Video Games and Aggression in Children

Video Games and Aggression in Children‘

JOEL COOPER’ AND DIANE MACKIE Princeton University

This study examined the effect of playing an aggressive or nonaggressive video game on fifth-graders’ free play. Twenty-two pairs of boys and 20 pairs of girls were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. One of the children in each pair played a video game rated by peers as aggressive, a video game with little aggression, or a non-video maze-solving game for 8 minutes. The other child watched. Each child was then left individually to engage in free play in a separate room for 8 minutes, and also given the opportunity to deliver rewards and punishments to another child. The results were similar for both players and observers. Girls evidenced significantly more general activity and aggressive free play after playing the aggressive video game. Girls’activity decreased and their quiet play slightly increased after playing the low aggressive game compared to the control group. Neither video game had any significant effect on boys’ free play. Neither girls nor boys gave significantly more punishments or rewards after playing any of the games.

Does playing video games hurt children? Surgeon-General of the United States C. Everett Koop thinks so. In his address to the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Koop expressed his belief that video games, television, and the economic condition of the country were the root causes of family violence in America. Referring to video games, Koop was quoted as saying that children “are into the games, body and soul-everything is zapping the enemy. Children get to the point where when they see another child being molested by a third child, they just sit back” (Infoworld, 1982, p. 14).

It is unlikely that the few short years that video games have been with us could make them responsible for a major portion of society’s violence. Nonetheless, the video game industry has become a multi-billion dollar per year business. Video games have revolutionized children’s leisure time activities. Video games at home, instructional games at school, and video game arcades have permeated our culture. The question of what influence the many video games has on children is worth asking. Unfortunately, data on this question are scant.

‘The authors would like to thank Joan Hall, Matthew Mendel, James L. Hilton, and Barbara

’Requests for reprints should be sent to Joel Cooper, Department of Psychology, Princeton Cooper for their help as experimenters.

University, Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544.

726

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1986, 16,8, pp. 726-744. Copyright @ 1986 by V. H. Winston & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

VIDEO GAMES AND AGGRESSION 727

A preponderance of video games feature some form of aggressive metaphor. The player commands missiles to be fired at invading enemy craft, alien ships fire at cities that are protected by a player’s counteroffensive arsenal. In game after game, bullets, war games, missiles and bombs play an integral role. As one television commercial extolled, the ultimate game fea- tured the “total destruction of a planet”! Do such claims of total destruction and the reliance on metaphors of war, battles, and other violent acts have an effect on children, as suggested by the Suregon-General? Perhaps we can draw inferences from the decades of research on the effects of television programming on children.

The media: Aggression on television and aggressive behaviors. There is little doubt that television plays a role in shaping children’s aggressive attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Comstock & Rubenstein, 1972; Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar, 1982). Just what role television has played is a bit more controversial. Most studies have reported a direct link between viewing aggression on television and behaving aggressively (Comstock, 1980), supporting social learning (Bandura & Walters, 1963), attitude change (Thomas & Drabman, 1975; Drabman & Thomas, 1974a), and arousal (Zillmann, 1971) explanations of television violence’s impact on behavior. While there has been considerable support for the social learning proposition that watching models behave aggressively on the television screen promotes the learning of these behaviors in children (Lefkowitz, Eron, Walder, & Huesmann, 1977), the recent Report of the National Institute of Mental Health did not find the data unequivocally in favor of social learning (1982, p. 36). Viewing television violence also changes children’s attitudes about violence, making aggression more acceptable and therefore more likely to be engaged in (Drabman & Thomas, 1974a, 1974b; Dominick & Greenberg, 1972). And television has also been shown to increase arousal levels (Zillmann, 1971), which in turn increases the probablity of aggressive behavior (Green & O’Neal, 1969; Zill- mann, 1982). In fact, the positive relationship between television violence and aggression argues against only the catharsis hypothesis (Dobb & Wood, 1972), despite earlier findings that aggressive behavior decreased as a function of aggressive programming (Feshbach & Singer, 197 1). While the mechanisms underlying the effect may remain a matter of debate (there are data to indicate that more than one process may operate in children of different ages (Axsom & Cooper, 1982), the major conclusion of the Report of the National Institute of Mental Health and probably the majority of investigators working in this area is nonetheless that violence on television does produce an increased tendency toward aggressive behavior in children.

If the data suggest that televised violence leads to aggression, the case has been made more surely for boys than for girls. Most of the research that implicates television’s role in prompting aggression has been with males as

728 COOPER AND MACKIE

participants [as reviews by Murray, Rubenstein, & Comstock (1972) and Pearl, Bouthilet, & Lazar (1982) indicate]. Research involving females has been less common, and has produced somewhat inconsistent data, sometimes finding similar positive relationships between television violence and aggression (Milarsky, Kessler, Stipp, & Rubens, 1982) and sometimes not (e.g., Stein & Friedrich, 1971). What factors might account for differences in males’ and females’ reaction to televised violence?

