Technological Advancement of Video Games and Their Effects on Players’ Aggression

DeFelice, Joel

Technological Advancement of Video Games and Their Effects on Players’ Aggression

Persistent URL

http://hdl.handle.net/10456/35881

Author(s)

DeFelice, Joel

Date Issued

March 31, 2014

Abstract

Aggression, immersion, and arousal levels were examined in relation to participants who were assigned to play either an older violent, older non-violent, new violent, or new non-violent video game. Participants completed a word completion task (Anderson et al., 2004) as well as the Game Immersion Questionnaire (Jennett et al, 2008), and had their blood pressure and heart rate recorded throughout the study. The hypotheses were not confirmed, but the results suggest that there could be a possible relationship between the technological advancement of violent video game content and heightened levels of aggression. The results of this study mainly suggest that there is an increasing need to determine any and all relationships between video games and aggression. Due to the constantly increasing realism the players experience during video game play, it is possible that gamers could be subjected to greater effects.

First Reader(s)

Conklin, Sarah M.