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.”

Appeal of violent video games to lower educated aggressive adolescent boys (Lemmens & Bushman, 2006)

This article came up in my mind while I was in my shower, I was thinking about the Konijn et al. (2007) article and one of its methodological limitation of using boys from a lower-echelon education level instead of a representative sample of the entire youth population. In any case, this article here looks into education as a factor in aggressiveness and violent video game use.

 Abstract

The objective of this study was to test the effect of individual differences on appeal and use of video games. Participants were 299 adolescent boys from lower and higher secondary schools in the Netherlands and Belgium. In general, boys were most attracted to violent video games. Boys that scored higher in trait aggressiveness and lower in empathy were especially attracted to violent games and spent more time playing video games than did boys lower in trait aggressiveness. Lower educated boys showed more appreciation for both violent and nonviolent games and spent more time playing them than did higher educated boys. The present study showed that aggressive and less empathic boys were most attracted to violent games. The fact that heavy users of violent games show less empathy and higher aggressiveness suggests the possibility of desensitization. Other studies have shown that playing violent games increases aggressiveness and decreases empathy. These results combined suggest the possibility of a violence cycle. Aggressive individuals are attracted to violent games. Playing violent games increases aggressiveness and decreases empathy, which in turn leads to increased appreciation and use of violent games.

I’ll read it as soon as I can… 

Lemmens, J. S., & Bushman, B. J. (2006). The appeal of violent video games to lower educated aggressive adolescent boys from two countries. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 9(5), 638-641.

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.