Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today's episode is
Speaker 1: from the vault. It is an episode that we did
Speaker 1: last year on toy Guns. Originally published December twenty two.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's unwrap it and uh and have
Speaker 1: a go at it. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And Rob I've got a question for you
Speaker 1: to start off with today. I want to know if you,
Speaker 1: as a child had a toy that I also had.
Speaker 1: I think it was really common and I got it
Speaker 1: for Christmas one year, I remember, and what it was
Speaker 1: was a a plastic alien pistol that when you pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger, it would play one of a sequence of
Speaker 1: like five different sequences of sound effects. So the first
Speaker 1: one would go like do you do? You do you do?
Speaker 1: And then the next one would go 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 blue,
Speaker 1: clear plastic case over some led lights that would shoot
Speaker 1: back and forth when you fired the gun. Do you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about? I don't know what the
Speaker 1: name of this thing is, so I don't know how
Speaker 1: to look it up. I I don't think I had
Speaker 1: the exact one you had, but I must have had
Speaker 1: like an earlier model, because I had one that was
Speaker 1: black and red and it did the exact same sound
Speaker 1: effects you're discussing here, So I feel like it had
Speaker 1: to have been the same tech in just a different color,
Speaker 1: or like a slightly different plastic toy gun. Now, there
Speaker 1: was one thing I liked about this toy gun, which
Speaker 1: was that every time you pull the trigger, it would
Speaker 1: make a different sound effect, which means that it was
Speaker 1: almost like you could imagine that you had like one
Speaker 1: of the Stormtrooper blasters from the very beginning of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: where you have multiple settings. You can set, I guess
Speaker 1: for the regular blast, and then you can set for stun.
Speaker 1: Except the problem was you couldn't toggle the sound effects
Speaker 1: on this thing. They just win in a sequence, So
Speaker 1: if you wanted to get one sound effect in particular,
Speaker 1: you'd have to pull the trigger a certain number of
Speaker 1: times to like run through the cycle and get back there.
Speaker 1: I think part of that is the toy designers focus
Speaker 1: on tormenting the parents, because I've noticed this in contemporary
Speaker 1: toys as well. Um, where my son has a few
Speaker 1: different lightsabers, and one of the ones he has it
Speaker 1: seems to at random either do lightsaber noises or play
Speaker 1: part of the Star Wars theme. But it seems entirely unpredictable,
Speaker 1: so if the batteries are in, if the device is on,
Speaker 1: and it seems also confusing about if it's toggled on
Speaker 1: or not, like you're never sure, um, yeah, you it's
Speaker 1: apparent listening in from the next room over, you don't
Speaker 1: know what to expect. It just keeps you completely on edge.
Speaker 1: I think if you want to calibrate a sound effects
Speaker 1: toy for maximum parental torment, you should somewhat randomize the
Speaker 1: sounds that come out and the sequence at which they
Speaker 1: come out, because that we know that randomized rewards they
Speaker 1: tend to create more addictive effects. The child will make
Speaker 1: the sound effects more often for longer durations, and the
Speaker 1: parents will slowly lose their minds. And of course it's
Speaker 1: also written in a in a way ridiculous because when
Speaker 1: we were kids, but also kids today perfectly capable of
Speaker 1: creating their own sound effects. You don't need the toy
Speaker 1: regun to go, Pu pu, you don't need the lightsaber
Speaker 1: to go because we can do those sound effects. We
Speaker 1: do them all the time. Um. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: I read that that they had to get onto you
Speaker 1: and McGregor in filming the prequel films because he kept
Speaker 1: making those sounds with his mouth during the lightsaber battles. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I read that somewhere. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's wonderful either way. So he was like, anaka,
Speaker 1: I have the high ground. M yep, I think so.
Speaker 1: But I guess this all comes up because today you
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about toy guns, which I thought was
Speaker 1: a very interesting topic. Yeah. And in a way, this
Speaker 1: is a holiday episode because the holidays are about toys
Speaker 1: under the trees, right, and the holidays at their best
Speaker 1: or about imaginative escapes, and um, you know, I know
Speaker 1: in my own experience raising an eight year old, it's
Speaker 1: it's proven impossible to ignore the specter of the gun. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's everywhere it was in it was
Speaker 1: you know, in our upbringing. So I thought it would
Speaker 1: be good to look at some of the sort of
Speaker 1: broad studies and meta analyzes that that look at the
Speaker 1: idea of toy guns, because I mean, first and foremost,
Speaker 1: we have to recognize that that actual guns are lethal
Speaker 1: instruments designed to kill animals and or humans, depending on
Speaker 1: their exact design. Now, gun ownership itself is obviously a
Speaker 1: divisive topic, and one can spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: discussing objections to the legal use of such weapons, and
Speaker 1: there's there's too much here for us to get into
Speaker 1: in this episode, but I think we can mostly agree
Speaker 1: that improper use and misuse of firearms is to be avoided,
Speaker 1: and in very broad strokes, I'm thinking about guns used
Speaker 1: in homicides and suicides, guns used in mass shootings and
Speaker 1: accidental deaths involving firearms, especially those involving children. Right, And
Speaker 1: of course, the the obvious implication there is that children
Speaker 1: should not be playing with real guns, even though there's
Speaker 1: clearly a desire among many children to enact types of
Speaker 1: play that involve guns or involve surrogates for guns. So
Speaker 1: so there's sort of a natural accommodation that happens there.
