Vidoe Games Essay Research Paper In recent

Vidoe Games Essay, Research Paper

In recent years, technological advances have introduced many new forms of entertainment, one of the most popular being video games. Since their introduction, professionals and parents have become concerned with the addictive power that video games can have on people, particularly children and adolescents.

Today, concern has shifted from the addictive effects of video game playing to the possible effects that they have on players. aggression levels. C. Braun and J. Giroux (1989) determined that the most popular category of video games is the war-type game. These are usually the most violent games, as most of them involve destroying objects and other people. This destruction can range from one-on-one combat to mass annihilation of other humans or creatures. In 1982, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (Orlofsky, 1982) stated that video games could encourage children to mimic the violence displayed on the screen, and that these games may have adverse physical and mental effects on teenagers. Ever since Koop.s warning, parents have become increasingly concerned about the video games their children play.

Defining aggression has been a problem across many previous studies. An interesting approach was used by Edmunds and Kendrick (1980) which classifies aggression into two categories: aggression (general overt and direct behavior,) and aggressiveness (typically represented by hostile feelings). A more refined approach is used by the Buss-Durkee Inventory (1957) which has seven major subscales: Assault, Indirect Hostility, Irritability, Negativism, Resentment, Suspicion, and Verbal Hostility. One of the most common personality assessment instruments used to examine the personality dimensions in these studies is the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) which consists of four scales: E (introversion-extraversion), N (stability-instability), P (tough-mindedness), and L (social desirability/ lie scale). Because most research into television violence does demonstrate a relationship between the exposure to aggression and later aggressive behavior, it is generally theorized that exposure to aggressive video games will produce a similar relationship.

In this paper, the effects of video game playing on personality and behavior are examined in respect to postgame aggressive tendencies and behavior. It is hypothesized that playing aggressive video games will lead to an increase in post-game aggression and/or aggressive tendencies. Two previous studies will be presented, and their results will help evaluate if video game playing causes people to become more aggressive. Although important, the addictive properties of the video games will not be discussed. Since some of the studies cover gender differences but others do not, gender will not play a major role in this paper as well.

STUDY 1 G. Kestenbaum and L. Weinstein (1985) studied the relationship of heavy video game use in adolescent male subjects to personality and psycho-pathological factors. They hypothesized that video game playing is positive in the sense that it releases pent-up aggressive energies. They felt that after playing a video game, adolecents should feel more relaxed, having invested so much energy, whereas those who never, or rarely play video games would not. They also hypothesized that video games are particularly suited to low frustration tolerance adolescents because of video games. nature of immediate feedback. (As opposed to discharging aggression through sports, for example, in which the results are delayed from one.s particular effort.) Video games also protect the adolescent from ridicule, or social stress factors since they can play by themselves and not be subject to external judgement. It was therefore hypothesized that they would not report a greater general interest in sports than other adolescents.

Kestenbaum and Weinstein also gave a self-report questionnaire to 447 junior high school students from an urban, middle-class neighborhood. The questionnaire consisted of general demographic information, 30 questions pertaining to video game use, and 30 general personality questions. They also required each participant to complete Eysenck.s (1958) short-form extroversion and neuroticism scales, and Singer and Antrobus. (1970) acceptance of daydreaming scales, as measures of psycho-pathology, social introversion, and tendencies toward fantasy escapism. Some of the questions were aimed toward different content areas, such as the discharge nature of the games. A typical response was, “I like to play video games when I am .wound up. or tense.” Questions were also directed toward competitiveness. For example, “How much do you like playing video games with others when not competing.… When competing.” Frustration tolerance questions resulted in replies such as, “I am annoyed by people who get in my way,” and “Trying to learn something new can be very uncomfortable if you.re not good at it.” Some questions were aimed to discover possible Oedipal difficulties. A typical question for this was, “How do you usually feel after you.ve beaten your father at a video game: proud-guilty, good-bad, strong-weak.” Some indications of Oedipal difficulties were responses similar to, “I have occasionally gotten into trouble with the police.” Two groups were created; those who spent 5 hours or 5 dollars a week on pay video games were called