Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Speaker 1: Rob I've got a question for you to start off
Speaker 1: with today. I want to know if you, as a
Speaker 1: child had a toy that I also had. I think
Speaker 1: it was really common and I got it for Christmas
Speaker 1: one year, I remember, and what it was was a
Speaker 1: a plastic alien pistol that when you pulled the trigger,
Speaker 1: it would play one of a sequence of like five
Speaker 1: different sequences of sound effects. So the first one would
Speaker 1: go like do you do? You do you do? And
Speaker 1: then the next one would go what what what? And
Speaker 1: the next one would be like I've got that kind
Speaker 1: of memorized in my brain. Uh. And in the version
Speaker 1: that I had, there was like a little red and
Speaker 1: blue clear plastic case over some led lights that would
Speaker 1: shoot back and forth when you fired the gun. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about? I don't know what
Speaker 1: the name of this thing is, so I don't know
Speaker 1: how to look it up. I I don't think I
Speaker 1: had the exact one you had, but I must have
Speaker 1: had like an earlier model because I had one. It
Speaker 1: was black and red, and it did the exact same
Speaker 1: sound effects you're discussing here, So I feel like it
Speaker 1: had to have been the same tech in just a
Speaker 1: different color, or like a slightly different plastic toy gun. Now,
Speaker 1: there was one thing I liked about this toy gun,
Speaker 1: which was that every time you pull the trigger, it
Speaker 1: would make a different sound effect, which means that it
Speaker 1: was almost like you could imagine that you had like
Speaker 1: one of the Stormtrooper blasters from the very beginning of
Speaker 1: Star Wars, where you have multiple settings. You can set,
Speaker 1: I guess for the regular blast, and then you can
Speaker 1: set for stun. Except the problem was you couldn't toggle
Speaker 1: the sound effects on this thing. They just went in
Speaker 1: a sequence, So if you wanted to get one sound
Speaker 1: effect in particular, you'd have to pull the trigger a
Speaker 1: certain number of time to like run through the cycle
Speaker 1: and get back there. I think part of that is
Speaker 1: the toy designers focus on tormenting the parents, because I've
Speaker 1: noticed this in contemporary toys as well. Um, where my
Speaker 1: son has a few different lightsabers, and one of the
Speaker 1: ones he has it seems to at random either do
Speaker 1: lightsaber noises or play part of the Star Wars theme.
Speaker 1: But it seems entirely unpredictable, so if the batteries are in,
Speaker 1: if the device is on, and it seems also confusing
Speaker 1: about if it's toggled on or not. Like you, you're
Speaker 1: never sure. Um yeah, you it's a parent listening in
Speaker 1: from the next room over. You don't know what to expect.
Speaker 1: It just keeps you completely on edge. I think if
Speaker 1: you want to calibrate a sound effects toy for maximum
Speaker 1: parental torment, you should somewhat randomize the sounds that come
Speaker 1: out and the sequence at which they come out, because
Speaker 1: that we know that randomized rewards they tend to create
Speaker 1: more addictive effects. The child will make the sound effects
Speaker 1: more often for longer durations, and the parents will slow
Speaker 1: lose their minds. And of course it's also in a
Speaker 1: in a way ridiculous because when we were kids, but
Speaker 1: also kids today perfectly capable of creating their own sound effects.
Speaker 1: You don't need the toy ray gun to go, pu pu,
Speaker 1: You don't need the lightsaber to go because we can
Speaker 1: do those sound effects. We do them all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think I read that that they had
Speaker 1: to get on to you and McGregor in filming the
Speaker 1: prequel films, because he kept making those sounds with his
Speaker 1: mouth during the lightsaber battles. Yeah, I read that somewhere.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: wonderful either way. So he was like Anakin, I have
Speaker 1: the high ground. M yep, I think so. But I
Speaker 1: guess this all comes up because today you wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about toy guns, which I thought was a very
Speaker 1: interesting topic. Yeah. And in a way, this is a
Speaker 1: holiday episode because the holidays are about toys under the trees, right,
Speaker 1: and the holidays at their best or about imaginative escapes,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, I know in my own experience
Speaker 1: raising an eight year old, it's it's proven impossible to
Speaker 1: ignore the specter of the gun. Um. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's everywhere, it was, and it was, you know, in
Speaker 1: our upbringing. So I thought it would be good to
Speaker 1: look at some of the sort of broad studies and
Speaker 1: meta analyzes that that look at the idea of toy guns,
Speaker 1: because I mean, first and foremost, we have to recognize
Speaker 1: that that actual guns are lethal instruments designed to kill
Speaker 1: animals and or humans, depending on their exact design. Now,
Speaker 1: gun ownership itself is obviously a divisive topic, and one
Speaker 1: can spend a lot of time discussing objections to the
Speaker 1: legal use of such weapons. And there's there's too much
Speaker 1: here for us to get into in this episode. But
Speaker 1: I think we can mostly agree that improper use and
Speaker 1: misuse of firearms is to be avoided, and in very
Speaker 1: broad strokes, I'm thinking about guns used in homicides and suicides,
Speaker 1: guns used in mass shootings and accidental deaths, involving firearms,
Speaker 1: especially those involving children, right, and of course the the
Speaker 1: some implication there is that children should not be playing
Speaker 1: with real guns, even though there's clearly a desire among
Speaker 1: many children to enact types of play that involve guns
Speaker 1: or involve surrogates for guns. So so there's sort of
Speaker 1: a natural accommodation that happens there. It's like, well, kids
Speaker 1: want to want to pretend to play with guns, Obviously
Speaker 1: they should not be seeking out and handling real guns,
Speaker 1: so give them plastic toy guns. Yeah, and of course,
Speaker 1: especially nowadays, but but I mean this was also president
Speaker 1: in the minds of parents in the past too. You know,
Speaker 1: we ask ourselves, are we doing the right thing? Should
Speaker 1: they have toy guns? Should we take all the toy
Speaker 1: guns away? Um? So many questions that emerge. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I wonder about this question myself. I mean I can,
Speaker 1: I can very much see both sides of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, I feel like, well, you know, conflict
Speaker 1: play is a normal type of imaginative play. Uh. One
Speaker 1: of the most common types of conflict that children are
Speaker 1: going to imagine given the world we live in, is
Speaker 1: conflict with guns. So they will want to act that
Speaker 1: out and in a way that just seems like part
Speaker 1: of childhood development. But then on the other hand, like
Speaker 1: if you watch a child, like, you know, running around
Speaker 1: pretending to shoot each other, You're like, oh my god, no,
Speaker 1: something horrible is happening here. This can't be allowed. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it gets increasingly complex the more you think about it,
Speaker 1: you know, because especially since you're dealing in different worlds,
Speaker 1: you know, generally speaking, like the child's world and their
Speaker 1: exposure to guns is almost entirely within this room of fantasy,
Speaker 1: you know, if you know, if if you're fortunate and uh,
Speaker 1: and adults live in a broader world of understanding about
Speaker 1: what guns are and what they can do, and you
Speaker 1: don't want to just grab them and pull them completely
Speaker 1: into your bubble. But but then also the question is
Speaker 1: what should I leave them over there and their bubble,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, it becomes this this this labyrinth, this
Speaker 1: maze that you try and figure your way out of.