Speaker 1: It's like well, kids wanna want to pretend to play
Speaker 1: with guns. Obviously they should not be seeking out and
Speaker 1: handling real guns, So give them plastic toy guns. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course, especially nowadays, But but I mean this
Speaker 1: was also president in the minds of parents in the
Speaker 1: past too. You know, we ask ourselves, are we doing
Speaker 1: the right thing? Should they have toy guns? Should we
Speaker 1: take all the toy guns away? Um, there's so many
Speaker 1: questions that emerge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I wonder about
Speaker 1: this question myself. I mean I can. I can very
Speaker 1: much see both sides of it. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: I feel like, well, I mean, you know, conflict play
Speaker 1: is a normal type of imaginative play. Uh. One of
Speaker 1: the most common types of conflict that children are going
Speaker 1: to imagine given the world we live in, is conflict
Speaker 1: with guns. So they will want to act that out
Speaker 1: and in a way that just seems like part of
Speaker 1: childhood development. But then on the other hand, like if
Speaker 1: you watch a child, like, you know, running around pretending
Speaker 1: 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 realm 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, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it becomes this this this labyrinth, this maze that you
Speaker 1: try and figure your way out of. So this is
Speaker 1: what we're gonna basically be talking about in today's episode.
Speaker 1: But before we go go further, I thought it might
Speaker 1: be helpful to go ahead and throw out some stats
Speaker 1: and some numbers, um, just to um, you know, underlie
Speaker 1: the conversation here. So, according to the CDC stats for eighteen,
Speaker 1: the most recently made available as of this recording, at
Speaker 1: the tail end of the United States saw thirty eight
Speaker 1: thousand three deaths from firearm violence in and that accounted
Speaker 1: for homicides and suicides UH those involved firearms. Additionally, Americans
Speaker 1: are ten times more likely to be killed by guns
Speaker 1: than people in other developed countries. According to a two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen study published in the American Journal of Medicine,
Speaker 1: gun purchases surged over the summer in as did incidents
Speaker 1: of gun violence we face. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: of course, we faced increased awareness of police violence against minorities.
Speaker 1: And as Craig Jackson pointed out on the conversation, despite
Speaker 1: lockdown measures in the US, mass shootings in the US
Speaker 1: sharply rows. As of November twenty six, I believe there
Speaker 1: were five d seventy eight mass shootings in the country,
Speaker 1: already ahead of the total four hundred seventeen from the
Speaker 1: year before. So we have to face the fact that
Speaker 1: if our children are going to be running around pretending
Speaker 1: to play with guns, you're holding that in your head
Speaker 1: with the reality of all the terrible things that guns
Speaker 1: can do and have been used to do, even just
Speaker 1: in in recent memory. Yeah, I mean, as as a parent,
Speaker 1: it is it is at once terrifying and then terrifyingly
Speaker 1: commonplace to get that that robot call from your school
Speaker 1: telling you that the school has been locked down because
Speaker 1: of an incident in the surrounding area, but that everything
Speaker 1: is cool, and you're you know it, it's it's shocking,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, oh, everything's okay, And then you
Speaker 1: you ask yourself, should I feel okay about this? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like I shouldn't. But anyways, as far as
Speaker 1: children and guns go, some more stats here. At two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen study published in the New England Journal of
Speaker 1: Medicine found that death by gunshot with the second highest
Speaker 1: cause of death in the United States and sixteen among
Speaker 1: children and adolescents ages one through nineteen. Firearms were the
Speaker 1: second leading cause of death in two thousand fourteen for
Speaker 1: American children between ages of one and nineteen, an average
Speaker 1: of eight kids shot per day um if you average
Speaker 1: that out over the calendar year. And then also saw
Speaker 1: an uptick in unintentional shootings by children by in March
Speaker 1: and April. And I believe commentators often, you know, link
Speaker 1: that to the fact that suddenly children were at home
Speaker 1: more and it gave them greater opportunity to come across
Speaker 1: guns in the household. Uh And and of course that
Speaker 1: opens up the door for misuse and accidental usage of
Speaker 1: the weapon. I think sometimes people get the feeling when
Speaker 1: when you're talking about things like certain like safety precautions
Speaker 1: involving like gun storage, you know, should you keep a
Speaker 1: gun stored in the homeloaded? And questions like that. Um,
Speaker 1: It's it's strange how people can know what the risks
Speaker 1: of certain things are but still think, Uh, those risks
Speaker 1: only apply like statistically to people in general. And I
Speaker 1: am not like people in general, So I'm okay like
Speaker 1: that that I the same logic that holds true in
