Anthony Bean, Ph.D.

There has been much talk about violent media and the effect on our children, or adults as some would say.  While our senators and governors play around on capital hill with accusations that are usually biased as hell (from both sides mind you) and point the finger in the wrong direction or at an illegitimate source, let us review some recent criminology findings.

This paper published by “Criminal Justice and Behavior” in 2008 compiled a more than adequate amount of research on the topic:  The Effects of Media Violence Exposure On Criminal Aggression: A Metal Analysis.  The authors did an excellent job of defining the current problems with our literature that we use, have looked at, and even replicate today.  These problems include faulty statistics, defunct methodology, lack of actual aggression links, the idea of Demand Effect, the psychological and behavioral difference in pressing a button in a confined space…

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Video Games and Culture Today

As of late, video games and the effect they have on our psyche and well-being has been a fiery issue.  There has been a lot of research in the past few decades that has suggested video games are the cause for violence in our society and culture.  While this may be true, it may be safer to say that video games are a reflection of our culture.  Our culture is reflected in numerous areas of our daily lives, billboards, books, reference materials, our own socially constructed ideals, etc.  To say that one area is more prevalent in causing our behaviors may be stretching the truth.

Researcher Craig Anderson from Iowa State University has been a main source of the research reporting that video games create violent behavior in individuals.  He has been studying the subject for an extended period of time (since 1995).  Most of his participants have been from the university that he teaches at and with computer games that have been created for his research purposes.  While this seems like a respectable sample, a researcher with an eye for methodology would be able to point out the obvious limitations of this approach.   The college population used solely in the samples, the video games created for the study are not actual games individuals play, and that the virtual games used were specifically created for his research purposes creates a sense of uncertainty when examining his results.  Even our government called for further research in this area and required expansion of the focus population beyond college students.

In cases like this, it is important to look at all of the facts when examining research that may affect a large part of our culture.  A leading competing researcher, Chris Ferguson from Texas A&M, recently published a meta analysis on video game research.  He looked at the recent literature on video games (from 1995 on) and reviewed all of the findings.  Not surprisingly, he founds that video games only had a correlation of .14 to violent behavior.  In non-statistical terminology this is a 2% overlap of violence associated with video game playing.  Interestingly enough, he discovered that a significant portion of the literature had been done with author bias involvement.  Once this was controlled for and the statistics reran; the .14 correlation was reduced to a .04 – not even close to anything significant.

When viewing this area of research, it is safe to say that we fall to either side of the argument.  Either we believe that video games cause individuals to behave violently or we believe that they have no effect.  This article is not here to sway an opinion, but to allow pertinent information to flow to the reader for you to decide.  There is not one article that explains all of the variables of video games, the storyline, the archetypal position you are put in while playing a character, not even the personality elements that have to be considered in any violent situation.  The domain of video game research is vastly unprepared and underfunded to draw any conclusions about the effect on the individual psyche.  There needs to be more research into this realm.

As for the debate on whether video games are the culprit on why individuals commit violent acts, it is inconclusive to state that individuals playing video games are the reason why crimes are committed.  It may be possible to instead of blaming problems that occur in our world that we look to other reasons why an event may occur; take our current culture for example.  We pride ourselves on knowing what other people are doing, blaming others for our own problems, we do not treasure critical thinking, we glorify individuals on TV rather than intellectual thinkers of our history, and even idolize a concept of beauty that is only skin deep.  What message is this giving to our society when we put such things first rather than a more moralistic reality.  In the debate on video games, why do we instantly blame them when there are so many more factors such as parenting, lack of self-discovery, and even the need of interacting with other individuals while not being connected to a piece of technology.  I would impart this idea of introspecting on the concept of why we, as a culture, behave the way we do and not look just at video games, but our current life as a whole to determine if there is any culprit besides our own personal demons in this matter.  Look to the research and drawn your own conclusions rather than be swayed by one source of information.

