Research on the link between media violence and aggression has demonstrated that

Over the past few decades, research has shown a positive association between media violence and the audience’s aggression and violent behavior (Anderson et al., 2010, Bandura et al., 1961). More recently, there has been a shift in attention from a focus on violence in TV and film to that in video games (Anderson et al., 2004, Anderson and Dill, 2000). Based on the general aggression model (GAM), exposure to video game violence has been found to increase players’ short-term physiological arousal, aggressive thoughts, aggressive affect, and aggressive behavior and long-term aggression (Anderson and Bushman, 2002, Bushman and Anderson, 2002). With the rapid growth in popularity of video games, researchers have started to question whether the relative magnitudes of violent effects vary between video games and TV (Dill and Dill, 1998, Dominick, 1984).

There are two lines of argument regarding the comparative magnitudes of violent effects stemming from video games and TV. Arguments that support the position that violent video games may have weaker effects on aggression than does TV emphasize the unrealistic graphics, abstract violence, and non-human characters of games. Researchers have argued that the realism of depicted violence affects the audience’s imitation and aggression (Potter, 1999). A meta-analysis (Sherry, 2001) showed a positive association between video game violence and aggression, but the relationship was weaker than what was found in TV violence. On the other hand, arguments that suggest violent video games may have greater effects on players’ aggression than TV emphasize media interactivity and behavior rehearsal in games. A longitudinal report on risk factors for aggressive behavior showed that the overall effect size of video game violence was .30 compared to .17 for other media violence (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007). Moreover, researchers argued that violent video games allow players to identify themselves with characters, which increases imitation of aggressive behaviors (Dill and Dill, 1998, Gentile and Anderson, 2003).

Whether media interactivity would intensify the violence-aggression relationship is important to our society because the findings help to make sense of such effects, and understanding the underlying mechanism provides further insights for educators and policy makers to set guidelines for violence prevention and violence literacy education. However, very little prior research has directly addressed the issue of media interactivity with regard to violent effects (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). What is the difference between interactive media, such as video games, and non-interactive media, such as TV and film? While researchers (Dill and Dill, 1998, Klimmt et al., 2009) usually distinguish these two based on “interactivity,” this is an ambiguous concept that is currently mentioned more implicitly (McMillan, 2002). The mechanism and theoretical distinction between video games and TV/film have not been clarified. This study employed the GAM and social cognitive theory (SCT) to continue to explore this issue. This study tested the effects of interactivity on aggressive outcomes and character identification as the mediator between the relationship of interactivity and aggressive outcomes. In addition, prior studies have been confounded by uncontrolled, manifest differences in content between modalities, including the amount of violence displayed. This study kept violent content across media constant to compare the effects of video games and corresponding recorded game play and movie sections.

Arguments that violent video games may have weaker effects than film or TV

Many arguments that suggest that video game violence may have weaker effects on players’ aggression than television violence only focus on the technological perspective. The poor graphic quality of video games reduces the realism of video game violence, especially when compared to television (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). Audiences, however, have a higher likelihood to be aggressive when violence is portrayed more realistically, and researchers argue that video games with less realistic depictions

Method

The experiment was a three-condition, between-subject design: playing video games (mediated enactive experience) versus watching the recorded game play (mediated observational experience) versus watching the corresponding movie sections (mediated observational experience). The condition of viewing the recorded game is to provide equal violence between mediated enactive experience and mediated observational experience using the same level of graphics.

Results

The potential confounds were analyzed using ANOVAs. Results showed that frustration (F (2, 99) = .33, p = .72) and trait aggression (F (2, 99) = .68, p = .51) did not differ across the three groups. Enjoyment was only different between video game watchers (M = 4.58, SD = 1.54) and movie watchers (M = 5.65, SD = 1.28), p = .003. However, this study only focused on comparing video game playing (M = 5.13, SD = 1.54) with video game watching (see the above statistics), p = .12, and video game playing with movie watching, p

Discussion

Interactivity is an essential element in video games, but its effects have been understudied in existing literature. Incorporating SCT, this study theorized the role of media interactivity as a situational factor in GAM, which could exacerbate the effects of media violence on aggression compared to non-interactive media format, specifically in the case of video games. Identification was further theorized as being a mediator between media interactivity and aggression. Previous empirical studies

Conclusion

In conclusion, the results in this study showed that media interactivity had greater effects on audience aggression after keeping the amount of violent content constant across different media formats. This study focused on comparing the effects of video game playing versus video game watching, and video game playing versus movie watching, on audience aggression. Results of these two pairs of comparisons indicated that video game playing caused a greater increase in aggressive affect, a higher

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Aiming for the Top University Plan of National Chiao Tung University, the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, under Contract 100W9633 & 101W963. The author also gratefully thanks the Graduate School at Michigan State University for funding this project and acknowledges Alexander Abbott for his assistance in data collection. The author further thanks Dr. Robert LaRose, Dr. Wei Peng, Dr. Nicole Ellison, Dr. Joe Walther, and the anonymous reviewers for their

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