Video Game Violence and the Female Game Player: Self- and Opponent Gender Effects on Presence and Aggressive Thoughts (Eastin, 2006)

Okay this is my last one for today… I hope. Now following Dr.Eastin’s academic trail, he wrote an article published last year. Since I’m trained in APA, I do find that the words in the title seemed so wrong. All capitalized, how strange…

Abstract

Adding depth and breadth to the general aggression model, this paper presents three experiments that test the relationships among user and opponent gender representation, opponent type, presence, and aggressive thoughts from violent video game play. Studies 1 and 2 suggest that females experience greater presence and more aggressive thoughts from game play when a gender match between self and game character exists. Studies 2 and 3 indicate that playing against a human opponent (rather than a computer) increases aggressive thoughts. Finally, although Studies 1, 2, and 3 indicate that playing as a female against a male opponent increases aggressive thoughts, Studies 1 and 2 suggest that playing as a male against a female opponent consistently and significantly decreases aggressive thoughts.

In this study, Eastin examined the relations on the effect of gender representation in a series of experiments. Now, gender representation means the player’s character’s gender and the opponent’s gender, either from the character or from the opponent player. Other examined relations are the concept of presence, agency of the opponent (human player vs. computer player).

Now, the dependent variable is aggressive thoughts of players (cognition).

One of the aggression factors of violent video games is identification, it is especially true for FPS games. Some games allow a creation process of which players can represent themselves within the game world, such as height, weight, clothes, skin color, hair style and gender. Hence, this creates a connection and an emotional investment between one’s identity and the avatar’s identity. As these identities are connected, in-game behaviours activate cognitive schema within individuals. In FPS games, psychologists would usually view these in-game behaviours as aggressive and violent for good reasons. Thus, repetition of aggressive behaviours and a strong identification to violent characters would lead to more easily accessible cognitive schema of aggression. Mind you, this does not translate directly into aggressive behaviours or attitudes as said in other studies.

Eastin wondered whether gender would be a factor in character identification. For example, a women who plays a female game character would be more likely to aggress. IMO, that depends on how someone views femininity, since it being female can be as caring, compassionate and non-violent. Well I’ll have to think on it further…

Tied to gender representation is presence. I’m a little weak on the concept of presence, as it is a relatively recent concept in social science. Eastin follows presence as “feeling in one even when located in another.” (p.354) However, there are three aspects of “presence”: social, spatial and self. What Eastin is more likely looking at is self-presence and social presence, which fits in this study’s operational definition.

In relation of presence to FPS games, players experience a strong sense of presence, since it is first-person view, we can interact with game objects, or get up-close and personal with the enemy, but importantly serve a point of reference within the virtual environment. I’m not sure if you can follow my summary, but that’s the best I can do.

Digital game playing and direct and indirect aggression in early adolescence: The roles of age, social intelligence, and parent-child communication (Wallenius et al., 2007)

This article was very tricky and again found it by luck. They called video games as digital games, which confounds my search. Again, I seem to can’t resist writing more since that praise from John Rice, Am I that easily pleased?

Abstract

The roles of age, social intelligence and parent-child communication in moderating the association between digital game playing and direct and indirect aggression were examined in 478 Finnish 10- and 13-year-old schoolchildren based on self-reports. The results confirmed that digital game violence was directly associated with direct aggression, especially at age 10, but only among boys. The moderating role of social intelligence was substantiated among older boys: game violence was associated with indirect aggression among those with high level of social intelligence. Further, as hypothesized, digital game playing was associated with direct aggression especially when parent-child communication was poor, but only among boys. Our findings emphasize the importance of individual and situational factors as moderators of the link between game violence and aggression.

Wallenius et al. investigated several interesting variables on the effects of violent video games. I will name them and the rationale behind them.