The Lara Croft Study

by Natasha Lewis Harrington

 

This weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting some illustrators for the card game Magic: The Gathering. (Yes, I am that kind of geek). I really enjoy the work of one in particular, Michael C. Hayes, for the astonishing variety of personalities displayed by the women he paints.  Some are flirty. Some are pious. Some are wary. And this is reflected in the clothes they wear and the poses they strike.

This is a welcome respite from many female game characters, who only seem to have one kind of style (sexy) and one kind of pose (also sexy). When that is clearly a conscious choice on the part of the artist, such as in the case of the flirty archer I mentioned, I think that the provocative pose and clothing tells a fun story. Too often, though, the story seems to be “The artist (or art director) doesn’t know how to do anything else.”

But this is a psych blog, not an art critique blog. You may find the homogeneity of women in games to be monotonous or you may find it appealing—it’s a matter of personal taste. It’s subjective.

What is not subjective is the effect that gratuitous sexualization of characters has on the people who play the games. Some people assume (understandably) that since so many of the women are both sexually appealing and powerful, that it is the best of both worlds. However, a 2009 study suggests that this may not have the expected effect.

The Study

The name of the study is “The Effects of the Sexualization of Female Video Game Characters on Gender Stereotyping and Female Self-Concept,” by Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz and Dana Mastro. It was published in 2009 in an academic journal called Sex Roles.

328 American college students at a school in the Southwest participated in the study. Some (the “sexualized” condition) played the chapter of Tomb Raider: Legend called “Japan,” in which main character Lara Croft was dressed in a revealing evening gown that highlighted her curves. Others (the “non-sexualized” condition) played the chapter called “Kazakhstan,” in which she wore winter clothing that de-emphasized her figure.

Using two chapters of the same game minimized the variables between the two groups, although it is important to consider that the content of the levels may have been different, as well as the fact that using a well-known game means that players in the nonsexualized condition may have been influenced by the fact that Lara Croft is already widely known for her body.

A third group didn’t play any game at all. All three groups filled out surveys about their gaming habits, their familiarity with Lara Croft, their beliefs about gender roles, their self-esteem, and their self-efficacy (i.e. how much they see themselves as able to accomplish things). People who played the games were also asked about “presence”—how immersed they were in the game and how much they felt like they were there.

The Results

So, the good news is that there were no significant differences between the conditions on women’s self-esteem.  However, women who played the game with sexualized Lara felt significantly lower (p < .05) self-efficacy than those who played no video game.

The difference between self-esteem and self-efficacy is that self-esteem is about feelings of worth, while self-efficacy is about feelings of competence. For example, someone can feel valued but helpless—or even the inverse, having faith in her own abilities but still feeling worthless.

Looking at the decreased self-efficacy, the Behm-Morawitz and Mastro suggested that “…this may have occurred because the sexualization of the character confines her and limits her power by making her sexualized body her most prominent feature (p. 819).”

In addition, the game appeared to influence how people felt about women’s abilities in general. Both men and women in the sexualized condition rated the physical capability of women as significantly lower (p<.05) compared to people who played the nonsexualized condition, and the difference was also found between women who played the sexualized condition and women who played no video game.

In Conclusion

While people weren’t affected by the sexualized character in every area looked at (in addition to self-esteem, no significant effect was found for beliefs about women’s mental abilities, expectations about how women should groom themselves, and opinions about domestic and professional roles), even thirty minutes with the game did appear to have a significant impact on how men view women and how women view themselves.

While I would like to see this study reproduced with tighter control over the variables (using an unknown character, possibly modding a game so people can play the same level in two different outfits—even within the same game, chapters can have very different content) these preliminary findings open some very important questions.

Based on this, it is important to realize that the portrayal of women in games is more than a philosophical or aesthetic question. As this study was conducted with college students, I would especially want to know more about how this kind of thing affects (presumably more vulnerable) teenagers and kids.

And in addition to matters of ethics or responsibility, there are some practical implications. With more and more women playing games, it seems wise to avoid alienating them whenever possible. It would be nice if these characters could be blatant eye candy and good role models/player avatars (I mean, I’m a gamer, it’s not like I hate fun) but it looks like we need to start thinking seriously about what the trade-offs are.