Speaker 1: general for people and households won't apply to me or
Speaker 1: to my household. You know, I don't need to worry
Speaker 1: about that kind of stuff. Isn't it like weird how
Speaker 1: we can think like that? Yeah? Yeah, And and plus
Speaker 1: I think we also color our estimation of these numbers
Speaker 1: based on our own experiences, and are you know the
Speaker 1: limited nature of our experiences, you know? Like I? On
Speaker 1: on one hand, I can lie, I can look back
Speaker 1: at my own past and say, well, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up with guns in the household, and and
Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, have an accident with a gun.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't. I never loaded a gun on
Speaker 1: my own or anything like that. I I don't think
Speaker 1: I knew any growing up that was engaged in a
Speaker 1: firearm related accident or the accidental discharge of a fire
Speaker 1: firearm in the house. But but then again, that's just
Speaker 1: my limited experience, you know, and you know, and then rationally,
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to to to roll the dice for
Speaker 1: my own child based on what I experienced, you know, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, but there is definitely a natural tendency to
Speaker 1: sort of think of yourself as an exception to whatever
Speaker 1: the statistical rule is, and to elevate the importance of
Speaker 1: anecdotes in your own life over the you know what
Speaker 1: the risks actually are exactly. Yeah, So as far as
Speaker 1: the stats go, we could we could keep going on
Speaker 1: and on about this and torturing the numbers, but and
Speaker 1: there're ultimately number of different directions one could go into
Speaker 1: discussing these numbers, the causes, the possible solutions. But one
Speaker 1: question that always comes up, sometimes in good faith, sometimes
Speaker 1: as a distraction is what about guns in childhood play?
Speaker 1: And and one of the reasons, again, like we've been
Speaker 1: discussing that this is so um, you know, there's something
Speaker 1: we end up meditating on so much is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I found that guns and media and subsequently in play
Speaker 1: are almost impossible to avoid because while you can curate
Speaker 1: what your kids watch and and ultimately this is even
Speaker 1: harder than I expected it to be, they're still going
Speaker 1: to interact with other kids, and there's always going to
Speaker 1: be a kid on the playground that turns a stick
Speaker 1: into a weapon, turns a stick into a gun or
Speaker 1: a sword or spear or what have you, but very
Speaker 1: often a gun. And even if they don't have access
Speaker 1: to sticks, they can make the finger guns and blast away. Right. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: I think this comes down to like this difficult question
Speaker 1: that people have over like how much is it reasonable
Speaker 1: to try to control your child's experience of the world. Um, like,
Speaker 1: you're always going to be balancing that. I mean when
Speaker 1: you talked about media for some reason, the thing that
Speaker 1: immediately popped into my head is like what happens once
Speaker 1: a child discovers YouTube? Like how do you do you
Speaker 1: just like set a child loose on YouTube? Or like
Speaker 1: how do if if not, how do you prevent that
Speaker 1: from happening? Uh? I don't you know, it just seems
Speaker 1: like it's it's mind boggling to me. Yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: You know, what we have We can certainly go on
Speaker 1: about about that that topic as well. But but of
Speaker 1: course sorry that that's ancillarty your main point, which is
Speaker 1: about play. Yeah, I mean, I think it's absolutely clear
Speaker 1: probably everybody who's been around kids for any amount of
Speaker 1: time or was once a child themselves, probably remembers or
Speaker 1: has observed the natural emergence of violent and conflict play
Speaker 1: among kids. It doesn't seem like something it's hard to
Speaker 1: rule this out, but it doesn't seem like something that
Speaker 1: like parents have to instruct their children how how to
Speaker 1: do it. Seems like it just kind of comes naturally
Speaker 1: out of the child brain that like we need to
Speaker 1: enact some kind of imaginative violent conflict. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the gun being an inevitable part of the conflict media,
Speaker 1: they absorb, it just becomes a part of it, and
Speaker 1: it's a you know, you can try and sort of
Speaker 1: steer your children towards things like lightsabers and ninja turtles,
Speaker 1: you know, but even in those genres, a lot of guns,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot there's there's those are very
Speaker 1: ultimately very shooty properties as well. So you know, unless
Speaker 1: you you know, just want your your you're just gonna
Speaker 1: feed your kid pop patrol over and over again and
Speaker 1: never let them move on to something else. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you do? It's funny how many of these properties
Speaker 1: I can think of several offhand. You know, Batman, uh,
Speaker 1: Star Wars whatever, have this sort of moral hierarchy of
Speaker 1: weapons selection where the most morally virtuous characters never use guns.
Speaker 1: They will use like hand to hand combat. They do
Speaker 1: still use weapons of various types, lightsabers and all that.
