THE EFFECT OF VIDEO GAMES ON FEELINGS OF AGGRESSION

Fueled by the media, the controversy over whether playing popular arcade/computer games increases aggressiveness has only been compounded by inconsistencies within empirical research. This experiment, conducted with university students in Scotland, was designed to explore some of these inconsistencies. Aggressiveness was manipulated as the independent variable. As dependent variables, the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (Buss and Durkee, 1957) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck and Eysenck, 1975) were used. There was no linear pattern in aggressive affect change across three games that contained varying levels of violence. Results are discussed in terms of the general lack of support for the commonly held view that playing aggressive computer games causes an individual to feel more aggressive.