Playing violent video games and aggressive political opinions (Eyal et al., 2006)

Reasons why I shouldn’t be writing this blog at this moment:

1. Writing my draft for my thesis paper
2. Writing my detailed opinion piece on the Byron Report (due last week)
3. Writing my seminar paper
4. Finding a part-time job

But the one reason I’m writing is because I’m worried that I would forget the eureka moment I had during my seminar class when someone talked about political conservatism as a motivated social cognition and the mechanism behind, one of them on priming. Since VG research also touches on priming, I found one interesting article that deals with such relations. Hope someone writes me a summary.

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between young people’s exposure to media violence and their aggressive political opinions (APO), which were defined as support for positions that involve forceful resolution to social or political issues. Students from 2 U.S. universities completed surveys assessing their APO, exposure to violent media, authoritarianism, trait aggressiveness, political leaning, personal experience with crime, and demographics. Results revealed that violent television exposure significantly predicted several forms of APO above and beyond the control variables. Playing violent video games, however, predicted only a few aggressive political opinions. The results of this study support the reliability and validity of the APO measure, shed light on the relationship between exposure to violent media content and political opinions, and suggest some important differences between television and video game content in the effects process.

Affective response to video games: effects of personality, gender and in-game reinforcement (Chumbley & Griffiths, 2006)

I am getting the impression that American and European psychologists have differing views on video game effects.

Abstract

Previous research on computer games has tended to concentrate on their more negative effects (e.g., addiction, increased aggression). This study departs from the traditional clinical and social learning explanations for these behavioral phenomena and examines the effect of personality, in-game reinforcement characteristics, gender, and skill on the emotional state of the game-player. Results demonstrated that in-game reinforcement characteristics and skill significantly effect a number of affective measures (most notably excitement and frustration). The implications of the impact of game-play on affect are discussed with reference to the concepts of “addiction” and “aggression.”

Simulating factors of aggression in video games (Tang, questions)

This morning or was it yesterday night. I was thinking of how we can manipulate real life factors of aggression and have them tested in video games. It’s much like a simulation similar to the zimbardo experiment where players would assume roles the game assigns them to. Sure, they’re individuals who can’t pretend to be a violent person or a saint, but it can happen without being aware of it.

This article website has caught my attention and that generated a lot of questions. Unfortunately, they’re gone as soon as they came in.

Longer you play, the more hostile you feel: examination of first person shooter video games and aggression during video game play (Barlett et al., 2007)

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of video game play on aggression. Using the General Aggression Model, as applied to video games by Anderson and Bushman, [2002] this study measured physiological arousal, state hostility, and how aggressively participants would respond to three hypothetical scenarios. In addition, this study measured each of these variables multiple times to gauge how aggression would change with increased video game play. Results showed a significant increase from baseline in hostility and aggression (based on two of the three story stems), which is consistent with the General Aggression Model. This study adds to the existing literature on video games and aggression by showing that increased play of a violent first person shooter video game can significantly increase aggression from baseline.

Barlett and company investigated on the effects of different game controllers and length of game play aggression. What I like about this study is the emphasis on using a single video and experimentally controlling video game factors that may affect results. Some examples of video game factors are the amount of violence, character development and story development. The results have found that play is associated with state aggression, hostility, physiological arousal. In combination with playing a light gun, the effect is stronger than playing with a traditional controller. However, play time and frustration was not found to be significant.

In this study, the types of game controllers (light gun vs. controller) will tell us whether there are differences in aggression. One reason is the weapons effect, where the mere presence of a weapon increases aggressive behaviours.

The other factor being investigated is the amount of time a player spends on a violent video game in a session, not in the long term. IMO, Barlett et al. did not wrote much about it. What is being explained is simply a snowball effect: exposure to aggression or committing an aggressive act leads to increased aggressive cognition, emotions and physiological arousal. This could lead to increases in aggressive behaviours. So the logic is more exposure to violence equals more aggression. Well it seems there are two theories being tested: (1) there will be an increase, but it will not increase continuously during play. (2) There will be an increase and it would continue to increase as long as play continues.

Frustration is included within the study. It’s defined by the feelings of not being able to achieve goals.

Barlett et al. provided some info about Craig Anderson’s (2004) meta-analytic study and his criteria of “best-fitting” video game studies. What’s “best-fitting” to include in his meta-analysis is that it used a pre-post design (good), clearly defined non-violent and violent video games (no brainer), and “produced evidence that the video games differed from one another to not contaminate the experimental conditions.” This last criterion is puzzling me and perhaps I’m reading it wrong, so it’s best fitting if the study used different video games? If we were to compare two non-violent games that are different and achieve different results… so does it mean that other factors within the experiment can influence results? I just don’t see how it works out.

Hypotheses

 

1. The longer you play, the more hostile and aroused you become.
2. Playing with a more interactive controller is associated to higher increase in aggression than a standard controller.

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.