One of the problems that television research has had in attempting to untangle the gender differences is its reliance on scripts that confound gender with aggressive behavior. Simply put, almost all protagonists on shows involving aggression are male. If modelling is the process underlying the positive relationship between television violence and aggressive behavior, girls might be expected to be less affected by what they see. The picture is complicated, however, by evidence that girls as well as boys more readily imitate male models (Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1963a, 1963b), including aggressive male models (Huesmann, 1982), and therefore could be as suscep- tible as boys.

A second important factor is exposure, and related to it, experience of violence. Elementary school girls watch less violence on television than their male peers (Milarsky et al., 1982). This again suggests that females might show less aggression than males overall because they watch less, but suggests the opposite conclusion about the sexes’ reaction to any one violent episode. Viewing aggression heightens arousal, which in turn makes aggressive behavior more likely. There is both field and laboratory evidence to suggest that heavy watchers of violence display less physiological arousal in response to new violence than control subjects (Cline, Croft, & Courrier, 1973; Thomas, Horton, Lippencott, & Drabman, 1977). While some studies have placed limits on these findings (Baron, 1977). Huesmann (1982) concludes that it is plausible that children who watch the least violence will be most aroused and most likely to act aggressively. As girls have less exposure to and experience with violence, they are the group likely to be most aroused by exposure, suggesting that girls’ reactions to any violent context may be more pronounced than boys’.

Video Games and Aggression

While the similarities between television and video games make it heuristic to use the findings on television violence as a springboard for research in the video domain, the video games phenomenon is distinctive enough to offer some new perspectives.

First, many video games bypass the problems of gender identification with


same or different sex models. The protagonist in many video games is a computer-generated blip on the screen under the control of the player. To the extent that females are affected by aggressive stimuli, then the effects should be measurable in relation to gender-neutral video game aggression.

Secondly, because the video game phenomenon is largely dominated by males, girls remain relatvely inexperienced with the medium. Computer clubs and video arcades attract many more males than females; boys report having computers in the home much more frequently than do girls (Wilder, Mackie, & Cooper, in press). Girls’relative inexperience with video violence makes the hypothesis that any effect of violence will be even more pronounced in females plausible.

Video game research can also offer a new perspective on the issue of active and passive involvement. While television watchers are generally passive recipients of the information and affect that actors generate, video game players participate in the action. They receive the destruction caused by the computer-created missiles; they also bring destruction to the computerized enemy. At the same time, video games enable the effects of active engagement in and passive reception of violent content to be compared because the games allow both participation and concurrent observation. Anyone who has visited a video arcade has been struck by the number of people who watch the player. At any one time, more people at an arcade are observers than players. If video games do affect the player-that is, the active participant-what is their affect on the passive observer?

To test these notions, a study was designed in which 4th and 5th grade boys and girls were allowed to play either a highly aggressive or a less aggressive video game. Other children were assigned to watch them play. We wanted to see whether computer-generated games depicting a lot of violence affected children, and, in particular, whether they affected boys and girls differently. Our plan was to compare girls’ and boys’ preceptions of a pen-and-paper game, a nonviolent video game, and a violent video game on several dimensions, and then to gauge the effect of the games on children’s choice of toys in a free play session and on their distribution of rewards and punishments to another child. This technique allowed us to see both how much activity and what kind of activity children engaged in after playing our chosen games, helping pinpoint the exact effect of each game. We anticipated that girls and boys might perceive the games differently; we suspected further that the video games, and especially the aggressive game, might have greater impact on the children’s behavior. In particular, we predicted that a highly aggressive game would result in more aggressive play. We were also interested in whether the effects of playing would differ as a function of the sex of the child, and whether actually playing the game would have more impact than watching the game.


Method

Subjects

Eighty-four 4th and 5th graders from a school system in suburban Trenton, New Jersey, took part in the study. Of these, 44 were male and 40 female, with approximately equal numbers from both grades. For the experimental session, the children were paired randomly with the constraint that they be of the same sex and grade.