Speaker 1: But then as you go down the the hierarchy, down
Speaker 1: the ladder of moral virtue into more ambiguous and then
Speaker 1: ultimately evil characters, the propensity for firearms and firearm analogs
Speaker 1: gets higher and higher. Yeah, that is interesting, and and
Speaker 1: I I suppose I like that. There may be problems
Speaker 1: with it if I an analyze it too much, but
Speaker 1: on the surface, I like that that I that idea
Speaker 1: that the lightsaber is the civilized weapon and the blaster
Speaker 1: is the uncivilized weapon. So I guess, I guess it's
Speaker 1: complicated there because also the Sith Lords primarily use lightsabers,
Speaker 1: like the most evil of the most evil, also as
Speaker 1: shoe blasters, and and we'll only you know, you can
Speaker 1: do a lot of damage with the lightsaber. You can
Speaker 1: 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 a lightsaber because even though I'm
Speaker 1: not being you know, shot at in the allway, 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 in their imagination. As Jeffrey Goldstein of
Speaker 1: the University of you Trek and the Netherlands pointed out
Speaker 1: in Aggressive Toy Play published in and the Future of
Speaker 1: Play Theory, aggressive play includes mock fighting, general rough housing,
Speaker 1: and fantasy aggression, and we can further think of imaginary
Speaker 1: battles and war toys as being part of war play.
Speaker 1: Part quote. Aggressive toys and war toys are those that
Speaker 1: children use in play fighting and fantasy aggression, including but
Speaker 1: not limited to, toys that resemble weapons, and naturally this
Speaker 1: covers a great deal of territory. You know an old
Speaker 1: timey you know, silver toy, cowboy pistol. You know that
Speaker 1: there's a there's a weapon, uh toy, a bright orange
Speaker 1: ray gun that looks like nothing you would actually use
Speaker 1: in a real world combat scenario. Same case a tiny
Speaker 1: blaster and a Lego mini mini figures hand yep that
Speaker 1: applies Lego blocks formed roughly into the shape of a gun.
Speaker 1: The same thing, a stick, finger guns, you name it.
Speaker 1: All of that kind of falls under the same uh
Speaker 1: loose category here, So basically like most of the toys
Speaker 1: I remember having as a kid. That may be overstating it,
Speaker 1: but it is weird. Also the I wonder how much
Speaker 1: of this has changed generationally. I'm sure people were having
Speaker 1: this debate when we were kids, But I just remember
Speaker 1: having lots and lots of explicit weapon and even gun
Speaker 1: toys as a child, and all my friends having the
Speaker 1: same stuff. Yeah, and I remember making guns like I
Speaker 1: would watch like a James Bond film and I think
Speaker 1: it was what from Russia with Love? And there's the
Speaker 1: whole thing he has like a rifle that folds up
Speaker 1: in a suitcase so I somehow got my hands on
Speaker 1: an old suitcase and I had like a pipe that
Speaker 1: I had in there, and like some sort of capsule
Speaker 1: that I was pretending was the the bullet. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just it was so so easy to get excited
Speaker 1: about those things. Well, I think you you should be
Speaker 1: proud of any child who shows ingenuity of that kind.
Speaker 1: What did you also make yourself a like a Robert
Speaker 1: Shaw garatte wire. Oh yeah, that that suitcase had so
Speaker 1: many interesting bits of spycraft in it. But um, I
Speaker 1: can't remember what all I had in it. You know,
Speaker 1: it was it was the imagination was like it. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't too impressive. Okay. Now, generally speaking, studies have
Speaker 1: shown and continue to show that that boys display more
Speaker 1: aggressive play than girls and their various theorized reasons here.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that it's only boys by any stretch.
