Capella University Psych Perspective Videogames Are Not Harmful to Children Essay

User Generated

dhna4294

Humanities

Capella University

Description

The following articles are provided for you to use in constructing your argument for your assignment this week. You may go into the Capella library if you wish, but you are not required. Reading these articles will help you to start formulating knowledge for constructing your argument that supports your stance on the topic of violence in video games.

If you're taking the stance that video games are not harmful to children, refer to the following resources. Read the discussion of each.

If you're taking the stance that video games are harmful to children, refer to the following resources. Read the discussion section of each.

Unformatted Attachment Preview

Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh Video games as virtual teachers: Prosocial video game use by children and adolescents from different socioeconomic groups is associated with increased empathy and prosocial behaviour Brian Harrington*, Michael O’Connell School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Received 13 December 2015 Received in revised form 3 April 2016 Accepted 23 May 2016 Available online 8 June 2016 Objective: The main aim of this study was to determine if there was a positive relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents. Method: This study had a cross-sectional correlational design. Data were collected from 538 9e15 year old children and adolescents between March and December 2014. Participants completed measures of empathy, prosocial behaviour and video game habits. Teachers rated the prosocial behaviour of participants. The socioeconomic status of participants was also gathered. Results: Multiple linear regressions were conducted on these data. Prosocial video game use was positively associated with the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships, cooperation and sharing as well as empathy. This association remained significant after controlling for gender, age, school type (disadvantaged/non-disadvantaged), socioeconomic status, weekly game play and violent video game use. Conclusions: These findings provide evidence that prosocial video game use could develop empathic concern and improve affective relationships in a diverse population of young people. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Prosocial video game use Violent video game use Prosocial behaviour Empathy Socioeconomic status Young people 1. Introduction The increasing engagement of young people with media including video games is well documented (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010). Computer and video game sales in the US have risen from 7 billion dollars in 2003 to 15.4 billion dollars in 2014 (Entertainment Software Association, 2015). Some researchers have suggested that video games could be used as teaching resources in schools as these games are based on learning principles that allow players to be producers rather than consumers (Gee, 2003). In this context the use of video games in both educational and clinical settings has received attention recently from researchers (Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014). Anderson and Bushman (2001) ask if it is possible to create engaging video games “to teach and reinforce nonviolent solutions to social conflicts” (Anderson & Bushman, 2001, p.359). According to researchers in this area, a prosocial video game is a game in * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: brian.harrington@ucdconnect.ie (B. Harrington), michael.f. oconnell@ucd.ie (M. O’Connell). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.062 0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. which the player must help and cooperate in order to succeed. Examples of games with these characteristics that have been used in previous research are Animal Crossing, Super Mario Sunshine, Zoo Vet and Lemmings (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2010)1. The General Learning Model (GLM) (Gentile et al., 2009) proposes that each experience (eg. playing a video game) an individual has is a learning trial which temporarily alters cognitions, emotions and levels of physiological arousal. The GLM proposes that two short-term processes explain prosocial video game effects. Firstly, the cognitive effect of priming scripts predicts that games with 1 Previous studies have used prosocial video games such as Lemmings (Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2010) in which there is no violence and the player performs prosocial acts such as protecting a lemming from harm. However, content analysis of 33 best-selling video games found that 79% of these games had some form of violent content (Dietz, 1998). Therefore as games with only prosocial content are less common, the present study uses the variable ‘prosocial video game use’ to refer to prosocial behaviour within a game and ‘violent video game use’ to refer to violent behaviour within a game. For example, in the game Minecraft it is possible to cooperate with other players and construct buildings; however it also possible to fight creatures. B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 prosocial content will result in prosocial behavioural scripts being primed and rehearsed. Secondly, changes in cognitions, feelings and levels of physiological arousal while playing a prosocial video game are reciprocally reinforced through both classical and operant conditioning. Repeated practice of video games could produce certain longterm effects such as changes to precognitive and cognitive constructs, cognitive-emotional constructs and affective traits. This model when applied to prosocial video game use predicts that a game which requires the player to use prosocial