Lindsay Grace is an associate professor and founding director of American

University's Game Lab, which focuses its research on games designed to change people's interests, activities and behaviors. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) After 10 plus years of researching how games affect human behavior, I can tell you this:

Games do not teach people to become shooters in real life.

Lindsay Grace

Pundits claim that simulation games or virtual reality can make people better shooters. This is not accurate: if anything, of all the research on games and behavior change, the most compelling link between the two has to do with self-efficacy, a term coined by psychologist Albert Bandura.

Self-efficacy, according to social cognitive theory, refers to a person's belief in in his or her ability to succeed. Games simply offer the opportunity to change what people think is possible -- and to succeed at it ... on screen.

Thousands of hours of "shooting" games don't teach the essentials of a real gun. Players don't learn about the mechanics of safeties or a gun's weight. Players don't learn how to load a gun, to unbox bullets, to specify ammunition or how to purchase a weapon. Players don't learn how to adjust for a weapon's recoil, nor do they demonstrate the heat of a gun, or the maintenance of it.