Selection of Stimulus Games

An aggressive video game, a nonaggressive video game, and a control pen-and-paper game were selected for use in the study. In the control game, subjects were given magic markers and asked to solve mazes featuring cartoon characters (Star Wars and Tron) popular for the age group. Two video games compatible with the Atari home video cassette system were used both because they were portable and because subjects seemed most familiar with them. Both games were displayed on a standard color television monitor and oper- ated with standard joystick controls. Although we were primarily interested in the effects of the games in the light of oar subjects’perceptions of them, wedid have corroborating evidence for the kinds of games we had chosen. In an unrelated survey conducted 2 weeks earlier, 4th and 5th graders from the same school disrrict rated both Missille Command, selected as the violent game, and Pac-Man, selected as the nonviolent game. Missile Command, in which players must destroy laser beams before they in turn demolish the player’s cities, was seen as involving considerable violence towards both people ( M = 4.27 of a possible 8) and inanimate objects ( M = 3.16), and lots of shooting ( M = 7.02 out of 8). Pac-Man (in which the player-controlled Pac-Man alternately chases and is chased by ghosts through a maze), on the other hand, was rated as involving less violence towards both people ( M = 3.26) and inanimate objects ( M = 2.32), and almost no shooting ( M = 1.36). The two games thus differed significantly on the two measures of violence (F( 1,99) = 6.57, p < .02 for violence toward people, and F(1,99) = 5.7, p < .02 for violence toward things) and on the shooting measure (F(1,99) = 2 6 3 . 2 4 , ~ < .0001).

Procedure

Overview. Children who had gained parental consent to participate in the study filled out a questionnaire about their experience with video games a week before the experimental session. Each pair of children came into the


experimental room and was randomly assigned to either the high aggression (Missile Command) or the low aggression (Pac-Man condition), or to the control (maze-solving) condition. One member of the pair was randomly chosen to play the designated game for 8 minutes, observed by the other member of the pair. Half the players were then sent to a toy room, where aggressive play was measured, while their observer partners went to a second experimental room where a measure of interpersonal aggression was taken. After an observation period of 8 minutes, subjects in the toy room were sent for the interpersonal aggression measure, while their partners came to the toy room. For the other half of the pairs, the order in which the players and observers went to the toy room and the second experimental room was r e ~ e r s e d . ~ Every child filled out a manipulation check questionnaire before returning to class.

Experimental session. The pairs of children coming into the experimental room were randomly assigned to either the high aggression (Missile Com- mand), the low aggression (Pac-Man), or the control (maze-solving) condition. One member of the pair was randomly chosen as the player and was asked to play the designated game for 8 minutes, observed by the other member of the pair. If the player was not familiar with the game, he or she was given 2 minutes of familiarization play before the 8-minute experimental session. During the 8-minute period, an experimenter recorded the subject’s cumulative score on the game. In the Missile Command condition, the number of times the player attempted to shoot was also recorded. If the player lost the game, or advanced to a new screen or harder version of the game before the 8 minutes were up, the game was reset and play continued. In the maze condition, players were told that they would receive points for each maze completed without going over lines. They were told to go straight on to a new maze when they had completed the first until the 8 minutes were up.

Observers in all conditions were told that they should watch the game, and that they could advise or encourage their partner if they wished but could not actually touch the controls or use a magic marker. At the end of 8 minutes, the game was stopped and the subjects directed to either the toy room or second experimental room for measurement of aggressive play and interpersonal aggression respectively.

Dependent Measures

Effect on play. When the subjects arrived in the game room, a second experimenter told them that there would be a short delay before going on the

’A preliminary analysis showed that the order in which measures were taken had no effect on subjects’ responses. Data used in all further analyses were collapsed across the order factor.


second part of the experiment while she “worked some things out” on the subject’s sheet. Subjects were told that they could do anything they liked and play with any of the toys while they were waiting, that the experimenter would be busy and they would not disturb her, and that she would call them as soon as she was ready. The experimenter then sat at a desk in one corner of the room in which the toys were arranged, and appeared to be adding numbers diligently while in fact recording which toys were played with, in what order, and for how long, during a 8-minute period.

Four different toys were selected for use in the toy room after being rated by twelve 4th and 5th grade girls and boys. A 3-foot high plastic Shogun Warrior complete with spring-releasing fist and dart-firers was used as the aggressive toy, based on the children’s ratings of it as highly aggressive (6.25 on a 7-point scale) and significantly more aggressive than the other toys (F(3,30) = 25.90, p < .0001). A Nerf Basketball set with the pole adjusted to 5 feet was selected as the active toy, as children rated it as highly active ( M = 6.25 of 7) and significantly more active than the other toys (F(3,30) = 6 7 . 0 3 , ~ < .OOOl). A table top Pop-up Pinball game, in which players attempted to guide plastic balls into slots for points, was selected as the skill game. The raters thought the game involved considerable skill ( M = 6.00 of a maximum 7), and rated it as requiring more skill than any of the other games (F(3,24) = 9 . 3 1 , ~ < .0003). Finally, a large set of Lincoln Logs building and roofing pieces was selected as the quiet toy. The Lincoln Logs were rated as quieter (6.4 on the 7-point scale) than the other toys (F(3,30) = 6 0 . 5 4 , ~ < .0001). All of the toys were seen as enjoyable, but the Shogun Warrior and the Pop-up Pinball were seen as slightly more enjoyable (both were rated at 6.17 of B maximum 7) than the basketball ( M = 5.32) and building ( M = 5.42) toys, a difference that was significant (F(3,30) = 3 . 5 0 , ~ < .03). There was also a significant difference in girls’ and boys’ preferences for the toys, with girls preferring the active Nerf Basketball game least, whereas boys liked the building set least (F(3,30) = 3.50, p < .03).