Speaker 1: So this is what we're gonna basically be talking about
Speaker 1: in today's episode. But before we go go further, I
Speaker 1: thought it might be helpful to go ahead and throw
Speaker 1: out some stats and some numbers, um, just to um,
Speaker 1: you know, underlie the conversation here. So according to the
Speaker 1: CDC stats for eighteen, the most recently made available as
Speaker 1: of this recording, at the tail end of the United
Speaker 1: States saw thirty eight thousand, three ninety deaths from firearm
Speaker 1: violence in and that accounted for sevent of homicides and
Speaker 1: of suicides uh those involved firearms. Additionally, Americans are ten
Speaker 1: times more likely to be killed by guns than people
Speaker 1: in other developed countries, according to a two thousand sixteen
Speaker 1: study published in the American Journal of Medicine. Gun purchases
Speaker 1: surged over the summer in twenty as did incidents of
Speaker 1: gun violence we face. And on top of that, of course,
Speaker 1: we faced increased awareness of police violence against minorities, and,
Speaker 1: as Craig Jackson pointed out on the conversation, despite lockdown
Speaker 1: measures in the US, mass shootings in the US sharply rows.
Speaker 1: As of November twenty six, I believe there were five
Speaker 1: hundred seventy eight mass shootings in the country, already ahead
Speaker 1: of the total four hundred and seventeen from the year before.
Speaker 1: So we have to face the fact that if our
Speaker 1: children are going to be running around pretending to play
Speaker 1: with guns, you're holding that in your head with the
Speaker 1: reality of all the terrible things that guns can do
Speaker 1: and have been used to do, even just in recent memory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as as a parent, it is it is
Speaker 1: at once terrifying and then terrifyingly commonplace to get that
Speaker 1: that robot call from your school telling you that the
Speaker 1: school has been locked down because of an incident in
Speaker 1: the surrounding area, but that everything is cool, and you're
Speaker 1: you know it, it's it's shocking, and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: everything's okay, And then you you ask yourself, should I
Speaker 1: feel okay about this? Because I feel like I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: But anyway, is as far as children and guns go.
Speaker 1: Some more stats here at two thousand sixteen study published
Speaker 1: in the New England Journal of Medicine found that death
Speaker 1: by gunshot with the second highest cause of death in
Speaker 1: the United States in sixteen among children and adolescents ages
Speaker 1: one through nineteen. Firearms were the second leading cause of
Speaker 1: death in two thousand fourteen for American children between ages
Speaker 1: of one and nineteen, average of eight kids shot per day. Um.
Speaker 1: If you average that out over the calendar year, and
Speaker 1: then also saw an uptick in unintentional shootings by children
Speaker 1: by in March and April. And I believe commentators often
Speaker 1: you know, link that to the fact that suddenly children
Speaker 1: were at home more and it gave them greater opportunity
Speaker 1: to come across guns in the household. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: of course that opens up the door for misuse and
Speaker 1: accidental usage of the weapon. I think sometimes people get
Speaker 1: the feeling when when you're talking about things like certain
Speaker 1: like safety precautions involving like gun storage, you know, should
Speaker 1: you keep a gun stored in the home loaded, and
Speaker 1: questions like that. Um, It's it's strange how people can
Speaker 1: know what the risks of certain things are but still think, Uh,
Speaker 1: those risks only apply like statistically to people in general,
Speaker 1: and I am not like people in general, So I'm
Speaker 1: okay like that that I the same logic that holds
Speaker 1: true in general for people and households won't apply to
Speaker 1: me or to my household. You know, I don't need
Speaker 1: to worry about that kind of stuff. Isn't it like
Speaker 1: weird how we can think like that? Yeah? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and plus I think we also color our estimation of
Speaker 1: these numbers based on our own experiences, and are you
Speaker 1: know the limited nature of our experiences, you know, like
Speaker 1: I On on one hand, I can lie, I can
Speaker 1: look back at my own past and say, well, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I grew up with guns in the household,
Speaker 1: and and I didn't, you know, have an accident with
Speaker 1: a gun. I didn't. I don't. I never loaded a
Speaker 1: gun on my own or anything like that. I I
Speaker 1: don't think I knew anybody growing up that was engaged
Speaker 1: in a firearm related accident or the accidental you know,
Speaker 1: discharge of a fire firearm in the house. But but
Speaker 1: then again, that's just my limited experience, you know. And
Speaker 1: you know, and then rationally, I'm not willing to to
Speaker 1: to roll the dice for my own child based on
Speaker 1: what I experienced, you know, right, I mean, but there
Speaker 1: is definitely a natural endency to sort of think of
Speaker 1: yourself as an exception to whatever the statistical rule is,
Speaker 1: and to elevate the importance of anecdotes in your own
Speaker 1: life over the you know what the risks actually are exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So as far as the stats go, we could we
Speaker 1: could keep going on and on about this and torture
Speaker 1: in the numbers, but and they're ultimately a number of
Speaker 1: different directions. One could go into discussing these numbers, the causes,
Speaker 1: the possible solutions. But one question that always comes up,
Speaker 1: sometimes in good faith, sometimes as the distraction, is what
Speaker 1: about guns in childhood play? And and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons again, like we've been discussing that this is so um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something we end up meditating on so much,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, I found that guns and media
Speaker 1: and subsequently in play are almost impossible to avoid because
Speaker 1: while you can curate what your kids watch and and
Speaker 1: ultimately this is even harder than I expected it to be.
Speaker 1: They're still going to interact with other kids, and there's
Speaker 1: always going to be a kid on the playground that
Speaker 1: turns a stick into a weapon, turns a stick into
Speaker 1: a gun or a sword or a spear or what
Speaker 1: have you, but very often a gun. And even they
Speaker 1: don't have access to sticks, they can make the finger
Speaker 1: guns and blast away. Right. Yeah, again, I think this
Speaker 1: comes down to like this difficult question that people have
Speaker 1: over like how much is it reasonable to try to
Speaker 1: control your child's experience of the world. Um, like you're
Speaker 1: always going to be balancing that. I mean, when you
Speaker 1: talked about media for some reason, the thing that immediately
Speaker 1: popped into my head is like, what happens once a
Speaker 1: child discovers YouTube? Like how do you do you just
Speaker 1: like set a child loose on YouTube? Or like how
Speaker 1: do if if not, how do you prevent that from happening? Uh?
Speaker 1: I don't you know, it just seems like it's it's
Speaker 1: mind boggling to me. Yeah, yeah, it is. You know
Speaker 1: what we have. We can certainly go on about about
Speaker 1: that on that topic as well, but but of course
Speaker 1: sorry that that's ancillarity your main point, which is about play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's absolutely clear. Probably everybody who's
Speaker 1: been around kids for any amount of time or was
Speaker 1: once a child themselves, probably remembers or has observed the
Speaker 1: natural emergence of violent and inflict play among kids. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like something Uh it's hard to rule this out,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like something that like parents have
Speaker 1: to instruct their children how how to do it. Seems
Speaker 1: like it just kind of comes naturally out of the
Speaker 1: child brain that like, we need to enact some kind
Speaker 1: of imaginative violent conflict. Yeah, and then the gun being
Speaker 1: an inevitable part of the conflict media, they absorb it
Speaker 1: just becomes a part of it, and it's a you know,
Speaker 1: you can try and sort of steer your children towards
Speaker 1: things like lightsabers and ninja turtles, you know, but even
Speaker 1: in those genres, a lot of guns, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of are those are very ultimately very shooty
Speaker 1: properties as well. So you know, unless you you know,
Speaker 1: just want your your you're just gonna feed your kid
Speaker 1: pop patrol over and over again and never let then
Speaker 1: move on to something else. Yeah, what do you do?