behaviours to succeed will create an increase in prosocial behaviours in the player immediately following completion of the game. The repeated practice producing these short-term effects could change personality traits in the individual playing prosocial video games. Conversely the amount of time spent playing violent video games could result in long-term aggressive behaviour according to the learning mechanism described in this model (Gentile et al., 2009). A recent meta-analysis has provided evidence that video games have social outcomes (Greitemeyer & Mugge, 2014). This metaanalysis and other recent studies have concluded that violent video game use leads to desensitization and aggression while prosocial video game use increases empathy and therefore prosocial behaviour (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer & Mugge, 2014; Prot et al. 2014; Gentile, Khoo, Prot & Anderson, 2014). 1.1. Empathy and prosocial video game use Researchers have suggested that the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour could be mediated by empathy as opposed to accessibility to prosocial thoughts (Bartlett & Anderson, 2013). Previous correlational research into prosocial video game effects in children and adolescents has found a significant positive association between prosocial video game use and empathy (Gentile et al., 2009). A recent longitudinal study found that prosocial video game use was a significant predictor of prosocial behaviour and that this change was mediated by empathy (Prot et al., 2014). Therefore in the context of previous research it is reasonable to expect that prosocial video game use should be positively associated with empathy. 1.2. Theoretically relevant confounding variables such as sociodemographic factors and weekly game play Research has shown that when controlling for long-term causal factors for aggressive behaviour, such as personality and environmental factors, violent video game effects can disappear (Ferguson, San Miguel, Garza, & Jerabeck, 2012). Therefore in the case of prosocial video game effects, it is theoretically possible that when controlling for sociodemographic factors and weekly gameplay that prosocial video game effects could disappear. The following independent variables could theoretically explain part of the variance in prosocial behaviour: age, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), school status and weekly gameplay. The relationship between age and prosocial behaviour has been extensively studied ranging from the impact of adverse childhood experiences on prosocial behaviour (Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993) to factors influencing the development of prosocial behaviours in childhood and adolescence (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). Gender differences in prosocial behaviour have focussed on the agentic theory of male gender role models (Eagly & Crowley, 1986) as well as differences in the levels of prosocial behaviour in male and female children (Calvo, Gonzalez, & Martorell, 2014). While experimental research found that lower levels of social status were associated with higher levels of prosocial behaviour (Guinote, Cotzia, Sandhu &Siwa, 2015), clinical and developmental psychologists have noted the 651 difficulty that parents in socially disadvantaged communities have in reinforcing prosocial behaviours in their children (Kazdin, 1987). A study examining the effect of family, school and classroom ecologies on children’s social and emotional development found that first grade children who attended schools in disadvantaged communities had lower levels of prosocial behaviour (Hoglund & Leadbetter, 2004). Screen time in the form of weekly game play has also been found to be negatively associated with prosocial behaviour (Gentile et al., 2009). Therefore weekly game play could also explain some of the variance in prosocial behaviour. If the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour remains significant after controlling for the abovementioned theoretically relevant independent variables it could be argued that this provides stronger evidence for a prosocial video game effect (Prot & Anderson, 2013). 1.3. Violent video game use and prosocial behaviour Numerous studies have identified relationships between violent video game use and aggressive behaviour (Anderson et al., 2010; Gentile et al., 2014). There have also been a number of studies suggesting that violent video game use is associated with decreases in prosocial behaviour (Anderson et al., 2010; Gentile et al., 2009). Therefore, based on previous research, it is reasonable to expect that violent video game use will be negatively associated with prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents. 1.4. The present study Previous studies into violent and prosocial video game effects have generally accessed normative community-based samples (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007). Boxer, Huesmann, Bushman, O’Brien and Moceri (2008) sought to address this deficit in relation to violent media effects by including a sample of juvenile deliquents in a study into the relationship between violent media use and involvement in violent acts. In addition numerous studies have investigated the video game use of specific clinical samples such as individuals with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (Mazurek & Engelhardt, 2013). A recent study investigated the role of low educational ability as a risk factor for playing violent video games (Bijvank, Konijn, & Bushman, 2012). Prot et al. (2014) note that in studies investigating prosocial video game effects in both children and adolescents that socioeconomic status (SES) and parental education were measured. However, neither of these variables were controlled for in the statistical