After 8 minutes of free play, subjects were told that the second part of the experiment was now ready, and they were taken to the second experimental room.

Distribution of rewards andpunishments. A variant of a procedure used by Liebert and Baron (1972) to measure interpersonal aggression in children after watching violent television was used. Children were told that the experimenters were developing a program to try to stop children from doing“si1ly or bad” things and that the suggestions made by our subjects would actually be applied to another group of children. The subjects were then given a descrip- tion of three behaviors (talking back, hitting someone, and stealing something) and asked to choose the one they thought was worst-this was the


behavior with which they were going to have to deal. They were then told to imagine that another child (of their age and sex) had performed the chosen bad act. The subjects were asked to choose one of three possible punishments to deal with the behavior. The three punishments suggested were not being allowed out of the house to play, having restricted TV, and being sent to their room. When the subjects had chosen the punishment, they were shown a panel on which there was a red button. They were asked to push this button (which activated a high frequency “bad buzzer”) to show how much of the chosen punishment they would administer to the other child for performing the bad behavior. They were told that the longer they held down the buzzer, the “more” punishment the other child would receive (i.e., a longer time not allowed out of the house, longer time without television, longer time in one’s room). The amount of time the button was held down was recorded.

The subject was then asked to consider what he or she would do if the other child behaved badly a second time. They were allowed to stay with the same punishment or to go to another punishment, and were again asked to press the button to indicate how much the child should be punished. The whole procedure was repeated one more time with the subjects considering what they would do should the other child behave badly yet a third time. The time spent pressing the buzzer was recorded in both cases.

A parallel procedure was then carried out for “doing something good.” Children again chose which of three acts (helping someone, stopping a fight, cleaning up their room) they thought was best, and were asked to choose an appropriate reward (getting a surprise, not having to do a chore, staying up later) with which to reward the behavior. They then pressed the green button (activating a low frequency “good buzzer”) on the same panel to show how much reward they would administer the first, second, and third time the behavior occurred. As before, the subjects were allowed to change the chosen reward. When the actual measures had been recorded, children were asked to rank both the punishments and the rewards from worst to best. All subjects then filled out manipulation check questionnaires before returning to class.

Perception of the games played. Finally, all subjects filled out questionnaires about their perceptions of the games before returning to class. Children were asked to use 5-point scales to rate the game that either they or their partner had played for action (scale endpoints were labelled “has no action at all” to “is extremely active”) and violence (“has no violence at all” to “extremely violent”). They also indicated how much they liked the game, how well they thought they or their partner had played the game, and how much they wanted to keep playing (for players) or had wanted to play (for observers). All these ratings were done on 5-point scales labelled on all points.


Results

Experience with video games. In a preexperimental questionnaire, subjects were asked about their experience with video games in general as well as with the particular games used in the study. Of the 84 children, 61% reported having a video game system used with the family television or a computer which played video games at home. Significantly more boys ( N = 34) reported havingvideo games at home than did girls ( N = 17; X 2 = 1 0 . 6 2 , ~ < .001). All except 1 1 children had played some type of video game before, if not at home then at an arcade, restaurant, or at a friend’s house; again, fewer girls than boys had played before. There were no significant differences in experience with the two games actually used in the study, however. Of the 64 children in the experimental conditions, 56 were familiar with the game they had to deal with. Five children (4 girls and a boy) were not familiar with the Missile Command game, while three (2 girls and a boy) were unfamiliar with Pac- Man. Because of the differences in general experience, however, a score reflecting experience with playing video games in general and Pac-Man and Missile Command in particular was computed for each child in the experimental conditions for use as a covariate in the analysis of the play measures. The effect of the covariate was insignificant.

There were no differences in the amount of time that children in the various conditions reported they spent playing video games each day. The average time reportedly spent playing video games was 42.57 minutes a day.

