Based on previous research about the effect of video games in aggression, Paul Adachi and Teena Willoughby conducted a research to determine if it was the competitiveness or violence of video games that could cause an aggressive response on university students. According to Adachi & Willoughby, much of the previous research on the topic had failed in leveling external variables such as competitiveness, difficulty and pace of action, and that those variable could have easily affected the results. They have also not taken into consideration if the aggressive behavior was caused either by competitiveness or by the violence or by the combination of both.
In their research Adachy and Willoughby (2011 p. 260) included and defined he following independent variables: violence (e.g. fighting wrestling, shooting or killing), competitiveness (e.g. competing with other players or computer-created opponents), difficulty (e.g. how difficult is to win the game) and pace of action (e.g. how fast are the action sequence happening). They also defined aggressive behavior (dependent variable) based on Lieberman’s Hot Sauce Paradigm (1999), which assigned a standardized number depending on the hotness rating and the weight in grams.
Pilot Study 1
The purposes of the pilot study was to define if Conan and Fuel (two video games selected) differed in terms of violence, but were similar in terms of competitiveness, difficulty and pace of action (Adachi & Willoughby, 2011 p. 262). Conan was defined as a violent game where battle players would fight using words and axes to survive and defeat their opponents. Fuel is a race game in which players go through a series of races using cars and motorcycles.
In this study, fourteen students (6 men and 8 women) ...
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...esearch, were theory and practice made a good match. The researchers were able to control the side variables, and obtain trustful data to prove the hypothesis that there is a relation between violent video games and aggression, and that when isolating specific video game characteristics, competitiveness had a much larger impact on aggressive behavior than the violent content.
Works Cited
Adachi, P.J.C. & Willoughby, T. (2011). The Effect of Video Game Competition and Violence on Aggressive Behavior: Which Characteristic Has the greatest influence? Psychology of Violence 1(4), 259-274.
Barlett, C. P., Branch, O., Rodeheffer, C., & Harris, R. (2009). How long do the short-term violent video game effects last? Aggressive Behavior, 35, 1–12. doi:10.1002/ab.20301
Cozby, P.C., & Bates, S.C. (2012). Methods in Behavioral Research (11th Ed.). New York: NY, McGraw Hill.
This study occurred in the University of Oxford and the University of Rochester with the purpose of examining the effects of video games by having volunteers play a range of different video games while the researchers altered the difficulty of the games. The objective of this experiment was to prove whether or not difficult, but not necessarily violent, video games can lead to spikes in one’s aggression. The result? When a participant in the study could not master the games control in about twenty minutes, increased levels of aggression would often follow, no matter if the participant partook in a violent game or not. In hopes of shedding light on this new hypothesis, scientists conducted an experiment where volunteers played a game known as Half Life 2; however, the game was modified into several different versions. One, being violent, had the participants shoot at monster-like creatures, while the other, instead of shooting, had players tag the creatures causing them to “gently” evaporate (Vincent). Whether or not the player participated in the violent version of Half Life 2 was irrelevant, yet whether or not the contributor got to see the tutorial effected their aggression. The co-author of this study, Richard M. Ryan, came to the conclusion that “aggression stems from feeling not in control or incompetent while playing. If the structure of a game or the design of the controls thwarts enjoyment, it is this, not the violent content, that seems to drive feelings of aggression” (Vincent). This theory easily explains why people tend to feel aggressive after losing something as low-tech as a game of
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...f Violent Video Games on Aggression: Is it More Than Just the Violence? Aggression and Violent Behavior, 55-62.
Reilly describes video games as violent regardless of the age, gender, and culture. Reilly explains that video games today are nothing but fuel of aggressive behavior. Reilly does one experiment that s...
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The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review on existing articles relating to the possibility of violent video games promoting aggressive behavior. The hypothesis set forth was that people who played non-violent video games displayed more Prosocial behavior versus those who played violent video games displayed more antisocial and aggressive behavior. A search was conducted on regular search engines on the internet, and on EBSCOhost using the title “can violent video games promote aggressive behavior.” The research articles presented are obtained from five case studies each focusing on different measures that were obtained, methods used, the participants involved, the designs of the study, and the results of the studies.
Thesis Statement: Violence in video games does not affect levels of aggression in people as long as you follow the MSRB rating scale.
While many different case studies have been done all over the world, scientists have yet to prove that there is a direct correlation between violent video games and child aggression. Since the start of this quarter, this has been an issue that I have been doing extensive research on. Despite looking into several scholarly sources, I was surprised to see that many of my findings were pretty consistent with one another. For the mort part, what I found through my research was a bunch of statistics from case studies and the interpretation of those statistics from renowned scientists. In many cases, statistics and studies showed slight indications that violent video games have an effect on c...
Jaslow, Ryan. "Violent Video Games Make Kids Aggressive, Study Suggests." CBSNews.com. N.p., 1 June 2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2013.s."
Willoughby, Teena, Paul J. C. Adachi, and Marie Good. "A Longitudinal Study Of The Association Between Violent Video Game Play And Aggression Among Adolescents."Developmental Psychology 48.4 (2012): 1044-1057. PsycARTICLES. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Ihori, N., Sakamoto, A., Shibuya, A. & Yukawa, S. (2007). Effect of video games on children’s aggressive behavior and pro-social behavior: A panel study with elementary school students. Retrieved 26 March 2014 from http://www.digra.org/wp-content/uploads/digital-library/07312.31554.pdF
Have you ever wondered if violent video games can cause aggression in children? Thousands of children all over the world engage in violent video games for a large amount of time during their day. According to ProCon.org 60% of middle school boys and 40% of middle school girls who played at least one Mature-rated (M-rated) game hit or beat up someone, compared with 39% of boys and 14% of girls who did not play M-rated games. I will be using naturalistic and case study research methods to determine if violent video games cause aggression in children.
Willoughby, T., Adachi, P. C., & Good, M. (2012). A longitudinal study of the association between violent video game play and aggression among adolescents. Developmental Psychology, 48(4), 1044-1057. doi:10.1037/a0026046