Parenting Pointers: Aggression and Video Games - Recent Studies

The degree to which the content of video games influences aggression continues to be debated in research and scholarly literature. New research findings published in Wiley Online Library's British Journal of Social Psychology suggest violent content does not influence hostility nor aggressive behavior.

The "Video Games, Frustration, Violence and Virtual Reality: Two studies" journal articles are based on research by Chris Ferguson, PhD, professor of psychology at Stetson University, and Stetson alumni Anastasiia Gryshyna, Jung Soo Kim, Emma Knowles, Zainab Nadeem, Izabela Cardozo, Carolin Esser, Victoria Trebbi and Emily Willis.

 

The first study replicates research conducted by Andrew K. Przybylski, PhD, director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, et al. The "Competence-Impeding Electronic Games and Players' Aggressive Feelings, Thoughts and Behaviors" published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2014. 

 

The second study extends related concepts into virtual reality.

 

In the first study, two versions of Tetris were examined, differing in levels of difficulty.

In the second study, participants played virtual reality games, which differed regarding difficulty and violent content.

 

Difficulty increased hostility in the second study but not the first. 

 

Violent content influenced neither hostility nor aggressive behavior. Results partially supported the frustration theory of aggression, but not theories of violent content effects.

 

I had a chance to interview Dr. Ferguson to learn more.

Why were these two studies conducted?

We were interested in examining two competing theories of why people may become aggressive after playing video games...one because they got frustrated by not doing well in the game and, two, because they'd been exposed to violent content.  We found partial support for the first hypothesis about frustration, but no support for the violent content hypothesis.  Since virtual reality is slowly becoming a bit more popular and we could foresee people worrying about the increased immersiveness of such games, we also wanted to have a look at virtual reality games specifically.  There are very few studies to do so.

I know that these kinds of studies focus on actual data, not speculation, but were there any theories for why difficulty had an effect on hostility for VR games but not for Tetris?

That was admittedly a bit of a surprise to us.  Our one thought is perhaps most people don't really care all that much about Tetris anymore, haha.  It's a bit of a simple game so perhaps people didn't get "into it" as much as some of the other games to really care if they were winning or losing.

What is a key takeaway for parents and caregivers of kids from these studies?

I suspect the main thing people will be interested in is whether VR games with violent content can cause aggression and the answer appears to be that they do not.  Sometimes kids (and adults) might get a bit annoyed when they're playing games but when this happens it appears to have more to do with frustration over losing than it does with any of the content of the game.  Parents might sometimes mistake one for the other.