Speaker 1: It's funny how many of these properties I can think
Speaker 1: of several offhand. You know, Batman, uh, Star Wars whatever,
Speaker 1: have this sort of moral hierarchy of weapons selection where
Speaker 1: the most morally virtuous characters never use guns. They will
Speaker 1: use like hand to hand combat. They do still use
Speaker 1: weapons of various types lightsabers and all that. But then
Speaker 1: as you go down the the hierarchy, down the ladder
Speaker 1: of moral virtue into more ambiguous and then ultimately evil characters,
Speaker 1: the propensity for firearms and firearm analogs gets higher and higher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is interesting, and and I I suppose I like that.
Speaker 1: There may be problems with it if I an analyze
Speaker 1: it too much, but on the surface, I like that
Speaker 1: that I that idea that the lightsaber is the civilized
Speaker 1: weapon and the blaster is the uncivilized weapon. So I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess it's complicated there because also the Sith lords
Speaker 1: primarily use lightsabers, like the most evil of the most
Speaker 1: evil also is shoe blasters and and will only you know,
Speaker 1: you can do a lot of damage with the lightsaber.
Speaker 1: You can be a bad guy with just a laser sword. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have reservations at times when I am ambushed by
Speaker 1: my my son with the lightsaber, because even though I'm
Speaker 1: not being you know, shot at in all way, you know,
Speaker 1: he is trying to dismember me. So but it's dismemberment
Speaker 1: that comes from a place of love. Yeah, Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and you know, well, I think we'll actually come back
Speaker 1: to to some of that in a bit here, but
Speaker 1: but let's go ahead and talk about just the topic
Speaker 1: of aggressive play, because that's, you know, very broadly what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. Um, you know, getting out of
Speaker 1: the media portion of this and getting more into like
Speaker 1: what children are doing when they're engaging with their toys
Speaker 1: and each other and their imagination. As Jeffrey Goldstein of
Speaker 1: the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands pointed out in
Speaker 1: Aggressive Toy Play published in and the Future of Play Theory,
Speaker 1: aggressive play includes mock fighting, general rough housing, and fantasy aggression.
Speaker 1: And we can further think of imaginary battles and war
Speaker 1: toys as being part of war play. Part quote. Aggressive
Speaker 1: toys and war toys are those that children use in
Speaker 1: play fighting and fantasy aggression, including but not limited to
Speaker 1: toys that resemble what pens And naturally this covers a
Speaker 1: great deal of territory. You know, an old timey you know,
Speaker 1: silver toy, cowboy pistol. You know that there's a there's
Speaker 1: a weapon, uh toy, a bright orange ray gun. It
Speaker 1: looks like nothing you would actually use in a real
Speaker 1: world combat. Scenario, same case, a tiny blaster and a
Speaker 1: Lego Mini Mini figures hand yep that applies Lego blocks
Speaker 1: formed roughly into the shape of a gun. The same thing,
Speaker 1: stick finger guns, you name it. All of that kind
Speaker 1: of falls under the same uh loose category here, So
Speaker 1: basically like most of the toys I remember having as
Speaker 1: a kid. That might be overstating it, but it is
Speaker 1: weird also that I wonder how much of this has
Speaker 1: changed generationally. I'm sure people were having this debate when
Speaker 1: we were kids, But I just remember having lots and
Speaker 1: lots of explicit weapon and even gun toys as a child,
Speaker 1: and all my friends having the same stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I remember making guns like I would watch like a
Speaker 1: James Bond film and I think it was what from
Speaker 1: Russia with Love? And there's the whole thing we has,
Speaker 1: like a rifle that folds up in a suitcase. So
Speaker 1: I somehow got my hands on an old suitcase and
Speaker 1: I had like a pipe that I had in there,
Speaker 1: and like some sort of capsule that I was pretending
Speaker 1: was the the bullet you know. Um, Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: it was so so easy to get excited about those things. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you you should be proud of any child
Speaker 1: who shows ingenuity of that kind. What did you also
Speaker 1: make yourself a like a Robert Shaw garatt wire? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that suitcase had so many interesting bits of spycraft
Speaker 1: in it. But um, I can't remember what all I
Speaker 1: had in it. You know, it was it was the
Speaker 1: imagination was like it, So it wasn't too impressive. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, studies have shown and continue to show that
Speaker 1: that boys display more aggressive play than girls and their
Speaker 1: various theorized reasons here, But it doesn't mean that it's
Speaker 1: only boys by any stretch. The sex differences, though, seem
Speaker 1: to have been observed across cultures. Uh. Now, given you know,
Speaker 1: the cultural landscape of everything, I imagine this is an
Speaker 1: area where we're going to continue to see analysis of
Speaker 1: where we are with this and where we're going with this. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, because there were a number of of sort
Speaker 1: of loose ends I could have gone after when I
Speaker 1: was looking at this, and originally, like, there's a whole
Speaker 1: thing about like gender marketing in a gun weapons, you know,
Speaker 1: particularly like in nerve toys. So there's a lot to
Speaker 1: consider just in this category as well. But these seem
Speaker 1: to be the trends that have played out over time,
Speaker 1: and these are the trends that are often, uh at
Speaker 1: least brought up in any kind of study regarding aggressive
Speaker 1: play and gun play among children. Yeah, it seems pretty
Speaker 1: clear that the aggressive play is uh present regardless of gender,
Speaker 1: but it's more common in boys. Now. Goldstein pointed out
Speaker 1: that warplay usually begins around age two and occurs once
Speaker 1: a week with at least a couple of other kids.
Speaker 1: I love this detail because I know what he's saying.
Speaker 1: But it also makes me imagine like a child keeping
Speaker 1: a schedule and you're like, hey, do you wanna do
Speaker 1: you want to watch a movie this Wednesday? As I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I got warplay? Um, you know Keith and Toby are
Speaker 1: are are already, Um, yes, is for that, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to pass. I like that, And it also
Speaker 1: makes me think of, um, remembering back to my own childhood,
Speaker 1: how thin sometimes the boundary was between something that was
Speaker 1: explicitly war or violence play and something that was a
Speaker 1: thinly disguised or leaky surrogate for war violence play, some
Speaker 1: kind of game that was like almost a war that
Speaker 1: would you'd easily sort of like slip into it being
Speaker 1: a violent war. Do you know what I mean? Oh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think one of the most you know,
Speaker 1: obvious examples, of course, sports itself. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: several times away, like what every day you would go
Speaker 1: to pe class, and you know, maybe you're square dancing
Speaker 1: or doing that thing with the with the parachute where
Speaker 1: you dance around in circles with it. But a lot
Speaker 1: of times you're playing games, sports games, and those are
Speaker 1: essentially wars. Those are wars that are that are carried
Speaker 1: out in a mostly nonviolent way with some rule limitations,
Speaker 1: but they kind of fulfill the same role that warfare plays. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you know, on on top of that, you've
Speaker 1: got all sorts of things, all sorts of games. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could, if you really wanted to stretch things, you
Speaker 1: could say a game of cards as a war, I
Speaker 1: mean any kind of competition, right, yeah, And but I
Speaker 1: mean in a in a closer literal sense, I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember a lot of the games we came up
Speaker 1: with as a child, when you're not playing like a
Speaker 1: pre created game that has its own rules and all
Speaker 1: that external to you, but you're doing some kind of
Speaker 1: Calvin Ball thing. When kids do all the time that
Speaker 1: you come up with some original game in your head
Speaker 1: and you play with your friends. A lot of those
Speaker 1: games I recall, we're basically just like half a step
Speaker 1: removed from being a cage match. You know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a game that maybe involves a ball or you know,
Speaker 1: some kind of abstract item or rules in some way,
Speaker 1: but it could easily just devolve into a battle royale. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess a part of it is when you see
Speaker 1: kids play, A lot of it comes down to this
Speaker 1: sort improv that they're doing. They're all bringing a certain
Speaker 1: energy and certain ideas to what they're playing and how
Speaker 1: they're playing. And so you know, the right combination of
Speaker 1: kids might be just concerned with building a house for
Speaker 1: a mouse or doing an archaeological dig in the dirt.