Perceptions of the games played. Our subjects did see the three games as being significantly different in perceived violence. The maze game ( M = 1.54) was seen as least violent, followed by Pac-Man ( M = 1.87) and Missile Command ( M = 2.28, F(2,72) = 4.34, p < .02). Pac-Man did not, however, differ significantly from either of the other games, and even Missile Command did not score above the midpoint of the scale. Not surprisingly, players in all three conditions thought the game they played involved more action than did their observer partners (F(1,72) = 5 . 1 7 , ~ < .03) and the maze game was seen as having less action ( M = 3.1) than either Pac-Man ( M = 3.8) or Missile Command ( M = 3.9, F(2,72) = 4 . 6 4 , ~ < . O l ) .

Responses to other items indicated sex differences in perception. Girls thought that the game had been played better if their partners had been playing, while boys thought the game had been played better if they were players rather than observers (F(1,72) = 4 . 8 4 , ~ < .03).This was true for both video games; in the maze condition, boys’ results looked very like girls’ (the interaction of sex, game, and position reached p < .07). Female players of the maze game and Pac-Man games thought they had played better ( M = 3.5 and 3.4) than female players of Missile Command ( M = 3.00). Boys were equally and more strongly confident about their performance on all three


games ( M = 4.0, 4.12, and 4.0 for mazes, Pac-Man, and Missile Command, respectively; differences between girls’and boys’ responses were different only in the Missile Command condition). Examination of the actual scores players had received showed that males had performed slightly better (M(ma1e) = 63 12.77, M(fema1e) = 4088.75), but the sex difference was significant only for Missile Command where boys scored an average of 8806.87 points while girls scored 4993.75. Girls in the other two conditions had not performed worse than boys; they believed that they had, however. There were no differences among the three games (p < . l ) and an analysis of toy play using obtained score on the game as a covariate showed the measure to have no effect ( F < 1) on which toys were chosen.

Attempts to be aggressive (regardless of whether they were successful) by the players in the Missile Command condition were also considered by examining the number of responses players made. There were no differences for sex, and entering number of responses made as a covariate had no effect of analyses of toy play ( F < 1). As different perceptions of success or failure might have influenced subsequent behavior, we intended to check the impact of this effect on toy play and reward distribution.

Responses to the item that asked how enjoyable the game was produced a difference consistent with the success measures. Boys found the game more enjoyable if they were playing rather than watching, while female observers enjoyed the game more than female players (F( 1,72) = 3 . 8 6 , ~ < .05) except in the control condition (the interaction of sex, game, and position reachedp < .07). Female players of the maze game liked playing more ( M = 4.25) than female players of Pac-Man ( M = 4.0) and especially Missile Command ( M = 3.3). Boys were equally happy playing all three games ( M = 4.2,4.37, and 4.37 for mazes, Pac-Man, and Missile Command, respectively). Again the strong- est difference occurred in the Missile Command condition. Almost identical results were obtained on the measure of how much subjects wanted to play the game. For girls, those who had actually played the game wanted to keep playing less than those who had observed wanted to play. However, in boys, the players felt strongly that they wanted to keep playing, more than those who had observed wanted to play. Considering just the players alone, boys wanted to keep playing much more than girls, and again much more in the Missile Command condition than in the others. Liking and enjoyment of the game therefore seemed like good candidates for use as covariates in the analysis of the effect of the games on subsequent behavior.

There were several significant interrelationships in these measures, but only in the two video game conditions. For both Missile Command and Pac-Man conditions, boys liked the game more if they perceived it as involving more action ( r = .56 and .73, respectively,ps < .03). Whether or not they succeeded, or whether or not the game was violent, had no effect on their liking of or


desire to play the game. The situation was more complicated for girls. In the Pac-Man condition, there was a similar tendency for girls to like the game more if it was more active, and also to like it more if they were more successful (bothp <.06). When the girls played Missile Command, however, there were strong positive relationships between liking the game and amount of action ( r = .59), liking and success (.84), liking and wanting to play more (.74), and success and wanting to play more (.70; allps < .02). Even more importantly, there was a strong negative relationship between wanting to play and perceived violence; the more violent Missile Command was seen as being, the less girls wanted to play (r = -.58, p < .02).

Effects of Game on Toy Play

Overall analysis. An analysis of variance with sex of subject (male or female), game played (mazes, Pac-Man, or Missile Command), position (player or observer) as between subjects factors and type of toy (aggressive, active, skilled, or quiet) as a within subjects factor was performed on the logarithmic transformations of the amount of time spent playing with each toy to offset large variations in individual responding. The analysis revealed a main effect for toy type (F(3,216) = 3 . 9 3 , ~ < .0093) with more time being spent playing with the quiet toy (M = 134.74 seconds) and skilled toy (M = 1 18.36 seconds) than with the active toy ( M = 89.56 seconds) or aggressive toy ( M = 59.3 1 seconds). Consistent with previous findings on sex preferences for certain toys, we found the aggressive toy to be preferred by males, the quiet toy to be preferred by females, with no real differences in preference being exhibited for the active or skill toys (the interaction between type of toy and sex of subjects was significant at F(3,216) = 4 . 1 8 , ~ < .0066).

