Research examines gamers’ aggression, morality in making choices
— By Craig Lyons, graduate student
New research about the impact of video games on feelings showed that gaming can influence feelings of aggression and that morality can guide choices people make.
IU telecommunications doctoral student Nic Matthews presented his research, “Making Conflict/Cooperation,” during the first Brown Bag seminar Jan. 23 in RTV. Matthews’ research used video games to test how players processed feelings of hostility, aggression and cooperation.
“I want to know what makes people get along and what makes them fight,” Matthews said.
For his research, Matthews gauged players’ reactions to the content of video games in two groups: The first looked for reactions to violent content, and the second looked at morality and how that influenced game play.
In the first series of experiments to test for outcomes of hostility and aggression across players of different skill levels, Matthews used a custom game and looked at how players responded to the content.
Some early patterns that emerged were that as skill level increased, so did the amount of violence players encountered, and low-skilled players were more often the target of violence while the high-skilled players were the perpetrators.
Players with a higher skill level had lower levels of feelings of aggression and hostility, and perceived less violence in the game, Matthews said.
Another component of the research looked to see if the structure of the game had any influence on reactions. One scenario put players through a game with a series of steps to overcome, and the other had them work toward a single end goal.
Matthews’ found the game with more steps to work through provoked more hostile and aggressive reactions in players that the module with the singular goal.
“This really reveals the importance of mastery and narrative engagement in game play,” Matthews said.
The second prong of Matthews’ research sought to see if a link existed between a people’s morality and how they performed during a video game.
A part of the research looked at how moral codes impacted the types of games people chose to play and how often. Matthews said people’s moral code will generally guide the types of games they play.
For example, a group that identified as having high loyalty but a low level of caring most often chose to play war games, his survey found. Players used a game where they needed to choose to protect a sacred mountain or allow people to cross it. He said the players showed that people with high morals tended to protect the mountain despite influences pushing them to do otherwise.