Running head: VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES Do Video Games Reinforce Stereotypes Desmond K. Fulton Rasmussen College Author Note This paper is being submitted on April 21, 2019 for Debra Bohlman, English Composition 1 VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES 2 Do Video Games Reinforce Stereotypes Thesis Statement Video games influence users negatively through creation of stereotypes that include social and sexual stereotypes which subsequently incites social conflicts and violence in the society. Annotated Bibliography Glaubke, C. R., Miller, P., Parker, M. A., & Espejo, E. (2001). Fair Play? Violence, Gender and Race in Video Games. The article explores the messages that videogames attempt to portray to the public. The article takes a critical approach to an analysis of the content in most video games. In the cross sectional experimental study, the research investigates the social and cultural messages that dominate in the video games that are currently the most marketed. The aim of the research is to ascertain whether there are any negative cultural messages that could be present and finds that out of the 70 games meant for use by children there were negative social messages (Glaubke et al., 2001). The importance of the source is that it identifies racial stereotypes alongside violence, despising of women and other negative messages to characterize video games. In this research, the source is important as part of the scholarly perspectives as to whether or not video games promote negative stereotypes. Yang, G. S., Gibson, B., Lueke, A. K., Huesmann, L. R., & Bushman, B. J. (2014). Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(6), 698-704. VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES 3 Yang et al., 92014) on the other hand focus their argument on the roles that video games play in promoting racial stereotypes. More specifically the research explores whether video games communicate racial attitudes about aggressive. The question by the authors is quite important because aggression and violence is one of the most prominent public concerns regarding the safety of video games for children’s social and psychological health. The article findings are that videos that had black avatars and depicted violence created negative attitudes towards blacks. The levels in which such games created the negative attitudes towards blacks was much higher than in games that were nonviolent or used white avatar when violent. The rationale here is that the source is instrumental in revealing that video games have a profound effect on the social ideologies of the children or adults who play them. Leonard, D. (2004). High tech blackface: Race, sports, video games and becoming the other. In Intelligent Agent (Vol. 4, No. 4.2, p. 1). The role of video games in facilitating racial attitudes with regard to violence is a topic that this source also explores. In fact, Leonard, (2004) acknowledge that video games form the scenery for creating negative social notions concerning African Americans terming them as ‘high-tech black faces’. The argument that the authors attempt to place is that video games offer the players an opportunity to act like a black man when they use blacks as avatars. Additionally, the article discusses NFL games such as NFL Street and NBA where they manifest racial stereotypes having athletic black avatars in settings where there is use of obscene language. The showcasing of such ideas may lead the players to gain certain perceptions about blacks that are negative, or that may make an individual preempt a negative expectation of a black individual in real life. The article is VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES 4 important because it explores the racial aspect of games that forms a widely debated topic involving how gaming promotes social stereotypes. Stermer, S. P., & Burkley, M. (2015). SeX-Box: Exposure to sexist video games predicts benevolent sexism. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 4(1), 47. The authors reveal that videogames also have the potential for facilitating development of other stereotypes such as sexism. In the study, the researchers survey respondents who reported to have played video games and compared them to those who did not. Accordingly, the research was on sexist messages in video games and their effects on the individual behavior. From the research, men who played videogames with sexist attitudes showed more ambivalent sexism than men who did not play such games (Stermer & Burkley, 2015). The source is quite unique in the sense that exposure to videogames has been linked mostly to violence alone. However, the source unveils that videogames may also facilitate the development of other behaviors such as gender based stereotypes or attitudes. Paaßen, B., Morgenroth, T., & Stratemeyer, M. (2017). What is a true gamer? The male gamer stereotype and the marginalization of women in video game culture. Sex Roles, 76(7-8), 421-435. The article takes a rather different approach in exploring how videogames influence our social interaction and the attitudes we hold about each other. In this case, the researchers consider that the use of videogames in itself is stereotypes. Paaßen, B., Morgenroth, T.,& Stratemeyer, (2017) state that men and women are exposed to videogames relatively equally but that videogames are stereotypically associated with men only. The research VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES 5 observes that women are actively marginalized or ignored in their roles as gamers and due to the domination of the gaming culture by males, women may fail to benefit out of the activity. The source is important in revealing the extent in which gaming and its contents are linked to social stereotypes. Thus one may question whether the reduced role of women in the video gaming world affects their suitability for women. VIDEOGAMES AND STEREOTYPES 6 References Glaubke, C. R., Miller, P., Parker, M. A., & Espejo, E. (2001). Fair Play? Violence, Gender and Race in Video Games. Leonard, D. (2004). High tech blackface: Race, sports, video games and becoming the other. In Intelligent Agent (Vol. 4, No. 4.2, p. 1). Paaßen, B., Morgenroth, T., & Stratemeyer, M. (2017). What is a true gamer? The male gamer stereotype and the marginalization of women in video game culture. Sex Roles, 76(7-8), 421-435. Stermer, S. P., & Burkley, M. (2015). SeX-Box: Exposure to sexist video games predicts benevolent sexism. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 4(1), 47. Yang, G. S., Gibson, B., Lueke, A. K., Huesmann, L. R., & Bushman, B. J. (2014). Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 5(6), 698-704.
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