Speaker 1: The sex differences, though, seem to have been observed across cultures. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: given you know, the cultural landscape of everything, I imagine
Speaker 1: this is an area where we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: see analysis of where we are with this and where
Speaker 1: we're going with this. Uh, you know, because there were
Speaker 1: a number of of sort of loose ends I could
Speaker 1: have gone after when I was looking at this, and
Speaker 1: originally like, there's a whole thing about like gender marketing
Speaker 1: in uh gun weapons, you know, particularly like in nerve toys.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot to consider just in this category
Speaker 1: as well. But these seem to be the trends that
Speaker 1: have played out over time, and these are the trends
Speaker 1: that are often, uh at least brought up in any
Speaker 1: kind of study regarding aggressive play and gun play among children. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems pretty clear that that us of play is
Speaker 1: uh present regardless of gender, but it's more common in
Speaker 1: boys now. Goldstein pointed out that warplay usually begins around
Speaker 1: age two and occurs once a week with at least
Speaker 1: a couple of other kids. I love this detail because
Speaker 1: I know what he's saying. But it also makes me
Speaker 1: imagine like a child keeping a schedule and you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you wanna do you want to watch a movie
Speaker 1: this Wednesday? As I'm sorry, I got warplay. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: Keith and Toby are are are already uh yes, is
Speaker 1: for that, so I'm gonna have to pass. I like that,
Speaker 1: and it also makes me think of, um remembering back
Speaker 1: to my own childhood, how thin sometimes the boundary was
Speaker 1: between something that was explicitly war or violence play and
Speaker 1: something that was a thinly disguised or leaky surrogate for
Speaker 1: war violence play, some kind of game that was like
Speaker 1: almost a war, that would you'd easily sort of like
Speaker 1: slip into it being a violent war, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: one of the most you know, obvious examples is of
Speaker 1: course sports itself. I mean, you know, several times away,
Speaker 1: like what every day you would go to pe class,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe you're square dancing or doing that
Speaker 1: thing with the with the parachute where you dance around
Speaker 1: in circles with it. But a lot of times you're
Speaker 1: playing games, sports games, and those are essentially wars. Those
Speaker 1: are wars that are that are carried out in a
Speaker 1: mostly non violent way with some rule limitations, but they
Speaker 1: kind of fulfill the same um 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 mean,
Speaker 1: any kind of competition, right, Yeah, and but I mean
Speaker 1: in a in a closer literal sense. I mean, I
Speaker 1: remember a lot of the games we came up with
Speaker 1: as a child, when you're not playing like a pre
Speaker 1: created game that has its own rules and all that
Speaker 1: external to you, but you're doing some kind of Calvin
Speaker 1: ball thing when kids do all the time that you
Speaker 1: come up with some original game in your head and
Speaker 1: you play with your friends. A lot of those games
Speaker 1: I recall, we're basically just like half a step removed
Speaker 1: from being a cage match. You know. It's like it's
Speaker 1: 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 part of it is when you see kids play,
Speaker 1: a lot of it comes down to this sort of
Speaker 1: improv that they're doing. They're all bringing a certain energy
Speaker 1: and certain ideas to what they're playing and how they're playing,
Speaker 1: and so you know, the right combination of kids might
Speaker 1: be just concerned with building a house for a mouse
Speaker 1: or doing an archaeological dig in the dirt. But then
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a kid that comes up and is
Speaker 1: gonna bring the finger gun and you know, kind of
Speaker 1: like a Michael Scott in the office in every improv
Speaker 1: scene pretends to have a gun. Well, that scene in
Speaker 1: 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. Know what are we gonna do now? But
Speaker 1: the problem comes because he introduces a gun into every
Speaker 1: improv skit. And I think the same thing could probably
Speaker 1: be said of play, Like, you know, it's normal for
Speaker 1: children to enact is imaginative conflict play, but when when
Speaker 1: some kid wants to turn everything into an imagined violent conflict,
Speaker 1: then it's like, Okay, that's not fun anymore. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And then I don't remember if it was explicitly stated
Speaker 1: or if it was even implied, but I looking back
Speaker 1: on it, I kind of feel like it was the
Speaker 1: same gun scenario that he would bring, which also ties
Speaker 1: into some of the points that are are made in
Speaker 1: one of the sources we looked at for this episode.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the big question here is not whether kids
Speaker 1: engage in aggressive play, because they do, but it's rather
Speaker 1: about what is it for and indeed, if it actually
Speaker 1: leads to more aggressive behavior and golds Steam points to
Speaker 1: a trio of studies from the ninety nineties that that
Speaker 1: indicate that war games and video games with violent themes
Speaker 1: increase the frequency and duration of aggressive play. But the
Speaker 1: connection to actually aggressive behavior that that's a different story
Speaker 1: that's ultimately a lot more complicated. Yeah, I guess this
Speaker 1: is the big question that a lot of parents are
Speaker 1: probably worried about, Like if they watched their kids doing
Speaker 1: doing aggressive play that what they're worried about often is
Speaker 1: does this mean my child is going to grow up
Speaker 1: to be a violent person. Yeah, And we may think
Speaker 1: about this sometimes as adults when we play our video
Speaker 1: games and and whatnot, especially if you're playing a game
Speaker 1: that actually gives you like a kill count, which could
Speaker 1: be a little sobering at times, and you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I sure did pretend shoot a lot of people?
Speaker 1: Am I? Okay? So anyway, that that's a whole area
Speaker 1: we'll have to consider coming back to in the future.