From birth until adulthood, the body undergoes many developments and changes, physically and mentally. This is quite noticeable in adolescence, where hormones and rapid social changes made most of our lives seem pretty miserable. Psychologically, our mind grows as well as we learn a lot and adapt to changing social environments, from a safe kindergarten to asshole-filled high school life (yes, I hated my high school life). Adolescence goes through a lot of changes and, therefore, individuals are likely to be more tensed and aggressive. So, violent video games would have a stronger effect among adolescent, especially boys

Another concern is the brain’s hard wiring of cognitive schemas, or IMO, personality. So exposure to media violence active cognitive schemas of aggression, if this exposure is chronic and the individual is growing up. It might mean that one’s aggressive cognitive schema in the brain is more active to the detriment of other cognitive schema, such as altruism. Once these neural connections of these cognitions are established and hard-wired, a person is more aggressive than those are not chronically exposed to media violence.  So it is reasoned. Of course, the keyword is chronic, thank goodness for school, well maybe not in high school.

Indirect aggression, using human relationships, others’ feelings, thoughts and behaviours to put oneself in a favourable light and putting down another. Research on the associations between violent video games use and indirect aggression are mixed. So there might be a mediating factor, social intelligence is identified as such and it is defined as the level of social and verbal skills an individual possesses.

Finally, Wallenius et al. will investigate the associations between video game use and quality of parent-child interactions. What is known is that healthy parent-child interactions act as a protective factor on the effects of media violence and aggression. Well, I do believe that parents have one of the largest influences on their children because they are the first socialization influence in life and interact with the most. However, some studies have found that parent-child quality has no or little influence on violent video game effects on aggression. So, it still needs to be clarified.

Hostility differences between cooperative versus competitive play in video games (Eastin, 2007)

Abstract

Most research on violent video game play suggests a positive relationship with aggression-related outcomes. Expanding this research, the current study examines the impact group size, game motivation, in-game behavior, and verbal aggression have on postgame play hostility. Consistent with previous research, group size and verbal aggression both displayed a significant positive relationship with hostility. From these results, avenues for future research on anti- and prosocial outcomes from group gaming are offered.

Rationale

The differences between competitive and cooperative play is how players achieve a desired goal. That is whether a goal is interdependent with other people’s goals or not. For example in cooperative play, “I need to kill a dragon, but I can’t do it alone. So having others who share the same goal would help”. Whereas in competitive play, “I want to kill that dragon myself, but there are others who wants to. I’d better be the one who did the deed.”Therefore, between cooperative and competitive play different strategies will be adopted.

Researchers have found that competition is related to aggression. If you think of hockey, fights break out often for the slightest offences. Or the case of the headbutt of Zinedine Zidane. So, the literature says that competition is associated with frustration from being unable to achieve a goal, anger, and arguments. On the other hand, cooperative is associated with feelings of cohesion, camaraderie and agreement. Therefore, there are differences in experiences between cooperative (coop) and competitive play and this can translate into other situations as well.

Group size within MMOs can range from 2 players to thousands in a single guild. As group size increase, so does the feelings of competitiveness and disagreements. In addition, subgroups (i.e. cliques) would form that would compete with other subgroups. Decreased perceived individual achievement and competitiveness and increased perceive anonymity within a group are factors of this in-group competitiveness.

Wishful identification in videogames and the effect on aggression among adolescents (Konijn, Bijvank & Bushman, 2007)

In this study, they investigated on game characters, mainly the protagonists, effect on adolescent boys as role models. Indeed, we often look up to other people who serve as a role model in order to interact with society, how we ought to act in different situations, how to talk with other people, etc. So who do we look up? That depends on what you’d like: say your parents, a celebrity, a fictional character (say Sherlock Holmes or Gil Grissom from CSI), you get the picture. So anyone, real or fictional, can be a role model for children and prior research has been done on older media. Anyways, they want to see if game heroes have any effect on players in terms of aggressive behaviours. Their findings suggested that participants are more aggressive when they played violent video games and when they identify with the main character within said game. The effect is pronounced with realism and immersiveness.