The three-way interaction between game played, sex of player, and type of toy on time spent playing with the toys was also significant (F(6,216) = 2.57, p < .02). Comparison of the means indicated that the various toys were played with for different amounts of time by girls (F(1,216) = 5 . 1 1 , ~ < .02), but not by boys (p < .3). Further analyses were carried out to ascertain the effect of the games on time spent by boys and girls playing with each toy.

Aggressiveplay. We suspected that children who had played or watched the high aggressive video game would engage in more aggressive play in the toy room. Children in the high aggressive game condition did spend more time playing with the aggressive toy than children in the other two conditions combined ( M = 82.13 seconds compared with M = 46.48). Interestingly, this effect was attributable almost completely to the girls’ behavior. Girls who had played with Missile Command spent much more time playing with the aggressive toy (M = 79.625) than girls in the other conditions (M = 14.81; F( 1,288) = 9 . 9 8 , ~ < .002). As Table 1 shows, the effect of the high aggressive


game was to increase girls’play with the aggressive toy to the boys’level. While the boys spent more time overall with the aggressive toy than did the girls (F( 1,315) = 9 . 3 3 6 3 , ~ < .001), boys’ play with the aggressive toy was hardly affected by the video game played.

Quiet play. Another major effect of the video game manipulation was on the amount of time children spent engaged in quiet play. Overall, girls spent more time with the quiet toy than did boys. As with the aggressive toy, their behavior was affected more by the video game manipulation, and again more in the Missile Command condition than in any other (see Table 1). Girls played less with the quiet toy after Missile Command than after either of the other games (F( 1,288) = 5.51, p < .02); their quiet play increased in the Pac-Man condition but not significantly. The boys were again largely unaffected by the manipulation.

Skillplay. Time spent with the skill toy tended to decrease in both video game conditions compared to the control 0, < .07). This effect was contrib- uted to by a significant drop in skill play by boys in the Missile Command condition (F( 1,288)= 5.5 1 , p < .02); girls’play decreased, but less strongly, in both video game conditions (F( 1,288) = 4.31, p < .04).

Activeplay. Neither of the video games had a significant effect on children’s play with the active toy compared with the control condition ( F < I ) , nor did boys or girls differ in the amount of time they spent overall with the active toy. There was an increase in the amount of time girls in the high aggressive game condition spent in active play compared with the girls in the low aggressive game condition, but this increase was not significant. However, the fact that our pre-ratings of the games suggested that girls liked the basketball game least complicates these findings. Girls may have been more active after playing

Table I

Amount of Time Spent with Each Kind of Toy, by Condition and Sex, in Seconds

Game played

Control Pac-Man Missile Command

Female Male Female Male Female Male

Aggressive toy 15.88 62.33 13.75 78.69 79.63 84.62 Skill toy 167.63 126.25 111.31 162.75 98.31 70.50 Active toy 69.50 110.50 41.94 72.50 121.00 117.13 Quiet toy 164.13 139.58 233.06 53.81 97.19 136.56


the Missile Command game, but may not have chosen to express this by playing with the basketball game. In fact, girls rated the Shogun Warrior next most active toy after the basketball set.

Number of activities. As another measure of activity, we decided to look at the number of times subjects had changed activity in the toy room. If a child was feeling animated after playing the games, he or she might go from one activity to the next, rather than settling down with one toy. This measure might be particularly revealing for the girls, given that the toy we had classi- fied as active was less attractive to them. The analysis showed that girls played with more activities after Missile Command ( M = 4.1) than after Pac-Man ( M = 2.9), while boys did the opposite ( M = 2.8 and 4.4, respectively; the sex by game interaction was signficant, F(2,72) = 4 . 0 9 , ~ < .02). Moving from one activity to the next was positively related to playing with the aggressive toy for both girls and boys in the Missile Command condition (r = .52 and r = .59, bothp < .04).

Effect ofperceptions on game play. Children’s perceptions of their interactions were entered both as covariates in the analyses of variance and as factors in a multiple regression analysis of play with each kind of toy. There were three significant effects. The actual game played had far more effect on girls’ interaction with the aggressive toy than did the amount of violence they perceived in the game. This may suggest that it was something about Missile Command other than its violent content, or at least not directly its violent content, that changed girls’behavior in the toy room. Some hint as to another possible reason for Missile Command’s effect came from an analysis that showed that perceived success was a significant covariate in the girls’ results. Girls who perceived that they had performed poorly played with the aggressive toy more than those who thought they had performed better. As girls’ perception of poor performance was greatest after playing Missile Command, this might account for some of the increase in their aggressive play in this condition. The only other effect was one for males, which showed again that the actual game played was the only significant predictor of time spent in skilled play. Game played loaded negatively on time spent playing with the skill toy, indicating that boys played Pinball less after Pac-Man and even less after playing Missile Command.

