Tobias Greitemeyer Summary

1 Summary of Hypothesis

In this paper, Tobias Greitemeyer recalls previous articles showing thatplayingvideogamesareassociatedwithanincreaseinplayer’s aggressivebehavior. Greitemeyeralsostatesthateventhoughthere is proof of these correlations, if one would casually ask an avid gamer, they would deny these claims. Greitmeyer argues that the player’s behavior in a video game compared to their actions in real life creates a discrepancy in the violent video game debate. Furthermore, Greitemeyer proposes that because of the severity of the violence in certain video games, the player’s perception of aggression may be different than the societal norms. Greitemeyer then states that he conducted two separate experiments to test if his two theories were

correct.
2 Summary of Methodology
As stated earlier, Greitemeyer proposed two different experiments toprovehistheories.

Forthefirstexperiment, theparticipantswere tasked with playing a violent video game or a neutral one. From there, the participants were assessed on a Likert type scale, and answered various questions in regards to their mood, using the seven point scale. Afterwards to measure the perception of daily life aggressive behavior, Greitemeyer adapted a procedure created by another group of researchers. The participants were given fifty two aggressiveactionsthatwouldeitherbeactedoutbyothersorthemselves. From there, the participant would then rank the action dependingonhowaggressivetheythoughttheactionwas. Forthesecondexperiment,Greitemeyermainlywantedtoreplicatetheresults of experiment one and also see if a biased view of what aggressive behavior is considered would possibly account for increased aggression after playing a violent video game. For the first part of the second experiment, Greitemeyer switch the games used for the violent and neutral portion. In order to measure the aggression levels intheparticipantsforthesecondportionoftheexperiment,participantswereaskedtotastehotsauceanddecidehowmuchhotsauce they would taste, as well as the rest of the participants. Based on theamountofhotsaucesuggestedbytheparticipant,theaggression level of the participant would be calculated into the

study.
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6 graph.png Figure1: PerceptionofAggresiveBehaviorasaFunctionofVideo Game Condition and Person Showing the Behavior from [Greitemeyer 2014], Figure 1
3 Application of Methodology
Between the two tests, there were over a hundred participants, with mostofthemtakingpartinthefirstexperimentandwiththeaverage age of twenty one. With the first experiment, the results show that those who played a violent video game perceived their own actions as less aggressive compared to the actions of others, whereas those who played the neutral game viewed their actions on a higher aggression scale and was also closer to their ratings of other people’s behavior. Similarly to the first experiment, the second one posted similar results.
4 Issues with Methodology
I did notfind any glaring issueswith themethodology Greitemeyer used,however,Ifeelliketheuseofhotsauceforthesecondexperimentwasquiterandom,thereshouldhavebeensomethingdifferent thatdoesnotcontainanichegroupofparticipants(peoplewholike spicy food). I also appreciate the paper showcasing that it might be the perception of those playing the violent video game that causes a different aggression level which is different from other studies that just check the aggression levels and do not really dive in from there.