analysis. Therefore to our knowledge this is the first correlational study into prosocial video game effects to statistically control for both SES and school status. The present study primarily aimed to determine if there was a positive relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents. In addition three related objectives were pursued. These objectives related to theoretically relevant variables that were identified based on a review of the literature on both video game effects and prosocial behaviour. These three objectives were as follows: Objective 1 : To determine if prosocial video game use was positively associated with empathy in children and adolescents. Objective 2 To determine if the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour remained significant after controlling for theoretically relevant variables such as sociodemographic variables and weekly game play. 652 B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 Objective 3 To determine if there was a negative relationship between violent video game use and prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents. 2. Material and methods 2.1. Participants The population under study were students (N ¼ 538) from 10 schools in the Republic of Ireland. Participants ranged in age from 9 to 15 years, (M ¼ 11.6 years, SD ¼ 1.44). There were more males (n ¼ 315 (59%)) than females (n ¼ 223 (41%)) in the sample. Five of the schools in the sample were co-educational, two of the schools were all male schools and three of the schools were all female schools. Four of these schools were located in a city in western Ireland, while the remaining six schools were located in a city in eastern Ireland. Five of these schools could be described as socioeconomically disadvantaged, based on either a formal DEIS2 rating (four) or in one case, based on the analysis of professionals working with the school. In addition to five socioeconomically disadvantaged schools (two primary, three post-primary), a private primary school, two Gaelscoileanna, an Educate Together primary school and a mainstream post-primary school were included in this sample3. Snowballing or chain referral was used to access this sample. Snowball sampling is a technique widely used to reach populations that are generally difficult to access (Biernacki & Waldorf, 1981). 2.2. Procedure Data were collected between March and December 2014. The average overall response rate was 52% (range from 83% to 17%). The average response rate in the disadvantaged schools was 49% while the average response rate in the nondisadvantaged schools was 53%. The response rates for teacher questionnaires was 97%. The response rate for the measure of SES from parents/guardians who consented for their child to participate was 75%. Participants completed measures of computer/video game habits, empathy and prosocial behaviour. The researcher administered a battery of these questionnaires to each class group in the participating schools. Participants also received a glossary explaining potentially difficult words and phrases in the questionnaires. Class teachers were also asked to rate the prosocial behaviour of the participating students in their class group. Details regarding the measures used in this study are provided in the following section. 2 DEIS schools are schools in the Republic of Ireland that are designated disadvantaged and therefore allocated additional resources. The DEIS initiative used the following definition of educational disadvantage in the Education Act (1998) to guide the implementation of this project when it first began in 2005: “… the impediments to education arising from social or economic disadvantage which prevent students from deriving appropriate benefit from the education in schools” (https://www.education.ie). 3 A large number of the primary and post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland are under the patronage of the Catholic church and are funded by the Department of Education and Skills. The main language of instruction is English. However there are a number of exceptions. A Gaelscoil is a school in which all the instruction is carried out through the Irish language (Irish Gaelic). An Educate Together school is a multi-denominational school. The Department of Education and Skills pays the salaries to teachers in Gaelscoilenna and Educate Together Schools. A private school in the Republic of Ireland is self-funded and does not receive funding from the Department of Education and Skills (www.education.ie). 2.3. Measures 2.3.1. Prosocial video game use Computer/video game habits were measured using an adapted version of the Computer/Video Game Habits Questionnaire (Prot et al., 2014). In order to measure prosocial video game use the following procedure was adopted. Participants named the three games that they played most frequently. Participants chose one day during the week and 1 day at the weekend (Example: Pick one day during the week: (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday)______________. How many hours do you play this game on that day?). Participants were given a choice of times from None to More than 10 hours. Participants completed two items that rated each game on a 4-point Likert scale from Never to Almost Always. (Example: “How often do you help others in this game?”). Responses were coded from 0 (Never) to 3 (Almost Always). Participants’ reports of hours gaming during the week were multiplied by five while reports of weekend gaming were multiplied by two in order to calculate total weekly hours playing a particular game. Total weekly hours were then multiplied by the video game ratings to compute a score for weekly prosocial video game use. Prosocial video game scores were then divided by three to obtain an average prosocial video game score. This average score was then used as the variable ‘prosocial video game use’ in data analysis. 