Speaker 1: But uh, I've got a good place to go from
Speaker 1: here would be to travel back to nine seven and
Speaker 1: consider something that we know as the weapons effect. So
Speaker 1: back in sixty seven, American social psychologist Leonard Berkowitz and
Speaker 1: co author Anthony Lapage conducted a randomized study using male
Speaker 1: college students. Now, each test involved two participants, but one
Speaker 1: of these participants was always a secret accompliments accomplice of
Speaker 1: the testers. So you only really have one random individual one,
Speaker 1: you know, the purer college student that's in here and
Speaker 1: is being tested. The other person is just is actually
Speaker 1: a part of the study but pretending to be a
Speaker 1: test subject. So the subject in the accomplice would take
Speaker 1: turns engaging in a mundane task such as the example
Speaker 1: of that that I saw listed was uh, 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, so that's again that's the
Speaker 1: fake test subject shocking the actual test subject. But then
Speaker 1: it's the actual test subjects turn to shock back. Uh
Speaker 1: so this was the basic test for regression. How many
Speaker 1: 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 but,
Speaker 1: I mean the big thing is, it's impossible to ignore
Speaker 1: those weapons, right, I mean, there's a there's it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of impossible to ignore anything that is there on
Speaker 1: 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 can forgot about that episode, but it
Speaker 1: comes up in several 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 were aggressive within the boundaries of
Speaker 1: the study parameters. Okay, so what they're claiming is to
Speaker 1: have found that when you see the gun, it's not
Speaker 1: that 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: something 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
Speaker 1: it if there's some eyes painted on it, what's the
Speaker 1: effect if there's just a gun sitting beside it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or the collection play, Yeah, has a gun? Like what
Speaker 1: if the what if the Santa that is collecting coins
Speaker 1: with the bell, what if he also is packing a
Speaker 1: heat I don't know, I don't know if you saw this,
Speaker 1: But actually the one of the authors here, Leonard Burkowitz,
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: the anti metaboli was, yes, it's true that the finger
Speaker 1: pulls 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 isn't there's an argument that
Speaker 1: definitely plays into the various discussions that have taken place
Speaker 1: over the subsequent decades regarding weapons in society. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say that one thing we know that this is
Speaker 1: basically going to be one example of a study on
Speaker 1: what's known as price aiming, 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 effect 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 psycholo Gy 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 but these are the big takeaways
Speaker 1: that Benjamin at all Um put out there. First of all,
Speaker 1: weapons do appear to increase aggressive thoughts and hostile appraisals,
Speaker 1: although 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 objective 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,
Speaker 1: uh And and meta analysis is helpful for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: There was another thing that they looked into. One of
Speaker 1: the major factors tempering their findings here is a question
Speaker 1: of publication bias in the literature on the weapons effect.
Speaker 1: So 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 techt 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 that this publication disparity could also potentially pressure researchers
Speaker 1: to UH perhaps unconsciously, probably unconsciously to the time, lean
Speaker 1: into UH study designs and manipulations that would try to
Speaker 1: get a significant result showing something something interesting that you
Speaker 1: can report apart from just saying like, yeah, we looked
Speaker 1: and we didn't find anything. And this is why it's
Speaker 1: important to publish and reward well executed studies that receive
Speaker 1: a null result. And I understand the difficulty with that,
Speaker 1: like I try to remember to mention them on the
Speaker 1: show when I come across them. But I admit it's
Speaker 1: a lot harder to make a good podcast talking about
Speaker 1: a 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 weapons, 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 behave of your outcomes
Speaker 1: for instance, we recommend interpreting their mean estimates with considerable caution.
Speaker 1: So as best I can tell from these results, it
Speaker 1: looks to me like the weapons effect is probably real
Speaker 1: on average with regards to cognition how it affects what
Speaker 1: we're thinking about, But the size of the effect maybe
Speaker 1: a good bit smaller than some studies have suggested. So
Speaker 1: so maybe a gun on the table makes your cognition
Speaker 1: a 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 nineties. 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,
Speaker 1: like isn't that one of the reasons you have the
Speaker 1: gun on the wall right for people to see it,
Speaker 1: or 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, uh,
Speaker 1: they were not able to replicate the weapons 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. But it's also worth noting
Speaker 1: that it's pretty much impossible to fully conduct a real
Speaker 1: world test off the weapons effect, as it could potentially,
Speaker 1: you know, concern aggressive behavior. Uh, but it's it's still
Speaker 1: an official stopping point in considering such topics as gun control,
Speaker 1: violent media, and toy guns. Yeah, totally. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think this is a very interesting and fruitful realm of research.
