Gender, ethnicity and social gratification as predictors for video game play (Green & McNeese, 2008)

Before I start filling left-out details from the abstract, I’d like rant some of the bad writing of this paper because after reading the first few paragraphs of this study, I had the impression that the authors don’t have a positive opinion on video games.

Abstract

This study examines gender, race, and the need for social gratification as significant predictors of the number of hours of weekday and weekend digital game play. Secondary analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 revealed that that Caucasian and Asian students were associated with diminished digital game play, whereas African Americans students were associated with increased play. Results also indicated that the need for social gratification and being male was associated with greater digital game play.

The first sign of bad writing is the connection between the Columbine Shooting and violent video games. They wrote, in as-a-matter-of-fact tone, that video games are implicated as a contributing factor to the Columbine Shootings and Westside Middle School (Jonesboro massacre). They referenced this “fact” from a journal article (Smith et al., 2003) of which the article in question only made a single mention of it (with no elaboration) and its references were from non-scholarly sources (e.g. Newsweek & some online source) What does this mean? Perhaps a case of writing laziness or they’re trying to pass this statement with from a credible and scholarly source? Hogwash! So I sent e-mails to the authors of both articles to settle this case of misinterpretation.

To continue my dissection of their writing, they used information from the ESA fact sheet (2005) to demonstrate the pervasiveness of violent video games. They counted the top 40 games, instead of the top 10, just to show that 30% of the top 40 were E-rated games of which they used that number to suggest that violent or sexually explicit games are popular. My question would be for which demographics? It’s as if they’re telling us that these T & M-rated games are also popular for children and adolescents. Not so if you break down the list according to age groups, this way, we would know what games are popular for certain demographics. Of course, they might say that it doesn’t matter because if children are already playing violent video games, they would grow to ask ultra-violent video games or they would play violent video game the moment they can. Therefore, they have reasons to worry. Bah!

They mistakenly referred a “multi-user game on the internet” as a MUD (as a general term), which is technically correct. But, today it is generally referred to as MMO.

They devoted three-quarters of a page writing about racial and gender stereotypes in video games and yet they did not made any overt attempts to tell the readers the connection to the present study. Oh sure, the connection is about ethnicities and video games, but that’s such a plain and loose connection that it is such a complete waste.

So on to the details!

Voices In The Family radio show interviews experts on video game effects

Through the Teens & Tech blog, a radio show in Delaware called Voices In The Family inteviewed two psychology experts on the subject of video game effects, the interviewees were Dr. Douglas A. Gentile of Iowa State University and Dr. Lawrence A. Kutner of Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media and co-author of Grand Theft Childhood: the surprising truth about video games. The interview can be listened to on the net and it’s about an hour long and I recommend for anyone who needs to hear researchers’ opinions on video game violence.

My first impression of the interview was that I already know what they’re talking, so if you happen to have read their books, then you basically have a transcript that covers mostly the radio interview. So Dr. Gentile’s part can read be from Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy  while Dr. Kutner’s part can be read from his Grand Theft Childhood book. Otherwise, it’s quite informative about the past and current situation of psychology video game research, the two experts agree on many points of interests, such as risk factors of aggressive behaviours, some of the disagreements stem from their research studies and I was rather annoyed that the radio host asked one question to one expert, but not to both, such as what the researchers would define a violent video game.

There’s more joy playing online video games with a human than a computer (Weibel et al., 2008)

This article caught my attention in the recently published issue of Computers in Human Behavior. Weibel and colleagues conducted a study that examined the effects on how the perceived presence of another person in a gaming world can affect our enjoyment and subjective experience in an online game.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether playing online games against other users leads to different experiences in comparison with playing against computer-controlled opponents. Thereby, a one-factorial multivariate design was used (computer-controlled vs. human-controlled opponent). Dependent variables were the participants’ feelings of presence and flow. Additionally, the amount of enjoyment was measured. The findings indicate that the type of opponent influences playing experiences: participants who played against a human-controlled opponent reported more experiences of presence, flow, and enjoyment, whereby the strongest effect refers to the experience of presence. Furthermore, strong relations between presence, flow, and enjoyment were observed. Further analyzes suggest that flow mediates the relationship between presence and enjoyment.