Speaker 1: But then there's gonna be a kid that comes up
Speaker 1: and he's gonna bring the finger gun, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like a Michael Scott in the office in every
Speaker 1: improv scene pretends to have a gun. Well, that scene
Speaker 1: in the Office highlights a great thing about about play actually,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, occasionally in an improv scene,
Speaker 1: if somebody were to bring a gun into the scene
Speaker 1: that would be fun and interesting and it would liven
Speaker 1: things up and oh, what are we gonna do now?
Speaker 1: But the problem comes because he introduces a gun into
Speaker 1: every improv skit. And I think the same thing could
Speaker 1: probably be said of play, Like, you know, it's normal
Speaker 1: for children to enact imaginative conflict play, but when when
Speaker 1: some kid wants to turn everything into an imagine violent conflict,
Speaker 1: then it's like, Okay, that's not fun anymore. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I don't remember it was explicitly stated or
Speaker 1: if it was even implied, but I'm looking back on it,
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like it was the same gun
Speaker 1: scenario that he would bring, which also ties into some
Speaker 1: of the points that are made in one of the
Speaker 1: sources we looked at for this episode. So anyway, the
Speaker 1: big question here is not whether kids engage in aggressive play,
Speaker 1: because they do, but it's rather about what is it
Speaker 1: for and indeed, if it actually leads to more aggressive behavior.
Speaker 1: And Goldsteam points to a trio of studies from the
Speaker 1: ninety nines that that indicate that war games and video
Speaker 1: games with violent themes increase the frequency and duration of
Speaker 1: aggressive play, but the connection to actually aggressive behavior that
Speaker 1: that's a different story that's ultimately a lot more complicated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess this is the big question that a lot
Speaker 1: of parents are probably worried about, Like if they watched
Speaker 1: their kids doing doing aggressive play. What they're worried about
Speaker 1: often is does this mean my child is going to
Speaker 1: grow up to be a violent person. Yeah, And we
Speaker 1: may think about this sometimes as adults when we play
Speaker 1: our video games and and whatnot, especially if you're playing
Speaker 1: a game that actually gives you like a kill count,
Speaker 1: which could be a little sobering at times, and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I sure did pretend shoot a lot
Speaker 1: of people, am I? Okay? So anyway, that that's the
Speaker 1: whole area we'll have to consider coming back to in
Speaker 1: the future. But uh, I've got a good place to
Speaker 1: go from here would be to travel back to ninety
Speaker 1: seven and consider something that we know as the weapons effect.
Speaker 1: So back in sixty seven, American social psychologist Leonard Berkowitz
Speaker 1: and co author Anthony Lapage conducted a randomized study using
Speaker 1: male college students. Now, each test involved two participants, but
Speaker 1: one of these participants was always a secret accompliments accomplice
Speaker 1: of the testers, so you only really have one random
Speaker 1: individual one you know, purer college student that's in here,
Speaker 1: in is being test it. The other person is just
Speaker 1: is actually a part of the study, but pretending to
Speaker 1: be a test subject. So the subject in the accomplice
Speaker 1: would take turns engaging in a mundane task, such as
Speaker 1: the example that that I saw listed was listing ideas
Speaker 1: to help sell used cars, and the first point a
Speaker 1: gun at the buyer. No, no, no, the gun. The
Speaker 1: gun comes in later. But but so the the actual
Speaker 1: assignment here has nothing to do with guns. It's just
Speaker 1: something mundane and you know, and ultimately I think non violent.
Speaker 1: So first the accomplice gives the subject feedback on their work.
Speaker 1: And they give this feedback with between zero and ten
Speaker 1: small electric shocks. Okay, okay, yeah, so that's again that's
Speaker 1: the fake test subject shocking the actual test subject. But
Speaker 1: then it's the actual test subjects turn to shock back.
Speaker 1: Uh So this was the basic test for regression. How
Speaker 1: many shocks would they retaliate with? How aggressive would they be?
Speaker 1: And here's where the weapon came into play. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: was a gun or guns on the table. I believe
Speaker 1: it was a shotgun and a revolver um, and in
Speaker 1: other cases, they would have a badminton racket and some shuttlecocks,
Speaker 1: and there was also a control group that had no
Speaker 1: items on the table at all. The actual subjects were
Speaker 1: told that these were just part of another study and
Speaker 1: we're just items to be ignored, which of course sounds
Speaker 1: kind of comical in and of itself. Um but but
Speaker 1: but I mean the big thing is, it's impossible to
Speaker 1: ignore those weapons, right, I mean, there's a there's it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of impossible to ignore anything that is there
Speaker 1: on the table, like the shuttle cocks and the badminton racket,
Speaker 1: but especially the pistol and the shotgun. It's kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of in Madmen were for a long time,
Speaker 1: Pete Campbell just carries a rifle around the office and
Speaker 1: no one seems to think it's that big a deal.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I forgot about that episode, but that comes
Speaker 1: up and said pull episodes. It's like a fixture. Huh. So,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine the idea, here is what happens.
Speaker 1: How does just the mere sight of weapons, the mere
Speaker 1: sight of some guns, how does that affect, uh, the
Speaker 1: individual's aggressive response? And so this is this is what
Speaker 1: the results were provoked participants who saw the guns were
Speaker 1: more aggressive than the other participants, and the authors called
Speaker 1: this the weapons effect, and they argued that it meant
Speaker 1: that the mere sight of a gun made us more aggressive,
Speaker 1: not more aggressive without provocation, minds you, and certainly not
Speaker 1: so provoked that they say, grab the gun or anything
Speaker 1: like that, but more aggressive within the boundaries of the
Speaker 1: study parameters. Okay, so what they're claiming is to have
Speaker 1: found that when you see the gun, it's not that
Speaker 1: you pick up the gun and kill somebody with it,
Speaker 1: but when you see the gun, it's going to make
Speaker 1: you make your shape, your cognition to give more shocks
Speaker 1: to this other guy and to be more vengeful. Right,
Speaker 1: And you know, this kind of lines up with a
Speaker 1: lot of studies that we've that have been conducted in
Speaker 1: that we've looked at in the past about just how
Speaker 1: random or even you know, not so random things in
Speaker 1: our environment, symbols, etcetera, can affect the way that we
Speaker 1: think and behave, you know, be it religious iconography, or
Speaker 1: eyes staring at us from something. You know that that
Speaker 1: all all of these things, all all of this is
Speaker 1: stimuli that can affect the manifestation of the mind. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So if, for example, you take that study that found
Speaker 1: that people might be more generous in putting money into
Speaker 1: like a collection box if there are some eyes painted
Speaker 1: on it, or or less likely to steal money from it.