There are two types of identification explained in the study: similarity identification and wishful identification.

• Similarity identification is identification where a person’s role model has similar characteristics to one’s own, which leads to liking that character more than anyone else. For example, a nerd is likely to identify a nerdy character in a show. Or macho guy like a character who acted like a tough guy.

• Wishful identification is where characteristics of a character are attractive to that person who does not have them. For example, a weakling likes someone who’s strong and has guts to act out while he does not possess them.

So, like I mentioned before, what people identify with will likely learn their behaviours and attitudes. So in most violent video games, heroes behave in an aggressive manner. The researchers did make a good argument that boys are generally rewarded for what we see as gender-typical behaviours. For example, being tough, competitive, bravery, the saying “boys don’t cry”, etc. So, in a sense, heroes in violent video games engender both similarity and wishful identification since they display manly characteristics. This is relevant for adolescents who are searching an identity.

So what makes video games different from television and other media, well first the player plays the protagonist him/herself. In my opinion depending on game’s narrative, a player may either go through the story linearly and the character will develop accordingly without much player input. Or the game is open-ended, like Grand Theft Auto, where the player while may identify the character, but player has input into the character’s development. Say a criminal becomes reformed thanks to the player’s actions and vice versa. But this is my opinion.

According to the researchers, there are characteristics as the level of identification one may develop: violence and realism. Violence because being aggressive is what men are like, right? As they pointed out in their paper, “real men are not sissies”. Realism, unless you have lost your sense of reality, is where you know that being Master Chief of Halo is impossible because he’s a fantasy superhuman, while being a member of a SWAT team or the tragic Max Payne is something possible and easier to relate to. So, in a sense, what determines realism isn’t solely graphics, but that these heroes are believable and possible. Although the researchers believed graphics to be a key to realism and immersion, therefore wishful identification, but I don’t buy it with my earlier reasoning.

Other factors included are player traits like aggressiveness and sensation seeking. I guess activities that satisfy these traits attract people to them and video games are one of them and would likely generate identification.

Addiction and aggression within the MMO context (Grusser, Thalemann & Griffiths, 2007)

So we have some researchers asking whether there’s a connection between aggression and addiction within video games. Mark Griffiths is someone I recognize in the psych literature who has done extensive research on addiction, especially gambling.

A simple reasoning from the authors is that according to the lit.: violent video games increase aggression in players, while the addiction part is something that is now recognized amongst MMOG players. So two negative components of video games are now under the psychology microscope. However, their findings suggest that there is no or little connection between aggression and addiction

Method

The study is quite simple really: an online survey of players (7069 players, age average= 21.11, SD=6.35) who completed 2 questionnaires of which they related to gaming behaviours and aggression-related and violent-related variables. Of the gaming behaviours, in order to classify someone as addicted they used criteria based from the ICD-10 for dependence. I don’t know which specific one.

They analyzed the data using chi-square and a one-way ANOVA.

Results

11.9% of players fulfill the criteria for addiction. That’s quite a high number, but I do wonder the percentage of people who are alcoholics or those who are compulsive gamblers? But remember the criteria are adapted from existing diagnostic criteria, so the percentage mark is uncertain, but it should not be ignored because it is judged to be the best criteria under the present circumstances. i.e. video game addiction resembles very much to gambling addiction, even though there are marked differences, but it’s all we have for now.

Anger personality trait a factor in VG influence on aggressive behaviour (Giumetti & Markey, 2007)

I think my first blog entry wasn’t that great, maybe I should continue and improve.

Now continuing on to another study that’s published in the Journal of Personality Research by Giumetti & Markey.

In this study, Giumetti and Markey looked into the relationship between personality trait of anger and aggressive thoughts after playing video games, again they based the research from the General Aggression Model by Craig Anderson.
They found that anger has an influence on the influence of violent video games on players. In terms of personality, the more angrier players are, the more aggressive than non-angry players.