Sensitization and desensitization in a video game experiment (Staude-Müller et al., 2008)

It’s hard to get every research study in the world because most universities don’t have enough money to get subscriptions to every journal in existence. Another factor include the language barrier. This journal article here had some interesting references that I would want to read, if only I can read German, Swiss or any other foreign languages.

Abstract

This study tests whether playing violent video games leads to desensitization and increased cardiovascular responding. In a laboratory experiment, 42 men spent 20 min playing either a high- or low-violence version of a “first-person shooter” game. Arousal (heart rate, respiration rate) was measured continuously. After playing the game, emotional responses to aversive and aggressive stimuli – pictures from Lang, Bradley, and Cuthbert’s (1999) International Affective Picture System – were assessed with self-ratings and physiological measurement (skin conductance). Results showed no differences in the judgments of emotional responses to the stimuli. However, different effects of game violence emerged in the physiological reactions to the different types of stimulus material. Participants in the high-violence condition showed significantly weaker reactions (desensitization) to aversive stimuli and reacted significantly more strongly (sensitization) to aggressive cues. No support was found for the arousal hypothesis. Post-hoc analyses are used to discuss possible moderating influences of gaming experience and player’s trait aggressiveness in terms of the General Aggression Model (Anderson & Bushman, 2001) and the Downward Spiral Model (Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003).

Media Violence Researcher’s op-ed on Grand Theft Childhood and reactions

Dr. Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan wrote an opinion on the Detroit Free Press. Here I quote its entirety.

Children around the nation are looking forward to the end of the school year, with summer vacation giving them the freedom to play their favorite video games hour after hour. Instead of rightfully worrying that these games have the potential to hijack their children’s futures, parents may be relying on a recently published book that claims to tell “the surprising truth about video games.”

“Perhaps the biggest lesson we learned from our research,” write Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson in Grand Theft Childhood,,“is that most parents should not worry about violent…games having a profound effect on their children’s behavior or values.” They advise parents to focus instead on more important risk factors for violence – deteriorating family relationships, friendships and school achievement. “Violent video games,” they write, “are pretty low on that list.”

Not according to a 2001 report by the U.S. Surgeon General, ranking exposure to television violence relatively high on the list of early risk factors for youth violence, ahead of broken homes, abusive parents, antisocial peers, and school achievement.

The Surgeon General’s report focused on TV rather than video game violence. But there are at least three reasons to believe that violent video games might be worse. First, video game play is active whereas watching TV is passive. People learn better when they are actively involved. Suppose you wanted to teach a person how to fly an airplane. What would be the best method to use: read a book, watch a TV program, or use a video game flight simulator?

Second, players of violent video games are more likely to identify with a violent character. If the game is a first person shooter, players have the same visual perspective as the killer. If the game is third person, the player controls the actions of the violent character from a more distant visual perspective. In either case, the player is linked to a violent character. In a violent TV program, viewers might or might not identify with this character.

Third, violent games directly reward violent behavior, by awarding points or allowing players to advance to the next game level. In some games, players are rewarded through verbal praise, such as hearing the words “Nice shot!” after killing an enemy. It is well known that rewarding behavior increases its frequency. (Would you go to work tomorrow if your boss said you would no longer be paid?) In TV programs, reward is not directly tied to the viewer’s behavior.

Red team wins slightly more than blue team (Ilie et al., 2008)

It seems the alerts I set up were either too slow or I set them up pretty badly. Anyways, kotaku had posted a recent publication in Cyberpsychology & Behavior about how team wearing red were at a slight advantage over teams wearing blue.

Abstract

In the 2004 Olympic Games, opponents wearing red athletic uniforms were more likely to win against opponents wearing blue uniforms. To investigate whether this color bias extends to the world of virtual competition, we compared the performance of red and blue teams in a popular multiplayer first-person-shooter (FPS) computer game. For 3 consecutive months, we collected data from a publicly available global statistics server. Outcomes from 1,347 matches played by the top 10 players on the same virtual arena were included. Red teams won 54.9% of matches, and this effect was highly significant. Our data suggest that joining the red team may offer a slight advantage over the blue team in virtual competition, and this should be accounted for when designing FPS games. It is likely that “seeing red” may trigger a powerful psychological distractor signal in human aggressive competition that can affect the outcome of sports and virtual contests alike.

It seems ridiculous, but given how player behave when they are in their home territory or how some believe superstitions may affect the outcome of a match. It doesn’t sound far fetched. Unfortunetaly, I don’t have access to the article yet and I would probably forget about it. so if anyone can send me a copy, I’d appreciate it.