Speaker 1: If there's some eyes painted on it. What's the effect
Speaker 1: if there's just a gun sitting beside it? Yeah, or
Speaker 1: the collection play, yeah, has a gun? Like what if
Speaker 1: the what if the santa that is collecting coins with
Speaker 1: the bell, what if he also is packing a heat
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if you saw this,
Speaker 1: but actually the one of the authors here, Leonard Burkwitz,
Speaker 1: is associated with an anti metaboli that he used to
Speaker 1: communicate the results that he said he found here, and
Speaker 1: anti metaboli was yes, it's true that the finger pulls
Speaker 1: the trigger, but sometimes the trigger also pulls the finger. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a big one, and that of
Speaker 1: course has been been echoed a lot, because as you
Speaker 1: can well imagine, um, this is at there's an argument
Speaker 1: that definitely plays into the various discussions that have taken
Speaker 1: place over the subsequent decades regarding weapons in society. Now,
Speaker 1: I will say that one thing we know that this
Speaker 1: is basically going to be one example of a study
Speaker 1: on what's known as priming, right, the priming effects of
Speaker 1: like seeing objects and how that affects cognition. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of questions about priming studies, I mean, UH,
Speaker 1: and some priming effects really do seem to hold up
Speaker 1: under subsequent testing. Some priming effects that people have found
Speaker 1: UH in studies of decades past have really been undermined
Speaker 1: by like failed replication attempts or later analyzes. So part
Speaker 1: of the question would be, how does this UH supposed
Speaker 1: priming effects discovered in the sixties hold up under scrutiny
Speaker 1: and under review of all the subsequent research. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: because it's one thing for one study to observe this
Speaker 1: back in the late sixties, but how does it hold
Speaker 1: up over time and with different experiments, etcetera. So I
Speaker 1: was looking at effects of weapons on aggressive thoughts, angry feelings,
Speaker 1: hostile appraisals, and aggressive behavior a meta analytic review of
Speaker 1: the weapons effect UH literature. And this was by Benjamin
Speaker 1: at All, published in two thousand eighteen in the Personality
Speaker 1: and Social Psychology Review. In it, as the title implies,
Speaker 1: the authors looked at various later experiments into the so
Speaker 1: called weapons effect. Uh. Yeah, because basically, there have been
Speaker 1: numerous versions of this experiment over the last fifty three years.
Speaker 1: And this isn't even the first meta analysis all of them.
Speaker 1: It's just one of the it's either the most recent
Speaker 1: or the most recent one that turned up when I
Speaker 1: was looking around. But these were big takeaways that Benjamin
Speaker 1: at all Um put out there. First of all, weapons
Speaker 1: do appear to increase aggressive thoughts and hostile appraisals, although
Speaker 1: their effect on aggressive behavior is currently less clear. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a direct quote from the paper. But
Speaker 1: they also say that the relationship to that for the
Speaker 1: relationship to become more clear, we need quote higher powered
Speaker 1: studies with provocation manipulation, provocation manipulation. The hairs on the
Speaker 1: back of my next stand up at those two words.
Speaker 1: But yeah, So what they're saying is that when you
Speaker 1: look at all of these studies over the years and
Speaker 1: you do a meta analysis, meaning you sort of like
Speaker 1: average all the results together and look at them in total, Uh,
Speaker 1: it does seem pretty clear that the seeing weapons around,
Speaker 1: the presence of weapons or weapon imagery, it makes people's
Speaker 1: thoughts more aggressive and it increases people's tendency to perceive hostility,
Speaker 1: but there's not necessarily evidence that it makes them act
Speaker 1: more aggressive in an external way. Right. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: area whereas this is often the case, more more research
Speaker 1: is required. Yeah, And I gotta say, I think this
Speaker 1: is one realm where a meta analysis is very important
Speaker 1: rather than just looking at one study here or there.
Speaker 1: Because I don't have any way to prove this, but
Speaker 1: I have a pretty strong gut feeling that, like guns,
Speaker 1: psychology research is an area of research where there are
Speaker 1: probably some people messing around in this field with some
Speaker 1: kind of political acts to grind one way or another.
Speaker 1: And so you probably could get some individual studies that
Speaker 1: are less subjective than one would hope. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and likewise there's plenty of room for cherry picking from
Speaker 1: these studies as well, Like if you don't like the
Speaker 1: idea of the weapons effect, then yeah, you can definitely
Speaker 1: find some some studies that fail to replicate it, right uh.
Speaker 1: And and meta analysis is helpful for multiple reasons. There
Speaker 1: was another thing that they looked into. One of the
Speaker 1: major factors tempering their findings here is a question of
Speaker 1: publication bias in the literature on the weapons effect. So
Speaker 1: I'll briefly explain what they called the naive meta analysis,
Speaker 1: which basically just means you average together all the results
Speaker 1: of the studies they looked at without doing any like
Speaker 1: correcting for potential biases and the results. You just take
Speaker 1: the results at face value and put them all together,
Speaker 1: look at them against one another, and see what you find.
Speaker 1: And they found that this naive mean definitely confirmed that
Speaker 1: merely quote seeing a weapon can increase aggressive thoughts, hostile appraisals,
Speaker 1: and aggressive behavior. But they also ran a meta analysis
Speaker 1: using techniques that are designed to detect signs of publication bias.
Speaker 1: Publication bias, of course, is not a problem just with
Speaker 1: this subject. It's a major problem affecting the quality of
Speaker 1: all kinds of scientific literature, I think, especially in the
Speaker 1: social sciences. And it basically goes like this, Studies that
Speaker 1: find a significant result are more likely to be published
Speaker 1: than studies that test for something and find no evidence,
Speaker 1: also known as a null result. And this is actually
Speaker 1: a problem because it leads to biases in the existing literature.
Speaker 1: If Alice doesn't experiment and finds some interesting hypothesis is confirmed,
Speaker 1: and then Bob doesn't experiment, that does not yield any
Speaker 1: kind of solid conclusion, and then Alice publishes and Bob
Speaker 1: does not this, and then this kind of keeps happening.
Speaker 1: This can give us an inaccurate picture when we try
Speaker 1: to run a meta analysis on the existing literature. UH.
Speaker 1: And this publication disparity could also potentially pressure researchers to,
Speaker 1: uh perhaps unconsciously, probably unconsciously most of the time, lean
Speaker 1: into study designs and manipulations that would try to get
Speaker 1: a significant result showing something something interesting that you can
Speaker 1: report apart from just saying like, yeah, we looked and
Speaker 1: we didn't find anything. And this is why it's important
Speaker 1: to publish and reward well executed studies that receive a
Speaker 1: null result. And I understand the difficulty with that, Like
Speaker 1: I try to remember to mention them on the show
Speaker 1: when I come across them, but I admit it's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to make a good podcast talking about a
Speaker 1: bunch of studies that just didn't find anything interesting. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's definitely something that modern science is struggling with.
Speaker 1: But it's also a good thing that researchers are aware
Speaker 1: of it, looking out for it and trying to come
Speaker 1: up with ways of detecting the bias when it occurs.