Speaker 1: So yeah, more more on gun psychology. Absolutely, it certainly
Speaker 1: made me think more about how many you know, manifestations
Speaker 1: of a gun I encounter in just an average day,
Speaker 1: you know, like all my hobbies see too, 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 to my laptop, and I counted, like I think, uh,
Speaker 1: counting both physical models and illustrations and 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 or some weapons gonna
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 that people imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: political squabbles and all that. But almost every good story
Speaker 1: is about conflict of some kind, and one of the
Speaker 1: major types of conflict is violent, deadly conflict. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just to drive this time. I'm recording in a closet
Speaker 1: as usual, and I just counted eleven weapons uh on
Speaker 1: on packaging or images or books. Uh you know, that's
Speaker 1: the only thing is not not a weapon in an
Speaker 1: illustration then as I'm looking around, or is a box
Speaker 1: a boxed game of Ticket to Ride and a VHS
Speaker 1: of Jerry McGuire, And that's it. There are no guns
Speaker 1: in Jerry McGuire. It's it's I guess it's the cinema
Speaker 1: of peace. That's true. Now, there was one really strange
Speaker 1: thing that I was reading in the meta analysis you
Speaker 1: brought up a minute ago. This is yet another thing
Speaker 1: that could just be a sort of like artifact of
Speaker 1: of the existing research that isn't really robust, doesn't actually
Speaker 1: mean anything, but it could be a real discovery, and
Speaker 1: if it is, it's very intriguing to me. So to
Speaker 1: read from their paper quote. One counterintuitive finding in our
Speaker 1: analyses concerned the comparison of real weapons and images of weapons. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the effect for images of weapons was
Speaker 1: larger than for real weapons. Although there is no particular
Speaker 1: theoretical reason why there should be a difference between real
Speaker 1: weapons and images of weapons, the difference was significant in
Speaker 1: the naive meta analysis, and the difference remain significant after
Speaker 1: taking publication bias and potential outliers into consideration. Perhaps participants
Speaker 1: were more suspicious when they saw real weapons. I mean,
Speaker 1: that seems sensible to me. Yeah, uh so, maybe you're
Speaker 1: saying more so. I think the idea more suspicious is
Speaker 1: that people's genuine reactions were maybe tempered in an experiment
Speaker 1: where there's a real gun on the table because they
Speaker 1: feel like something's wrong here and you know that I'm
Speaker 1: being provoked or like you know that, they detect the priming,
Speaker 1: they start to understand what the experiment is testing for
Speaker 1: which they shouldn't in a well designed experiment, um, and
Speaker 1: that affects what they actually report in the end. That's
Speaker 1: a possibility another thing is just that. Yeah, it emerges
Speaker 1: some other strange artifact. But if that were a real effect,
Speaker 1: I would wonder what could explain that. I mean, would
Speaker 1: people actually be more primed to think host to to
Speaker 1: like perceive hostility, and to think aggressive and violent thoughts
Speaker 1: when they look at a picture of a gun rather
Speaker 1: than when when they see a physical gun sitting in
Speaker 1: front of them. Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean,
Speaker 1: the obvious answer that comes to mind, it might not
Speaker 1: 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 you have you
Speaker 1: have used the right way or the wrong way, depending
Speaker 1: how 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, caution, all that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank all right, Well at this point, let's get back
Speaker 1: into 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 in
Speaker 1: from Melinda Winner Moyer a science journalists 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 a 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, or 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 yuh, it
Speaker 1: doesn't look like the research actually lines up with this,
Speaker 1: um and there have been some very recent studies on
Speaker 1: this to back it up. Study from Rutgers University found
Speaker 1: that 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 twenty seventeen. Are children who see movie
Speaker 1: characters using guns more likely to use them? Well, this
Speaker 1: particular study published in um Jam of Pediatrics found that
Speaker 1: children who watched a PG rated movie clip containing guns
Speaker 1: played with a disabled real gun longer and pulled the
Speaker 1: trigger more often than children who saw the same movie
Speaker 1: not containing guns. Not super surprising. Kids love to act
Speaker 1: out scenes from movies that they've liked. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: bring us up to that. I think it's all good
Speaker 1: information to have in your head regarding your expectations of
Speaker 1: even your own perfect child. You know, Um, this is
Speaker 1: just kids statistically based on these studies. Now, a lawyer
Speaker 1: goes goes on from all this, the points out that
Speaker 1: you know, first of all, aggression play is of course
Speaker 1: normal and especially noted among boys. Uh. And and in
Speaker 1: in boys and among boys, you know, in individual boys,
Speaker 1: but then also when boys play together. In two thousand,
Speaker 1: two thirteen study from Fair and Russ Early Education and
Speaker 1: Development is the publication. The research has found that preschoolers
Speaker 1: who engaged in oral aggression play, such as having one
Speaker 1: stuffed animal bite the hell out of another stuffed animal. Uh,
Speaker 1: these children were less aggressive in the classroom. And the
Speaker 1: speculation here is the more violence that kids incorporate into
Speaker 1: their pretend play, the more they may learn to control
Speaker 1: violent impulses in real life and control their own emotions.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you've seen even stronger emphasis on all
Speaker 1: of this a two thousand thirteen paper by Heart and
Speaker 1: Tannic published in Children Australia even speculated that we may
Speaker 1: be interfering with a child social emotional, physical, cognitive, and
Speaker 1: communicative development if we try to prevent them from play
Speaker 1: fighting and engaging in this kind of like creative play aggression.
Speaker 1: Now there's some caveats here that that Moyer points out.