A conversation between two psychologists at OUPblog on violent video games

My google alert directed me to a podcast of a Q&A between fellow psychologists (Dr. Craig Anderson and Dr. Karen Dill) who study aggression and violent video games. It was quite an interesting conversation, especially how they dealt with the public at large and the public’s reaction to their research. The conversation reminded my position as undecided on the effects of violent video games’ effect on individuals’ aggression. That is, personally, I don’t believe the research, but my reasoning and knowledge tell me otherwise.

The conversation is short, but is well worth the insight, so anyone interested in listening to their conversation, here’s the link.

Does the interactive nature of violent video games have a greater effect than the passive viewing of television violence? (Tang, 2008)

What is one of the key differences between video games and television? Interactivity. I’ve taken that fact as granted and ignored it while reading research articles. In any case, I went on a research binge to find all relevant studies that compared the effects of violent video games and television violence. The results reflect the kind of hindsight in psychology video game research, five studies. I have managed to get four of them, one was a thesis dissertation, so it was not possible to get my hands on.

To summarize why psychologists are concerned with video games is that unlike television, the audience or player is actively involved in violent behaviours. The very decision to aggress another person, animal or object primes or activitates aggressive thoughts, feelings and behaviours. To boot, such aggressive behaviours are rewarded by numerous stimuli, such as player survival, points, special effects, and such. Do this hundreds of time in a short span of time and, theoretically, you could have someone who might be easily provoked to be aggressive (no not violent, that’s a different story). Whereas people watching violent television are simply learning as an observer, but don’t get any practice in doing it. In sum, the one difference between video games and television is that players are active learners which is more powerful than passive learning.

So I decided to read all four studies, two studies were published in the 1980s and 1 study published in 2004 and another that’s recently published. Their conclusions conflicted with each other, but there are circumstances to these conflicting conclusions.

Differences in video game interface, content and context in relation to presence and hostility (Eastin & Griffiths, 2006)

Whenever I read an article on my computer screen, it takes more effort and time than to read it on real paper. Also, more ideas and questions pop up when reading in a comfortable position than sitting in front of a PC. Well I guess the computer revolution doesn’t eliminate the need for paper. Oh, if anyone knows a lightweight gadget and where the screen isn’t glaring like a television screen. Please leave a comment.

Abstract

Investigating male game players, this study explores how game interface (virtual reality [VR] and standard console), game content (fighting, shooting, and driving), and game context (human and computer competition) influence levels of presence and hostile expectation bias—the expectation others will think, feel, speak, and act aggressively during social conflict. In addition to game interface and game content influencing hostile expectations, significant interactions were detected for hostile expectations. Presence, although not as predicted, also significantly differed across game interface and game content. Through the development and testing of each gaming experience, this study demonstrates that simply testing violent and nonviolent game situations underestimates the complexity of contemporary video-game play.

Book Opinion: Grand Theft Childhood

I was reluctant in buying that book because some of the content were already known to me and I had access to their published journal articles. So I could’ve saved some money. However, the book contained valuable information that raised eyebrows and some surprising opinions from various experts. The book was well written for a public-oriented audience and had addressed issues parents might have, such as video game violence, addiction, advertisement video games (that was a surprise), etc. I will address some things that I noticed during my reading of this book (as an wanna-be scholar).

As Kutner and Olsen noted, opinions differed based on training, professional background and personal experience (p.63). Throughout the book, they expressed doubts on everything including their own findings. IMO, Besides the persuasive evidence they brought up, another factor I have in mind are the authors’ background, since they’re from a clinical psychological background while other researchers, such as Craig Anderson of Iowa State University are of social psychology background. To elaborate in general, clinical psychologists look for vulnerable groups and what personal and environmental characteristics that may impede these groups’ normal functions within society, in this case whether certain groups are vulnerable to violent video games. This is apparent in their scepticism whether their statistical results apply in real life (see chapter 4). In contrast, social psychologists look for results that apply to individuals of a representative population. So, they may take many factors in consideration and try to see if a variable of interest has an interactional effect with considered factors or an effect beyond such factors. This, I believe, explains why R.L. Huessman’s arguments that violent video games are a public health risk. So, the opinions of experts depend on how they interpret the situation at hand. IMO, Kutner and Olsen seemed to take a pragmatic approach to this problem.