Violent Video Games Psychology

Experiment 2: Examining psychological and behavioural effects (dependent variables) of playing a violent video game (independent variable).

Subjects included twelve to eighteen year olds (111 males, 15 females). All participants had to have played the violent video game Quake II to participate in the study thus were representative of all Quake II players.

Procedure: subjects completed questionnaires measuring their personality traits including anxiety and anger and gaming behaviours. Subjects were then asked to play Quake II for five minutes. Aggressive thought were measured whilst playing the game with an Articulated Thoughts in Stimulated Situations (ATSS) model. Then participants were asked to say their thoughts out loud into a microphone

Procedure: Prior to the experiment a pilot test was done to test if the measures and games used were appropriate for the study. The researcher questioned participants about their experience of video games and how often they played with them and this was compared to a previous questionnaire which was given to parents to answer the same question. The Bioview clip which measured heart rate and psychological arousal was attached to the children’s ear and each child played all three games for four minutes each. Participants played three games- “Boucher II” (passive video game), “Herc’s Adventures” (violent video game) and the paper-and-pencil game (control). After playing each of the three games the children answered questionnaires which tested them for arousal, positive affect, mood and aggressive mood. Whilst playing the games the children’s heart rate was recorded for both the aggressive and passive

Arousal which was measured by heart rate and self-reported arousal increased significantly after playing the violent video game compared to playing the passive video game. Girls reported more arousal than boys. Research suggests that females are more likely to be persuaded than men. It is argued that this is as a result of women and men having diverse social roles. Females tend to be more cooperative with others whereas males prefer to be independent when co-operating with others, therefore women are more sympathetic or socially sensitive to the impact of others than men. Furthermore it is suggested that females are more predisposed than males when they are less familiar than males with what is being deliberated. This may be due to most of the research being conducted by male researchers and including topics mostly related to men. This was tested with an ANOVA test on gender and game conditions. However there was no significant increase in aggressive mood for either males or females after playing the violent game. Positive mood measured by positive affect showed no difference after playing any of the games. The general mood measure showed that both boys and girls mood increased after playing both the video games as compared to the paper and pencil