Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on aggressive and prosocial outcomes
Section snippets
Participants
One hundred eighty-eight undergraduates (131 women) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recruited using a Psychology Department website, participated in exchange for course credit.
Video games
Two violent games (Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition) and two nonviolent games (Zuma and The Next Tetris) were used in this study. Both violent games were first-person shooter games, where players run through a futuristic gladiator arena and must kill multiple enemies with a
Participants
Three hundred eighty-nine undergraduate men at the University of North Carolina participated in the study for credit toward a course requirement. Participants were recruited through a university website.
Materials
All video games and questionnaires were identical to those used in Experiment 1.
Delay task
To test the generality of the time delay effect, a different delay task was used in Experiment 2. Participants in the time-delay conditions completed a picture rating task for 15 min. In this task, participants viewed
Participants
One hundred and eleven undergraduate students (68 female) at the University of North Carolina and Gettysburg College participated in the study for credit toward a course requirement. Participants were recruited through websites at each University.
Materials
Games and initial questionnaires were identical to those utilized in Studies 1 and 2.
Dependent measures
Order of administration of the two dependent measures was counterbalanced within each condition.
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