,480 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: you don't want to just send the gun play underground. Yeah, now.

977
00:52:24,040 --> 00:52:26,200
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting that some of this

978
00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:29,960
Speaker 1: would seem to go far beyond anything specifically involving guns

979
00:52:29,960 --> 00:52:33,960
Speaker 1: and weapons. For instance, a June study from the University

980
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: of Cambridge found that children's children whose fathers make time

981
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:40,319
Speaker 1: to play with them from a very early age may

982
00:52:40,360 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: find it easier to control their behavior and emotions as

983
00:52:44,200 --> 00:52:46,800
Speaker 1: they grow up. And the key distinction here, and I

984
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:49,040
Speaker 1: think I think one worth pointing out for single parents

985
00:52:49,040 --> 00:52:51,680
Speaker 1: and same the same sex parents is that it's not

986
00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:54,680
Speaker 1: it's not about the you know, the gender of the father, etcetera.

987
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:57,960
Speaker 1: It's about a more physical play style and stuff like

988
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:02,120
Speaker 1: quote tickling, chasing and piggy act rides. But this studying

989
00:53:02,200 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 1: question looked at forty years of research and found quote

990
00:53:04,719 --> 00:53:09,160
Speaker 1: a consistent correlation between father child play and children's subsequent

991
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 1: ability to control their feelings. So play more in the

992
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: domain of rough housing maybe sometimes helps children understand understand

993
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:24,399
Speaker 1: boundaries better and and control their their outbursts. And impulses. Yeah,

994
00:53:24,480 --> 00:53:26,279
Speaker 1: and so like this is me, not the study, but

995
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 1: I instantly think of the times when I've been kind

996
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 1: of playing rough with the kiddo and I get kind

997
00:53:31,719 --> 00:53:34,640
Speaker 1: of clocked, you know, or something ends up really hurting,

998
00:53:34,680 --> 00:53:36,760
Speaker 1: Like like maybe that kind of thing is a part

999
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:42,000
Speaker 1: of of understanding like you know, restraint and the boundaries

1000
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:45,239
Speaker 1: of physical aggression, etcetera. You find out what too rough

1001
00:53:45,480 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 1: is by by like going there with a responsible adult present, right,

1002
00:53:50,719 --> 00:53:53,200
Speaker 1: all right, well we're gonna go and close it out there. Um.

1003
00:53:53,280 --> 00:53:55,839
Speaker 1: You know, hopefully this gave everybody a little food for thought,

1004
00:53:56,440 --> 00:53:58,480
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear from everybody out there

1005
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts on what we discussed tire today,

1006
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:03,840
Speaker 1: you know, especially in and around the holidays, when inevitably

1007
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: there's gonna there are going to be toy weapons under

1008
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: the tree. They might be human size, they might be

1009
00:54:09,880 --> 00:54:12,480
Speaker 1: very miniature. Uh they might be for grown ups, they

1010
00:54:12,520 --> 00:54:14,200
Speaker 1: might be for kids. But you know, what are we

1011
00:54:14,239 --> 00:54:16,040
Speaker 1: supposed to do with that? How are we supposed to

1012
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:18,120
Speaker 1: to think about these things? Uh? So I thought it

1013
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:21,359
Speaker 1: was a good a good episode to roll out this

1014
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 1: time of year. Oh man, what we didn't even get

1015
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:28,480
Speaker 1: into toy weapons for adults, such as like what do

1016
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,239
Speaker 1: you call it when like an adult person buys a

1017
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: buys a sword. They're not planning on using it in battle.

1018
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:36,839
Speaker 1: They just wanted to have it. Yeah, that you want

1019
00:54:36,840 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 1: to put it on the wall, which, of course you

1020
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:41,799
Speaker 1: know if you if you think about the weapons effect, Yeah,

1021
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:43,839
Speaker 1: that that means every time I walk into the living room,

1022
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:47,759
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be touched by the weapons effect, right, Um,

1023
00:54:47,800 --> 00:54:50,319
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's interesting. I mean then also, you're

1024
00:54:50,400 --> 00:54:52,799
Speaker 1: if you buy that sword to put on the wall,

1025
00:54:52,920 --> 00:54:57,360
Speaker 1: you are going to hold it at some point if you, um,

1026
00:54:57,520 --> 00:55:01,120
Speaker 1: you might film yourself on your phone doing tricks of it. Yeah,

1027
00:55:01,160 --> 00:55:04,240
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna happen. Um, if you have a rental

1028
00:55:04,239 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: house and you put on like Airbnb or something, and

1029
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 1: you have a sword on the wall, people who stay

1030
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:10,480
Speaker 1: there are going to try and take the sword off

1031
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 1: the wall. It's it's they're they're gonna go for it.

1032
00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 1: Even if it's fixed in place, it's gonna be back

1033
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 1: the sword, the stone bolt, that sucker down. Yeah, all right,

1034
00:55:19,080 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it out then. Um. In

1035
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:23,280
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes

1036
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:24,719
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You can find us

1037
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:27,400
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast, wherever that happens to be.

1038
00:55:27,600 --> 00:55:31,360
Speaker 1: We just hope that you rate, review, and subscribe. Episodes

1039
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:33,240
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays

1040
00:55:33,239 --> 00:55:36,160
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. We have some other shorter content that comes

1041
00:55:36,200 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 1: out on Monday's and Wednesdays Fridays that's gonna be weird,

1042
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:42,279
Speaker 1: how cinema and then what on Saturday you get a

1043
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:46,880
Speaker 1: repeat episode. So it's a full, a full menu of possibilities.

1044
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:51,360
Speaker 1: Your audio stockings are stuffed anyway, huge things as always

1045
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:54,200
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

1046
00:55:54,200 --> 00:55:56,080
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

1047
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest topic for

1048
00:55:58,239 --> 00:56:00,600
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you canmail us at

1049
00:56:00,719 --> 00:56:10,880
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff

1050
00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

1051
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:15,480
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the

1052
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:18,360
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening

1053
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:27,720
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.