Speaker 1: But anyway, with regards to this particular literature, what what
Speaker 1: did the researchers find? How how does publication bias affect
Speaker 1: the weapons effect? Well, it looks like it does not
Speaker 1: erase it, but it does appear to reduce the magnitude
Speaker 1: of it and to affect some of the conditions in
Speaker 1: which it applies. So to read from their discussion section quote,
Speaker 1: the naive meta analysis showed that the weapons effect is
Speaker 1: quite robust. It occurred inside and outside the lab for
Speaker 1: many different kinds of weapons e g. Guns, knives, spears, swords,
Speaker 1: hand grenades, for real and toy weapon, for males and females,
Speaker 1: for college students and non students, and for people of
Speaker 1: all ages, regardless of whether they were provoked. For some distributions,
Speaker 1: the weapons effect was also robust to the influence of
Speaker 1: publication bias and or outliers. Yet for other distributions, the
Speaker 1: weapons effect was not robust. These phenomena. The results from
Speaker 1: the sensitivity analysis, and that's the the analysis they ran
Speaker 1: to look for publication bias, showed that a publication bias
Speaker 1: had a small to moderate impact on the cognitive and
Speaker 1: appraisal outcomes. Given the difficulty in triangulating around a likely
Speaker 1: true effect size for affective and behavioral outcomes, for instance,
Speaker 1: we recommend interpreting their mean estimates with considerable caution. So,
Speaker 1: as best I can tell from these results, it looks
Speaker 1: to me like the weapons effect is probably real on
Speaker 1: average with regards to cognition how it affects what we're
Speaker 1: thinking about, But the size of the effect maybe a
Speaker 1: good bit smaller than some studies have suggested. So so
Speaker 1: maybe a gun on the table makes your cognition a
Speaker 1: little more violent. Yeah, they also write that quote. Overall,
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the weapons effect may even be increasing
Speaker 1: over time, although that may be due to the fact
Speaker 1: that much of this research has focused on cognitive and
Speaker 1: appraisal outcomes since the nineteen nines. That's a really interesting observation.
Speaker 1: So so there are a couple of things here. It
Speaker 1: could be an artifact of just how the studies have
Speaker 1: evolved in their methodology and things like that. But if
Speaker 1: that is real, I wonder what would explain that If
Speaker 1: there's actually a more cognitive priming from the presence of
Speaker 1: weapons now than there were like fifty years ago, what
Speaker 1: would that mean, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. Um you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately in the paper they acknowledge that that, yes, technically
Speaker 1: the the the adage is true, guns don't kill people.
Speaker 1: People kill people. But the research does indicate that guns
Speaker 1: are are not neutral stimuli. Right, So you can say,
Speaker 1: even even if it's not, even if the magnitude of
Speaker 1: the weapons effect is kind of in question, it does
Speaker 1: seem to be there these it's not neutral stimuli, right.
Speaker 1: And so I think this would be a counter to
Speaker 1: anybody who who wants to argue, like, oh, a gun
Speaker 1: is just a tool, you know, it's like whatever. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if there's a gun in the room
Speaker 1: and people can see it, like their brains are going
Speaker 1: to start behaving somewhat differently, right, And and I think
Speaker 1: on on some level, I think most people realize that, like,
Speaker 1: isn't that one of the reasons you have the gun
Speaker 1: on the wall right for people to see it, or
Speaker 1: in the back of the truck or what have you.
Speaker 1: But again, the extent of which weapons actually influenced aggressive
Speaker 1: behavior that remains debated and in need of further study. UM.
Speaker 1: I mentioned already that you can find some cases where
Speaker 1: they were not able to replicate the weapon's effect in studies. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there there's some other interesting cases as well,
Speaker 1: study from Click and mcelreth that even turned up a
Speaker 1: reverse weapons effect, which at least suggests that there there's
Speaker 1: a lot more going on than an ABC sort of
Speaker 1: reaction to seeing a weapon. Uh. But it's also worth
Speaker 1: noting that it's pretty much impossible to fully conduct a
Speaker 1: real world test of the weapons effect, as it could potentially,
Speaker 1: you know, concern aggressive behavior. Uh. But it's it's still
Speaker 1: an ofsential stopping point in considering such topics as gun control,
Speaker 1: of violent media, and toy guns. Yeah, totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think this is a very interesting and fruitful realm
Speaker 1: of research. So yeah, more more on gun psychology. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: It certainly made me think more about how many you know,
Speaker 1: manifestations of the gun I encounter in just an average day.
Speaker 1: You know, like all my hobbies seem to in some
Speaker 1: at some level or another involve the gun. Like I'm
Speaker 1: painting these little miniatures, and and yeah, there's like I
Speaker 1: was just I was counting the other day while I
Speaker 1: was at my laptop. My painting stuff was on a
Speaker 1: tray next at my laptop, and I counted like I think, uh,
Speaker 1: counting both physical models and illustrations. In some instructions, there
Speaker 1: were like two lightsabers and something like fifteen total blaster weapons,
Speaker 1: you know. And then like if I'm playing a video game,
Speaker 1: there's often some sort of a blasting weapon or a gun.
Speaker 1: If I'm reading a book, there's often some sort of
Speaker 1: conflict at the heart of it. You know, it's often
Speaker 1: going to have laser guns or some weapons going to
Speaker 1: show up at some point or another, or it's gonna
Speaker 1: be swords and whatnot, and even magic wands and wizard
Speaker 1: spells or ultimately some version of the weapon. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this comes back to something I was talking
Speaker 1: about at the beginning, which is that when we let
Speaker 1: our imaginations run wild. I mean, when we play, whether
Speaker 1: that's as children or adults, and you know, whatever the
Speaker 1: adult uh mental operations are that we call play, a
Speaker 1: lot of what we're gonna be doing is imagining potential
Speaker 1: or hypothetical conflicts. And those don't have to be violent conflicts.
Speaker 1: You sometimes people imagine arguments, people imagine you know, political
Speaker 1: squabbles and all that, but almost every good story is
Speaker 1: about conflict of some kind. And one of the major
Speaker 1: types of conflict is violent, deadly conflict. Yeah, just to
Speaker 1: drive this home, I'm recording in a closet as usual. Well,
Speaker 1: and I just counted eleven weapons. Uh on on packaging
Speaker 1: or images or books. Uh you know that the only
Speaker 1: thing that's not not a weapon in an illustration that
Speaker 1: is I'm looking around is a box, a boxed game
Speaker 1: of Ticket to Ride and a VHS of Jerry McGuire.
Speaker 1: And that's it. There are no guns in Jerry McGuire.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's the cinema of peace. That's true. Now,
Speaker 1: there was one really strange thing that I was reading
Speaker 1: in the meta analysis you brought up a minute ago.
Speaker 1: This is yet another thing that could just be a
Speaker 1: sort of like artifact of the existing research that isn't
Speaker 1: really robust, doesn't actually mean anything, but it could be
Speaker 1: a real discovery. And if it is, it's very intriguing
Speaker 1: to me. So to read from their paper quote, one
Speaker 1: counterintuitive finding in our analyses concerned the comparison of real
Speaker 1: weapons and images of weapons. Specifically, the magnitude of the
Speaker 1: effect for images of weapons was larger than for real weapons.
Speaker 1: Although there is no particular theoretical reason why there should
Speaker 1: be a difference between real weapons and images of weapons.
Speaker 1: The difference was significant in the naive meta analysis, and
Speaker 1: the difference remains significant after taking publication bias and potential
Speaker 1: outliers into consideration. Perhaps participants were more suspicious when they
Speaker 1: saw real weapons. I mean, that seems sensible to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh so, maybe you're saying more so. I think the
Speaker 1: idea more suspicious is that people's genuine reactions were maybe
Speaker 1: tempered in an experiment where there's a real gun on
Speaker 1: the table because they feel like something's wrong here. You know,
Speaker 1: that I'm being provoked or like, you know that they
Speaker 1: detect the priming, they start to understand what the experiment
Speaker 1: is testing for which they shouldn't in a well designed experiment. Um,
Speaker 1: and that affects what they actually report in the end.