Summary of effect of games on free play. The video games, and especially Missile command, had much more effect on girls’as compared with boys’ free play. Missile Command produced inceases in females’ aggressive play and general activty relative to the other two games, and reduced the amount of quiet and skill play girls engaged in. Although the effect was not so great, Pac-Man tended to increase their quiet play and decrease general activity. Apart from decreases in skill play in the two video game conditions and in


overall activity in the Pac-Man condition, boys’ behavior was hardly influenced by the video game manipulation.

Interpersonal Aggression

The length of time each subject pressed both the “good” and the “bad” buzzer was entered into a 5-factor ANOVA with sex, game played, and position as between subject factors and buzzer (good and bad) and trial (first, second, and third) as repeated measures. The analysis revealed no effects for game played. Boys used both buzzers more (spending an average of 31.78 seconds pressing the buzzers compared to girls 16.75 seconds, F( 1,72) = 5.05, p < .03). Amount of time spent pressing increased over trials, due largely to the boys’ tendency to increase time spent pressing by trial (trial by sex interaction was significant at p < .05). Amount of time spent pressing increased more by trial if the subjects had played the game rather than watched (p < .003), the only player/ observer effect found in the results. None of these results was influenced by which game children had played.4 Buzzer pushing was related to aggressive play (r = .55, p < .03) for boys in the Pac-Man condition; otherwise there were no significant relationships between toy play and buzzer use.’

41dentical analyses performed on logarithmic transformations of the times, difference scores (time spent pressing the “good” buzzer minus time spent pressing the “bad” buzzer, by trial), and buzzer times standardized by subject also failed to show significant effects in the data. Other analyses were carried out in which the length of time each subject pressed both the “good” and the “bad” buzzer was multiplied by the severity of the punishment (using the subjects’ own ratings) used to deal with the behavior on each occasion. For example, if a child changed to a punishment he or she had indicated as being more severe when pressing the buzzer on the second trial, the number of seconds the child pressed the buzzer on that child was multiplied by two. If the child stayed with that punishment, the number of seconds spent pressing on the third trial was also multiplied by two. If, however, the child changed to a more severe punishment again on the third trial, seconds spent pressing the buzzer were multiplied by three. Similar compensations for the reward chosen were made on the amount of “good” buzzer pressing. None of these analyses showed any effect other than that boys spent more time pressing both buzzers.

’The use of toy play and the good/ bad buttons as measures of aggression have had controversial histories. We acknowledge that there may be differences between playing with aggressive toys or pressing buttons in the laboratory and manifestations of aggression in the social environ- ment. Nonetheless, both measures appear to be related to aggression and may best be conceived as imperfect indicants of tendencies to aggress. Moreover, ethical and practical considerations within the laboratory constrain the choices to measures that create no injury and that can be completed within the laboratory context. Finally, the choice of the present measures permits comparison with the many research projects in the area of televised aggression which have used similar measures.


Discussion

The results of the present study show that there are measurable conse- quences of playing or observing video games on girls’ behavior. Playing the more aggressive game increased girls’ activity as well as the likelihood that they would play with the aggressive toy. Conversely, playing the less aggressive game mildly decreased activity and mildly increased girls’ passive play. Not only did these effects occur as a consequence of playing the video games, but watching peers play with aggressive and nonaggressive games had the same impact on our female subjects as actually playing the game.

Boys, on the other hand, were not affected by the playing of any of the video games. Their tendency to choose the aggressive toy was higher than that of the girls to begin with and did not change as a function of whether they played or observed the highly aggressive video game. It is unlikely, however, that their level of aggressiveness reached a statistical ceiling. Of the total amount of time children had to play with the toys, boys played with the aggressive toy only 15% of the time.

What might account for the gender differences found for toy play behavior? It was clear that girls’ and boys’ perceptions of their interactions with the computer-generated games differed, but apart from the possibility that perception of success interacted withgame played in thegirls’data, no one of the dimensions we asked about appeared to influence toy play directly.

Missile Command’s effect on girls’ play relative to Pac-Man could easily be attributed to the greater violent content in the former, as was intended by the manipulation. Aggressive play increased after girls played Missile Command. Our data appears supportive of the suggestion that increases in aggression are mediated by general increases in arousal produced by this game. Girls changed activities more after playing Missile Command and increased active as well as aggressive play. The previous evidence that such arousal is greater in those relatively inexperienced with violence would then explain the pattern of sex differences in our data. Girls, who are exposed less to violence in general and who are less experienced with violent video games (the one used in this study, for example) in particular, react to exposure to the aggressive game with greater arousal than boys. This arousal in turn makes aggressive behavior more likely, and so we find more activity and more aggressive play in our female subjects than in our male ones.

