Psychological Science ›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (3): 612-615.

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The Influence of Attack Motives in Violent Video Games on Aggression

Gui-Juan SHI1,2, 4,4   

  • Received:2012-03-23 Revised:2013-03-03 Online:2013-05-20 Published:2013-05-24

暴力视频游戏中不同攻击动机对玩家攻击性的影响

施桂娟1,2,高雪梅3,李娟2,4   

  1. 1. 宁波大红鹰学院
    2. 西南大学
    3. 西南大学心理学院
    4.
  • 通讯作者: 高雪梅
  • 基金资助:
    教育部人文社科青年基金项目;西南大学国家重点学科基础心理学211工程项目

Abstract: Considerable researches have been conducted to establish the relationship between violent video games and aggression. Studies suggest that exposure to violent video games will increase aggressive cognitive fluency and promote proviolent attitude. However, there are still some disagreements on the violent-content-only hypothesis. In order to establish the relative influence of each component, more and more studies have been designed to separate different components contained in violent video games. Although it was found that some components would lead to an obvious increase in aggression, studies had failed to take into account the role of players in the relationship between violent components and increased violence. As role playing is a common element in both old and new games, the present study controlled players' attack motive while employing role playing as an element in the game. And this is a different attempt from the previous research. Meanwhile, players' experience with violent video games could not be ignored, either.   This study adopted the word response task and extrinsic affect simon task paradigm to explore the impact of violent video games on aggressive cognitive fluency and implicit aggressive evaluation to players with different attack motives and violent video game experience. And this study set two independent variables: game types and player's experience with violent video games. Three game types were active attack, reactive attack and non-violence. In terms of player's experience, participants were divided into the experienced and the inexperienced. Their experience with violent video games was measured with the violent video game habits survey adapted from Anderson and Dill(2000). In order to reduce bias, an evaluating scale was added which was completed by 22 evaluators. 66 participants were evaluated as experienced and the other 63 inexperienced according to the survey (the evaluator reliability is .98).   The study arrives at several conclusions. Firstly, the influence of violent video games on aggressive cognitive fluency and implicit evaluation is subject to both the participants’ attack motives and experience. Secondly, the defense attack role is more effective in priming the short-term aggressive cognition of the inexperienced participants, while the active attack role is more effective in activating cognitive structures of the experienced. Thirdly, The experienced tend to evaluate attack words negatively in the active attack group while positively in the reactive attack group, and all the participants evaluate defense words negatively. Fourthly, Long-term exposure to violent video games will inhibit aggressive cognitive fluency and improve proviolent attitude.   The greatest significance of this research lies in our discovery that violent video games do not enhance aggression definitely. Some factors such as attack motives even can reduce the negative effect of violent video games on aggression. We can take advantage of this to freedom people from worries about its adverse effect. For example, we can control attack motive by implanting different background story rather than put strict forbiddance on violent video games exposure to control the size of negative effects. This paper is the first attempt to take consideration of active attack and reactive attack into the influence of violent video games on aggression. It provides a new insight for research on this field.

Key words: violent video game, aggressive motive, video game experience, implicit aggression

摘要: 分别采用词汇按键反应任务和EAST范式测查了攻击性认知的流畅性和内隐攻击性评价,旨在考察游戏中攻击动机对攻击性的影响,结果发现:暴力视频游戏的影响效应不仅与暴力内容有关,还受制于攻击动机和玩家的暴力游戏经验;且长期玩暴力游戏会使被试对暴力产生脱敏,表现为攻击性认知的流畅性低,对攻击的评价更积极。本研究表明,暴力视频游戏对个体攻击性的影响需综合考虑多种因素。

关键词: 暴力视频游戏, 攻击动机, 游戏经验, 内隐攻击性