Speaker 1: That's possibility. Another thing is just that, yeah, it emerges
Speaker 1: as some other strange artifact. But if that were a
Speaker 1: real effect, I would wonder what could explain that. I mean,
Speaker 1: would people actually be more primed to think host to
Speaker 1: to like perceive hostility, and to think aggressive and violent
Speaker 1: thoughts when they look at a picture of a gun
Speaker 1: rather than when when they see a physical gun sitting
Speaker 1: in front of them. Yeah, I mean I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: the the obvious answer that comes to mind that might
Speaker 1: not actually line up all that well is just you know,
Speaker 1: it is it is reality. It is a thing that
Speaker 1: I can pick up and it will become it would
Speaker 1: become a part of my body schema, you know. And
Speaker 1: it is also something that can can I have used
Speaker 1: the right way or the wrong way, depending on how
Speaker 1: you want to look at it. Uh, could hurt me,
Speaker 1: whereas the picture of the gun is not going to
Speaker 1: hurt me. So you're saying that maybe the picture what's
Speaker 1: the logic there? You're saying, maybe the picture of the
Speaker 1: gun is just like would give you more freedom to
Speaker 1: explore dangerous aggressive thoughts because there's not actually something you
Speaker 1: need to be cautious about in your environment. I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I don't know if this this actually
Speaker 1: has any any meat to it. Yeah, but uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, certainly we can we can sort
Speaker 1: of bring in our own, um, you know, personal experience,
Speaker 1: like the difference between seeing a picture of a gun
Speaker 1: and seeing somebody, say with a gun. You know. But
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I guess now that I think about it, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I can imagine, like I watch a scene of
Speaker 1: violence in a movie and I can get like, I
Speaker 1: can get pumped up about it. I'm like, yeah, time
Speaker 1: to fight. If I were to watch the same scene
Speaker 1: of violence play out in physical reality, like on the street,
Speaker 1: I would be like, oh my god, I've got to
Speaker 1: get away from here. So, like maybe the physical reality
Speaker 1: of the weapon um produces a different a different cognitive response,
Speaker 1: because like when it's just an image, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to start fantasizing about violence, and when it's a physical reality,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to respond with hesitation and caution. All that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well at this point, let's get back into
Speaker 1: the discussion of aggressive play versus aggressive behavior with children.
Speaker 1: A really great, great source that I enjoyed reading for
Speaker 1: this is an article that popped up on Slate and
Speaker 1: from Melinda Winner Moyer, a science journalist science author who
Speaker 1: I feel like you've probably if you've definitely encountered her
Speaker 1: work before. She's been published in a number of different
Speaker 1: major publications. She's written some books on parenting, and this
Speaker 1: particular article is titled It's Fine for kids to play
Speaker 1: with pretend guns, which I suppose that kind of gives
Speaker 1: away the overall answers that she presents in the article.
Speaker 1: But it's a great article, and it touches on some
Speaker 1: of the key gun safety principles and modern parenting, you know,
Speaker 1: such as not only properly storing guns and AMMO separately
Speaker 1: in a household, but also inquiring about gun safety at
Speaker 1: any house that your child might be going over to.
Speaker 1: Uh and how uh. You know, parents have have been
Speaker 1: pushing to just sort of make this a regular and
Speaker 1: not weird part of our discourse where you know, as
Speaker 1: as not weird as it can be, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just something you ask, something you inquire about. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know this, added with the reality that gun safety
Speaker 1: education is only so effective in preventing children from handling
Speaker 1: or playing with real firearms, you have given the opportunity,
Speaker 1: which which is interesting to note because again coming back
Speaker 1: to how we think about our own lives versus the statistics,
Speaker 1: it's easy to think, well, well, my child knows the
Speaker 1: difference between a real gun and a fake gun, or
Speaker 1: my child, I've gone over some of the safety tips,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I've even a roll and roll the
Speaker 1: child in some sort of class. They're going to know
Speaker 1: how to be safe with a gun. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like the research actually lines up with this, um
Speaker 1: and there have been some very recent studies on this
Speaker 1: to back it up. Study from Rutgers University found that
Speaker 1: gun safety programs do not prevent children from handling firearms.
Speaker 1: And then there was also a presentation at the American
Speaker 1: Academy of Pediatrics there two thousand eighteen National Conference and
Speaker 1: Exhibition UH that found that most children surveyed couldn't tell
Speaker 1: real guns from toy guns. Yeah, I was reading about
Speaker 1: that one. Actually, that's a and and here's a question
Speaker 1: came up in our children who see movie characters using
Speaker 1: guns more likely to use them. Well, this particular study
Speaker 1: published in UM Jam of Pediatrics found that children who
Speaker 1: watched a PG rated movie clip containing guns played with
Speaker 1: a disabled real gun longer and pulled the trigger more
Speaker 1: often than children who saw the same movie not containing guns.
Speaker 1: Not super surprising. Kids love to act out scenes from
Speaker 1: movies that they've liked. Yeah, and I bring us up
Speaker 1: to that. I think it's all good information to have
Speaker 1: in your head regarding your expectations of even your own
Speaker 1: perfect child. You know, Um, this is just kids. Statistically
Speaker 1: based on these studies, now Alayer goes goes on from
Speaker 1: all this, the points out that you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: aggression play is of course normal and especially noted among boys. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and in in boys and among boys, you know,
Speaker 1: in individual boys, but then also when boys play together
Speaker 1: in two thousan In a two thousand thirteen study from
Speaker 1: Fair and Russ Early Education and Development is the publication,
Speaker 1: the researchers found that preschoolers who engaged in oral aggression
Speaker 1: play such as having one stuffed animal bite the hell
Speaker 1: out of another stuffed animal. Uh, these children were less
Speaker 1: aggressive in the classroom. And the speculation here is the
Speaker 1: more violence that kids incorporate into their pretend play, the
Speaker 1: more they may learn to control violent impulses in real
Speaker 1: life and control their own emotions. And uh and you've
Speaker 1: seen even stronger emphasis on all of this. Two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen paper by Heart and Tannic published in Children Australia
Speaker 1: even speculated that we may be interfering with a child's social, emotional, physical,
Speaker 1: cognitive and communicative development if we try to prevent them
Speaker 1: from play fighting and engaging in this kind of like
Speaker 1: creative play aggression. Now, there's some caveats here that Air
Speaker 1: points out. First of all, if a child is actually
Speaker 1: hurting other kids during play fighting, then there may be
Speaker 1: some impulse control issues there. It might be something that
Speaker 1: requires further attention. It also might be of concern if
Speaker 1: there is no imagination involved in the process, if it is,
Speaker 1: as Moyer puts it, a case of a child simply
Speaker 1: hitting one toy with the other over and over again.