From past studies on anger personality and the GAM, people who are easily angered than others are more likely to be more violent. They see situations in a hostile manner, so someone spills a drink to a guy and he sees this as provocation or an insult. A third factor is that anger gets you aroused which that arousal would in turn fuel aggressive behaviour if given the opportunity like a provocation. In essence, our personality level of anger influences our interpretation of situations, our judgement and our actions.

In relation to VG, this study examined whether anger has a role in violent or aggressive behaviour. So they have 3 hypotheses to test:
1- Players who just played violent video games will likely respond to ambiguous stories in an aggressive manner.
2- When responding these stories, angrier players are more aggressive than the non-angry players.
3- which in turn leads the idea that anger is one of the factors that influence our reaction to video games.

To explain how relevant it is to test, the first hypothesis can be explained by an example: when you’re hungry the first thing you want to say or think is food. Or when you’re asked to make a story after watching an episode of Star Trek you’re likely to use material that are fresh in your mind. Or like Jack Thompson interpreting ambiguous stories that somehow relates to video games being the cause of bad things, no matter how trivial the story is. (something called closed-mindness)

Hypothesis 2: Even though you’re calm and you have an angry personality. But, you might not notice that you’re still seeing things in red. Along with arousal, you might feel more aggressive in seeing those stories end not so happily.

Hypothesis 3: Of course, violent video games alone don’t directly influence our behaviour. Some aspect of our personality does have a role in our behaviour. And so does being a jerk is a personality.

So how does the researchers do their study?

Temperament effect in video games (Devilly et al., 2007)

Devilly, G. J., Unsworth, G. , Ward, T. (in press) The effect of playing violent videogames on adolescents: Should parents be quaking in their boots? Psychology, Crime & Law.

This article came when gamepolitics.com found it in an australian news website. So I went and asked for a copy of the article from one of the authors. Unfortunately, I cannot distribute the copy freely without his permission or the journal’s. A news site gives a summary of the study.

This is my first blog and therefore my baptism of blogging which would be messy. So what I would be writing will be just bad and hopefully improve over time.

The authors argued that the instrument used in previous studies are questionably reliable and argued the use of “reliable change index” which I don’t get and will need some further research. But it is argued that it is psychometrically reliable based on previous research and it will be the first time in using the RCI for this kind of study.

They also discussed the General Aggression Model (GAM) and pointed out two problems to the GAM: (1) personality, it is argued that personality is relatively stable and according to my textbook, Anderson et al. might support the learning or conditioning perspective of personality. it would be interesting to see whether trait perspective like the five-factor model of personality have a say in VG research. (2) “…the model does not consider other learning experiences which may be equally powerful and yet provide a less aggressive alternative to conflict resolution.” I might add whether players learn and play in terms on the rules and laws of the game and apply these analytical skills to other situations. For example, “Doom” does not have jump, the ability to look up or down, or intelligent A.I. Although, VG are becoming more realistic they are still bound by rules that players would eventually learn and exploit.

Their hypothesis is interesting in that individuals self-regulate their emotions and arousal level, much like self-control or a having an amount of energy for self-control based on two temperaments, labile and stable. I have never thought of that and i should read the GAM, if it mentions self-regulation. Implications are important because impulsive individuals may run into a lot of trouble and the extreme form of it is antisocial personality disorder and other personality disorders.

The sampling of participants is peculiar, restricting participants to those who played Quake 2. Ludologically(? must ask Jesper Juul) speaking, playing Quake 2 and an equivalent FPS shouldn’t pose some problems, except differences with the gameplay and the setting of the game, although it is unknown whether they may affect differences in results. This would be an interesting research question whether the structure of a game is the same but the situation is different, i.e. pre-exposure of a one gaming situation then testing to a different game. So they learn how to operate fundamentals, but they would run different mazes. One might ask whether developing a proficiency test for a gaming genre may be useful for research.