Speaker 1: First of all, if a child is actually hurting other
Speaker 1: kids during play fighting, then there may be some impulse
Speaker 1: control issues there. It might be something that that requires
Speaker 1: further attention. It also might be of concern if there
Speaker 1: 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 seen
Speaker 1: from Star Wars is not engage 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
Speaker 1: scenes that's important, but the creation of different narratives. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, and unfortunately this is just anecdotal again,
Speaker 1: but you know, in my memory of childhood, there was
Speaker 1: a ton of recreating with toys and just out of
Speaker 1: pure imagination play in both cases just recreating scenes directly
Speaker 1: from movies, but also a lot of times I feel
Speaker 1: like that type of play would evolve. So you would
Speaker 1: start by recreating a scene in a movie with legos
Speaker 1: or with toys, and then it would turn into what
Speaker 1: happens next, and then from there you just sort of
Speaker 1: branch out. Yeah, yeah, I I definitely see this in
Speaker 1: my own son, Like I remember him building this, putting
Speaker 1: up a battle scene with Legos and he was like, Dad,
Speaker 1: this is the second battle of Enosis, And I was
Speaker 1: like all right, and uh, but then it it did
Speaker 1: evolved from there to where now it's it's a different
Speaker 1: battle scene every time I go into his room and
Speaker 1: they're off in these little side things he's set up
Speaker 1: where it's like Clone troopers camping and looking after an
Speaker 1: animal or some other like. It's it's kind of an
Speaker 1: interesting puzzle to try and put together the narratives that
Speaker 1: he's clearly playing out in all of these little scenes.
Speaker 1: Are they ever looking over a baby Yoda? We don't
Speaker 1: have a baby Yoda yet, so maybe maybe by by
Speaker 1: the time Christmas rolls around, they'll be a little baby
Speaker 1: Yoda Yoda for them to interact with. What do you think?
Speaker 1: What do you think the next Star Wars baby is
Speaker 1: going to be? So we've had baby Yoda, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about baby Darth Maul. Can you get a baby Darth Maul? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could definitely have a baby of his species. I
Speaker 1: mean on the Clone War series you had a baby
Speaker 1: hut 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 versu it's going to be adorable. But you
Speaker 1: get that wampa. It's cute. When it's a baby, it
Speaker 1: starts to grow up. You can't just flush it down
Speaker 1: the toilet like an alligator. Don't do that to alligators,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't buy baby alligators, but or baby wampa. 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 and education specialist at Wheelock College in Boston, UH
Speaker 1: and the author of the war play Dilemma. Levin says
Speaker 1: that you can you can ask follow up questions to
Speaker 1: 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 gun play, you know, are
Speaker 1: likely to backfire anyway, making it more desirable. So it's
Speaker 1: best to engage in conversations about it, like it better
Speaker 1: to have the conflict play is allowed, but it's something
Speaker 1: we 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 father 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 saying 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 piggyback rides. But this studying question
Speaker 1: looked at forty years of research and found quote a
Speaker 1: consistent correlation between father child play and children's subsequent ability
Speaker 1: to control their feelings. So play more in the domain
Speaker 1: of rough housing maybe sometimes helps children understand understand boundaries
Speaker 1: 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, restrain 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 just gave everybody a little you know,
Speaker 1: food for thought, and we would love to hear from
Speaker 1: everybody out there if you have any thoughts on what
Speaker 1: we discussed here today, you know, especially in and around
Speaker 1: the holidays, when inevitably there's gonna there are going to
Speaker 1: be toy weapons under the tree. They might be human size,
Speaker 1: they might be very miniature. Uh, they might be for
Speaker 1: grown ups, they might be for kids. But you know,
Speaker 1: what are we supposed to do with that? How are
Speaker 1: we supposed to to think about these things? Uh? So
Speaker 1: I thought it was a good a good episode to
Speaker 1: roll out this time of year. Oh man. One we
Speaker 1: didn't even get into toy weapons for adults, such as
Speaker 1: like what do you call it when like an adult
Speaker 1: person buys a buys a sword. They're not planning on
Speaker 1: using it in battle, they just wanted to have it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you want to put a on the wall, which
Speaker 1: of course you know if you if you think about
Speaker 1: the weapons effect, Yeah, that that means every time I
Speaker 1: walk into the living room, I'm gonna be touched by
Speaker 1: the weapons effect, right, Um, it's yeah, it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean then also, you if you buy that sword
Speaker 1: to put on the wall, you are going to hold
Speaker 1: it at some point if you, um, you might film
Speaker 1: yourself on your phone doing tricks with it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen. Um, if you have a rental house
Speaker 1: and you put on like Airbnb or something, and you
Speaker 1: have a sword on the wall. People who stay there
Speaker 1: are going to try and take the sword off the wall.
Speaker 1: It's it's they're they're gonna go for it, even if
Speaker 1: it's fixed in place. It's gonna be like the sword
Speaker 1: in 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
Speaker 1: out on days and Wednesdays. Fridays that's gonna be Weird
Speaker 1: House 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 thanks 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 can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart radiosit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.