A second possibility, of course, is that there was a disinhibition effect. By asking girls to play the Missile Command game we had implicitly condoned aggressive play; aggressive play is often accepted in boys but not in girls. Girls may have felt freer to play more with an aggressive toy (especially one that shot darts and missiles) after being encouraged to play a game involving the same behavior.


Both these explanations are made more complicated by the fact that the girls perceived Missile Command as only moderately violent and only sightly more violent than Pac-Man. Girls did not play more with the aggressive toy after playing Pac-Man than after playing the control game, and perceived violent content had no effect on their behavior. Our results suggest other factors that should be explored as possible mediators of the games’ effects on girls’ behavior as well.

First, the issue of perceived success needs to be dealt with further. Girls’ actual performance was only slightly worse than boys’, but their perceived performance was much worse if they were actually playing the game, especially in the Missile Command condition. Similar results were found in a study of college freshmen’s perception of computing skill (Wilder et al., in press, Study 2). Although females had objectively similar levels of skill and experience as males, they underestimated their skills compared to the self- ratings of males. Increased aggressive play in the Missile Command condition, in which girls rated themselves as performing worst, might at least partially reflect negative reactions to perceived failure. No similar relationship was found between success and failure in the boys’ toy play.

A second possible explanation for the obtained pattern of results is suggested by Wilder et al.’s results (in press, Study 1). A survey of elementary school children indicated that both girls and boys considered video games to be a boy’s domain, that is, appropriate for boys to use and play with. Girls in this study, however, liked the Pac-Man game and may have thought it just as appropriate for females as for males. Moreover, the two games differ in the context in which the perceived violence occurs. In comments elicited after the study, girls expressed distaste for “space and war” themes (used in Missile Command) in video games and a preference for “animal and fantasy” themes (Pac-Man could be loosely categorized in this group). Our finding that fewer girls needed the familiarization play with Pac-Man compared with Missile Command is consistent with this. The two video games might therefore have had different effects on the girls’ behavior because they were seen as more or less sex-appropriate by the girls. Playing with Missile Command may have produced uneasiness, which may have been responsible for the increased activity and aggressive play found here. The aggressive metaphor of the game may have increased perceptions of the game as suitable for boys, and thus may have influenced, but not been directly responsible for, changes in the girls’ behavior. Boys, on the other hand, seeing both games as equally sex- appropriate, would have remained unaffected by the games.

It is especially interesting that the playing or observing of video games did not affect boys’ or girls’ behavior on the interpersonal measure of aggression. In much of the literature on children’s responses to violent television, various measures of aggression have been used rather interchangeably. Some variety


of toy play has been used in a large number of studies (see Stein & Friedrich’s, 1975, review). Measures relying on the rewarding and punishing of others have also been used (e.g., Liebert & Baron, 1972; Lovaas, 1961). The present results suggest that, at least in the area of video games, the effects are not parallel.

One possible reason for the failure of the interpersonal measure to find differences among conditions may be purely procedural. This explanation would suggest that both measures-toy play and interpersonal-are indicants of the same procedure, but that toy play is simply the more sensitive of the two. There are social sanctions against demonstrating aggression towards others; therefore the toy play may have been the easiest way to demonstrate aggression. In general, this explanation holds that our procedures were suffi- cient to provoke enough aggression to be measured on the simplest measure of aggression, but were not sufficiently strong to produce aggression that would be manifested on a dimension where implicit sanctions might be applied.

A more interesting possibility is that there may be at least two distinctly different types of aggression assessed in the present study. The toy play behavior may be conceptualized as a generalized aggression that is not directed at other people. We should note that the aggression displayed in our high-aggression game was directed explicitly against objects (space ships and buildings) and only implicitly against people. The buzzer pressing, on the other hand, may be an indication of a more specific form of aggression-that which is directed towards others-that the games did not elicit. This explanation would be consistent with activity patterns in the toy play data which suggest an increase in general activity rather than a specific and isolated increase in purely aggressive behavior.

Of special interest in all these findings is the fact that there were no differences between the playing and the observing of video games. Except that they tended to press both reward and punishment buzzers more on the second and third trials, players were not affected more than observers, even though other experiments have demonstrated increments in social learning due to active rather than passive behavior. In the video parlor as at home, observers of video games often outnumber the players, and appear just as absorbed by the action. Our results suggest that they are, and suggest an analysis of attention to the games as a factor affecting their influence rather than children’s nominal interaction with them.

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Video Games and Aggression in Children

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