Executive Summary Outline

Title :

The relationship between online game addiction and aggression, selfcontrol and narcissistic personality traits

Authors :

Eun Joo Kim, Kee Namkoong, Taeyun Ku, Se Joo Kim

Name of
Publication : European Psychiatry
Year :

2007

Citation :

Eun Joo Kim, Se Joo Kim (2007), The relationship between online game
addiction and aggression, self-control and narcissistic personality traits
, European Psychiatry 23, 212-218.

A. ISSUES
1. Whether a real time online game have become addiction on the
Internet, and act as primary reason some teenagers become addicted.
2. Whether an aggression is one of the factors that change a person
characteristic when playing violent games.
3. Whether a narcissistic personality trait is important to understand an
online game addiction process, as people with this trait use it to access to
4.

numerous relationships to gain an admiring audience.

Whether young people who is weak of self-control, discipline and weaker
at controlling their emotions than average Internet user are relating to
game addiction.

B. PROCEDURE
1. Participants
a. The participants can be regarded as a representative sample of online
game users in Korea
b. The total number of participants was 1713.
c. Due to some overlapping response and some participants who failed to
filled out completely or appropriately were excluded from the analyses,
and the final number of participants was 1471 including 1216 males
(82.7%) and 255 females (17.3%).
2. Instrument

a. By using survey on Internet use .It has divided into five sections
involving questionnaires.
b. Investigate the general information about the responders such as age
sex occupations and the patterns of Internet or online game use by
c.

using demographic information

The online game addiction scale being used to measure the degree of

online game addiction tendency.

d. The Buss-Perry aggression questionnaire was also used to measure
aggression and hostility that consist of 29 items.
e. Self-Control scale used in this study which comprised of 20 questions.
f. The Narcissistic personality disorder scale (NPDS) was used to assess
the narcissistic personality traits of the participants.
C. FINDINGS
1. Differences of online game addiction scale scores according to sex and
occupation.
It reveals that scale score was not significantly correlated with sex, but
unemployed scored significantly higher than the other two group.
2. Correlation analysis
The scores between online game addiction and various continuous
independent variables, the result show narcissistic personality traits and
aggression scores were positively related with the online game addiction
score
3. Regression analysis to determine the amount of variance in online game
addiction
Higher narcissistic personality traits, higher aggression poor self-control,
poor interpersonal relationship and no occupation were associated with
higher online game addiction score.
4. Relationship between poor interpersonal relationship and online game
addiction
It was found based on Whangs study internet addicts would feel
interpersonal relationship in reality are stressful, and they would try to
shun others and engage in Internet use as an alternative to relationship in
real life.
5. Relationship between level of aggression with game addiction scores.
The aggression scale used in this study reasonably reflects the trait of
aggression, people with those aggressive traits will be engaged in an
online game to gratify their latent aggressive impulses, which are not

acceptable in the real world but which can be resolved in the virtual world
of online games
6. Narcissistic personality traits and relation to online game addiction scores.
It can reasonably predicted that people with a greater narcissistic
personality trait will collect valuable items and upgrade their skills to
advance their players in game. Because they value wealth and strength in
the game world as much as they do in the real world.
D. LIMITATION
1. No formalized criteria established for online game addiction yet.
2. This study has inherent biases present in its methodology by utilizing an
expedient group of self-selected online game players.
3. The objectivity of the responses might be compromise as a self-reported
questionnaire method being used rather than face-to-face in depth
interview.
4. The cross-sectional field study described did not address causality.
5. There is an issue of the validity and reliability of an online data as this is
an online response-based study.
E. CONCLUSION
1. Online games addiction has grown bigger each year.
2. Future research study needs to address the implications of the growing
number of online game addicts among the population, how the related
psychological traits change over time, especially with or without
interventions