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Do playing computer games cause people to be more aggressive?

Abstract

In this study we wanted to examine effects of different computer game types on theaggressive behavior. Although there are several studies in this field but it seems that they most focused was on violent factor not the other factors behind media games,therefore, we tried to consider the other factors such as excitement in our experiment. To achieve this goal we conducted a new version of Andresons’s studywith three games and with within- subject design, instead of between- subject, whichwas used in Anderson’s study. The result of this experiment shows that not onlyviolence of games can lead to aggressive behavior but also excitement element canbe an affective parameter. In conclusion we can say that computer games in general have positional to cause aggressive behavior.

Author: Marjan Falah Rastegar

Queen Mary University of London27/10/2009

Computer Games and Aggression 2

Do playing computer games cause people to be moreaggressive?

Short Title: Computer Games and Aggression

In Germany in 2002, Robert Steinhaeuser killed 13 teachers and two fellow pupils byshooting them. It’s reported that the 19-year-old killer was a great fan of “Counterstrike”- ashooting game in which terrorist should battle against police officers. You can find severalincidents same as that one, crime being done by a person being affected by violent games.Although several complicated reasons are always behind any crime, at least we should consider the effects of video games on aggressive behavior. Especially when you take a look at thestatistics showing rapid increasing of attention toward video games, “nine out of 10 kids (86%)ages 8 to 16 play video games in their homes(1)”.There are several research have being done from last decade to find a clear relation between video games and aggressive behavior. The result of most of these studies demonstrateda close relation between aggression and violent in video games. For example Craig A. Andersonand Karen E. Dill in their study conducted on about 200 undergraduate students showed thatviolent in games can cause aggressive behavior, thought. They also considered gender factor andirritability, which showed there are more tendencies in aggressive behavior among male thanfemale. Although Anderson considered both non-violent and violent games in his study, chosengames do not seem to entirely cover different types of the game. Therefore, we may can refer tothese research as an evidence of existing relation between aggressive behavior and violent invideo games, But we cannot generalize it to the

computer games

in general.

Computer Games and Aggression 3

Hence in our study we want to have a review on Anderson’s study and conduct his experiment ina way covering different types of games to find out if it is the effect of just violence onencouraging to have more aggressive behavior or other factors such as excitement or frustrationcan also lead to hostile behavior.Experimental TestPilot

StudyThe pilot study was conducted to choose three most popular games among teens aged between 16 and 18. Our goal was to find three games in three different genres (racing, shooter,life simulation), so as we can study effects of different factors on probable aggressive behavior,most notably excitement, violence and enjoyment.MethodsThirty (15 female, 15 male) participants were randomly selected from King’s College.A female experimenter would explain for them that we want to choose the most popular gamesin those three genres. The detailed information about why we want to choose most popular games was not given to the participants because it might give theme bad feeling or cause tohiding real information.Participants were asked to write down name of two games in given genre ordered by their priority.