One periodic theme in this blog has been the influence of
video games on behavior. To summarize
what I have discussed in the past, video games can have both positive and
negative influences. On the positive
side, playing prosocial video games promotes helping behavior. In addition, extensive video game play seems
to make people faster at making some kinds of complex decisions. On the negative side, playing violent video
games generally increases aggressive behavior in laboratory experiments. In field studies, giving school children
video games in the home leads to a decrease in their grades and the time they
spend on homework.
Today’s blog entry is another entry in the negative column.
Violent video games often treats the victims of the violence
abstractly. In some games, the victims
are aliens or nonhuman monsters. In
other games, the opponents are soldiers who are so heavily protected with body
armor that they do not really look like people at all. In still other games, the opponents are
members of some group of outsiders like gang members.
Dehumanization is also a factor that supports violence in
the outside world. Nick Haslam and his
colleagues have explore the ways that treating others as less than human tends
leads to a negative attitude toward the dehumanized group and increases
aggressive behavior toward the dehumanized group.
A paper in the May, 2011 issue of Psychological Science by Tobias Greitemeyer and Neil McLatchie
looked that the relationship between playing violent video games and the tendency
to dehumanize others.
In one study, people played either a violent video game, a
prosocial video game (in which the object was to help others) or a neutral
video game (Tetris). After playing, the
game, participants rated the personality characteristics of a typical person
from their country as well as a typical immigrant. Previous work suggests that the personality
traits of openness and conscientiousness are most typically thought of as
uniquely human traits. The traits of emotional instability (neuroticism) and
aggreableness are thought of as the ones most shared with other animals. The expectation was that when you dehumanize
someone, you will rate them as exhibiting the personality traits most typical of
animals rather than those that are uniquely human.
No matter what video game people played, they tended to view
people from their own country as having a high degree of the personality
characteristics typically associated with humans. The difference among groups came primarily in
ratings of immigrants. Those who played
a violent video game were much more likely to rate immigrants as having mostly
characteristics also associated with animals compared to those who played
prosocial or neutral video games.
Did this affect behavior?
In another study, participants had the chance to act
aggressively toward another person.
Following a technique developed by Brad Bushman and Roy Baumeister,
participants write an essay on a political issue. Then, they provided feedback
on the essay written by another participant (who they were told was in another
room on the same lab). Afterward, they
played either a violent video game or a neutral video game (in this case,
pinball). Next, they got the other
participant’s comments on their essay.
Those comments were quite negative.
Participants then rated a number of personality characteristics about
the other participant in the study.
Finally, participants had the chance to give a recommendation for the
other participant who they were told was being considered for a competitive
job. Obviously, giving the other
participant a negative evaluation would be a way to get back at them for the
bad comments on their essay.
What happened?
Participants who played the violent video game tended to
rate the other participant as having fewer personality characteristics
associated with humans than those who played the neutral game. In addition, those who played the violent
video game tended to give worse ratings to the other participant, suggesting
that they were acting more aggressively toward them.
That is, playing a violent video game led people to think of
others as less human and that made it more acceptable for them to act
aggressively toward them.
Obviously, it is a long way from giving a negative
evaluation of others to performing more violent actions toward them. However, the weight of evidence about violent
video games is troubling. Playing
violent video games generally increases people’s aggressive behavior toward
others.
That said, it is not clear whether playing violent video
games has a long-lasting effect on aggression.
In most studies, participants play a game and then have the chance to
act aggressively soon afterward. There
is much less evidence suggesting that people playing violent video games act
more aggressively in general.
In the end, though, it is worth recognizing that playing
violent video games can increase the tendency toward aggression in the
short-run. If you are going to play
violent video games, then in the period after you finish playing you should
probably avoid other situations in which aggression might be a problem.