Speaker 1: So narrative ultimately seems to be important. Part of all
Speaker 1: of this also makes sense. Yeah, so the creation of
Speaker 1: violent or war narrative seems to be key, Moyer says,
Speaker 1: because mirror imitation, let's say, recreating a key battle scene
Speaker 1: from Star Wars is not engaging in the sort of
Speaker 1: play that actually works out problems. And I have to
Speaker 1: say I found this pretty interesting, you know, from a
Speaker 1: personal standpoint, but also just looking at toys, because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of toys and play sets out there
Speaker 1: that that aim that that sell themselves on providing you
Speaker 1: with the tools to just recreate pivotal scenes in a
Speaker 1: lot of movies. Um, it's certainly the case with say
Speaker 1: Star Wars and Lego for example. You know you'll find
Speaker 1: sets that are all about like key duels, key action scenes,
Speaker 1: but it may not be that wrote. Reproduction of key scenes,
Speaker 1: that's important, But the creation of different narratives, well, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, and unfortunately this is just anecdotal again, but
Speaker 1: you know, in my memory of childhood, there was a
Speaker 1: ton of recreating with toys and just out of pure
Speaker 1: imagination play in both cases just recreating scenes directly from movies,
Speaker 1: but also a lot of times I feel like that
Speaker 1: type of play would evolve. So you would start by
Speaker 1: recreating a scene in a movie with legos or with toys,
Speaker 1: and then it would turn into what happens next, and
Speaker 1: then from there you just sort of branch out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I definitely see this in my own son, Like
Speaker 1: I remember him building this, putting up a battle scene
Speaker 1: with legos and he was like, Dad, this is the
Speaker 1: second battle of Genosis, and I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: and uh, but then it it did evolved from there
Speaker 1: to where now it's it's a different battle scene every
Speaker 1: time I go in into his room, and they're often
Speaker 1: these little side things he's set up where it's like
Speaker 1: Clone troopers camping and looking after an animal or some
Speaker 1: other like. It's it's kind of an interesting puzzle to
Speaker 1: try and put together the narratives that he's clearly playing
Speaker 1: out in all of these little scenes. Are they ever
Speaker 1: looking over a baby Yoda. We don't have a baby
Speaker 1: Yoda yet, so maybe maybe by by the time Christmas
Speaker 1: rolls around, they'll be a little baby Yoda Yoda for
Speaker 1: them to interact with. What do you think? What do
Speaker 1: you think the next Star Wars baby is going to be.
Speaker 1: So we've had baby Yoda, I'm thinking about baby Darth Maul.
Speaker 1: Can you get a baby Darth Maul? Well, yeah, you
Speaker 1: could definitely have a baby of his species. I mean
Speaker 1: on the Clone War series you had a baby hut
Speaker 1: you had a hutlet and that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I gotta watch this. Yeah. I said that
Speaker 1: a bunch of times on the show. Now, my son
Speaker 1: informs me that in some Star Wars lego show there's
Speaker 1: a baby Wampa that's super adorable as well. So I mean, really,
Speaker 1: you make a baby out of anything in the Star
Speaker 1: Wars universe versus going to be adorable. But you at
Speaker 1: that Wampa. It's cute. When it's a baby, it starts
Speaker 1: to grow up. You can't just flush it down the
Speaker 1: toilet like an alligator. Don't do that to alligators. By
Speaker 1: the way, don't buy baby alligators, but or baby wampath. Now,
Speaker 1: now this isn't to say that parents can't or shouldn't
Speaker 1: enter into this sort of thing, that they shouldn't interrupt
Speaker 1: or maybe not interrupt, but but at least, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: converse with their child about these sort of holy experiments
Speaker 1: and conflict play. Um and Moyer sites Diane Levin, an
Speaker 1: early in education specialist at at Wheelock College in Boston
Speaker 1: UH and the author of the war play Dilemma. Levin
Speaker 1: says that you can you can ask follow up questions
Speaker 1: to statements about, say, killing bad guys, with questions like, well,
Speaker 1: what did the bad guy do? Is there anything else
Speaker 1: that can be done besides killing the bad guy? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know, there are conversations you can have about conflict,
Speaker 1: in the nature of conflict and how this imagined conflict
Speaker 1: lines up with real life. Plus they point out that
Speaker 1: trying to prevent things like unplay, you know, are likely
Speaker 1: to backfire anyway, making it more desirable, So it's best
Speaker 1: to engage in conversations about it, like it's better to
Speaker 1: have the conflict play is allowed, but it's something we
Speaker 1: can have conversations about. So that we can you know,
Speaker 1: you can have these these important conversations about how real
Speaker 1: conflict works and the ramifications of violence in the real world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to just send the gun play underground. Yeah, now.
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting that some of this
Speaker 1: would seem to go far beyond anything specifically involving guns
Speaker 1: and weapons. For instance, a June study from the University
Speaker 1: of Cambridge found that children's children whose fathers make time
Speaker 1: to play with them from a very early age may
Speaker 1: find it easier to control their behavior and emotions as
Speaker 1: they grow up. And the key distinction here, and I
Speaker 1: think I think one worth pointing out for single parents
Speaker 1: and same the same sex parents is that it's not
Speaker 1: it's not about the you know, the gender of the father, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's about a more physical play style and stuff like
Speaker 1: quote tickling, chasing and piggy act rides. But this studying
Speaker 1: question looked at forty years of research and found quote
Speaker 1: a consistent correlation between father child play and children's subsequent
Speaker 1: ability to control their feelings. So play more in the
Speaker 1: domain of rough housing maybe sometimes helps children understand understand
Speaker 1: boundaries better and and control their their outbursts. And impulses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so like this is me, not the study, but
Speaker 1: I instantly think of the times when I've been kind
Speaker 1: of playing rough with the kiddo and I get kind
Speaker 1: of clocked, you know, or something ends up really hurting,
Speaker 1: Like like maybe that kind of thing is a part
Speaker 1: of of understanding like you know, restraint and the boundaries
Speaker 1: of physical aggression, etcetera. You find out what too rough
Speaker 1: is by by like going there with a responsible adult present, right,
Speaker 1: all right, well we're gonna go and close it out there. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, hopefully this gave everybody a little food for thought,
Speaker 1: and we would love to hear from everybody out there
Speaker 1: if you have any thoughts on what we discussed tire today,
Speaker 1: you know, especially in and around the holidays, when inevitably
Speaker 1: there's gonna there are going to be toy weapons under
Speaker 1: the tree. They might be human size, they might be
Speaker 1: very miniature. Uh they might be for grown ups, they
Speaker 1: might be for kids. But you know, what are we
Speaker 1: supposed to do with that? How are we supposed to
Speaker 1: to think about these things? Uh? So I thought it
Speaker 1: was a good a good episode to roll out this
Speaker 1: time of year. Oh man, what we didn't even get
Speaker 1: into toy weapons for adults, such as like what do
Speaker 1: you call it when like an adult person buys a
Speaker 1: buys a sword. They're not planning on using it in battle.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to have it. Yeah, that you want
Speaker 1: to put it on the wall, which, of course you
Speaker 1: know if you if you think about the weapons effect, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that means every time I walk into the living room,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be touched by the weapons effect, right, Um,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's it's interesting. I mean then also, you're
Speaker 1: if you buy that sword to put on the wall,
Speaker 1: you are going to hold it at some point if you, um,
Speaker 1: you might film yourself on your phone doing tricks of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna happen. Um, if you have a rental
Speaker 1: house and you put on like Airbnb or something, and
Speaker 1: you have a sword on the wall, people who stay
Speaker 1: there are going to try and take the sword off
Speaker 1: the wall. It's it's they're they're gonna go for it.
Speaker 1: Even if it's fixed in place, it's gonna be back
Speaker 1: the sword, the stone bolt, that sucker down. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and close it out then. Um. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You can find us
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast, wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just hope that you rate, review, and subscribe. Episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays. We have some other shorter content that comes
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Speaker 1: how cinema and then what on Saturday you get a
Speaker 1: repeat episode. So it's a full, a full menu of possibilities.
Speaker 1: Your audio stockings are stuffed anyway, huge things as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to suggest topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you canmail us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
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