Do Video Games Exert Stronger Effects on Aggression? Media Modality and Identification on the Association of Violence and Aggression

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Abstract

This study proposed and tested a media modality model with a random sample of 102 male college students to investigate the hypothesis whether media modality moderate the violence-aggression relationship. A three-condition (video game playing vs. recorded game play watching vs. movie watching) between-subjects experiment indicated that video game players experienced greater increases in aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, and physiological arousal. Character identification did not differ between treatments and did not mediate the media modality-aggression relationship.

Author

• Jih-Hsuan Lin, Michigan State University