4 2.3.2. Violent video game use In order to measure violent video game use participants completed two items that rated the violent content of each game on a 4-point Likert scale from Never to Almost Always (Example: “How often do you shoot or kill creatures in this game?”). Violent video game use was measured using the same procedure that had been used to measure prosocial video game use. As has been referred to in the Introduction many games involve both prosocial and violent behaviours. The procedure for rating games as described above allowed a participant to simultaneously rate a game in relation to both the degree of violent and prosocial behaviour in the game. For example a video game such as Clash of Clans involves prosocial behaviours such as protecting members of one’s own clan as well as violent behaviours such as fighting enemy clans. This issue will be addressed in more detail in the Discussion section. 2.3.3. Weekly game play The weekly hours spent playing each game were divided by three to obtain a measure of average game time (Weekly game play a ¼ 0.93) When mean scores for weekly gameplay were compared to international studies this method of calculating weekly gameplay produced mean scores that were consistent with international evidence (Rideout et al., 2010). 2.3.4. Empathy Empathy was measured using the 16-item Children’s Empathic Attitudes Questionnaire (CEAQ) (Funk, Fox, Chan, & Curtiss, 2008). Funk et al. (2008) note that this scale is a measure of cognitive empathy a construct which the authors conceptualise as ‘empathic attitudes’. The CEAQ is designed to measure attitudes and likely behaviour in children in relation to empathic responding (Example: 4 A Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.78 was obtained as a measure of internal reliability of prosocial video game use. While this is an acceptable level of internal reliability, 141 cases were excluded from this analysis. As some participants only listed one game in Section C, Sections D and E of some questionnaires were not completed. Therefore due to incomplete data interpretation of the internal reliability of this scale is problematic. A Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.75 was obtained for violent video game use. 141 cases were excluded in this instance. B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 “I feel sorry for kids who can’t find anyone to hang out with”.) a ¼ 0.74. 2.3.5. Helping behaviour, cooperation and sharing, affective relationships and normative behaviour Helping behaviour, cooperation and sharing, affective relationships and normative behaviour were assessed using the 40 item Prosocial Orientation Questionnaire (POQ) (Cheung, Ma, & Shek, 1998). The original scale was adapted to an Irish context after consultation with professionals working with participants from the current sample. Helping behaviour was measured with an 11-item subscale from the POQ (Example: “I would spend time and money to help those in need.”) a ¼ 0.63. Co-operation and sharing were measured using a 7-item subscale from the POQ (Example: “I feel jealous when my friends win an award or prize.”) a ¼ 0.50. The tendency to maintain friendly, affective and sympathetic relationships with family and peers was measured with an 11-item subscale from the POQ (Example: “I always argue with my family) a ¼ 0.66. The tendency to comply with social norms (normative relationships) was measured with an 11-item subscale from the POQ (Example: “I am always on time.”) a ¼ 0.63. 2.3.6. Prosocial behaviour (teacher evaluation) The 5-item Prosocial Behaviour Subscale of The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Teacher version) (SDQ) (Goodman, 1997) was used for the teacher evaluation of the participants’prosocial behaviour. 43 teachers took part in this study. These teachers were asked to evaluate the prosocial behaviour of participating students in their classes in order to control for biases associated with self-report. The teachers were given the following instructions: “Please put a tick in the box which most accurately describes your student: Not True, Somewhat True, Certainly True. (Example: Item 3: Helpful if someone is hurt, upset or feeling ill) a ¼ 0.89. 2.3.7. Socioeconomic status On the information sheet/consent form that was sent to all participants, parents/guardians were given the option of giving information in relation to their occupational status. The occupations of parents/guardians were coded for socioeconomic status (SES) using an Irish census based social class scale (O’Hare, Whelan, & Commins, 1991).5 2.4. Partial missingness In relation to missing data three separate strategies were used. Firstly, in relation to the CEAQ and POQ missing values were left blank. Multiple value imputation was used for these measures as the missing values were“Missing at Random” (MAR). MAR is also referred to as ignorable non-response. According to Tabachnick and Fidell (2014) attention should be paid to the pattern rather than the amount of missing data. In the present study missing values were randomly distributed throughout the data matrix, therefore 5 This information was coded on the following ordinal scale: “Social Class 1: Higher professional and higher managerial; proprietors and farmers owning 200 or more acres; Social Class 2: Lower professional and lower managerial; proprietors and farmers owning 100e199 acres; Social Class 3: Other non-manual and farmers owning 30e49 acres; Social Class 4: Skilled manual and farmers owning 30e49 acres; Social Class 5: Semi-skilled manual and farmers owning less than 30 acres; Social class 6: Unskilled manual” (O’Hare et al., 1991, p.142). Each Social Class was coded with a corresponding number, eg. Social Class 1 ¼ 7, Social Class 2 ¼ 6. Participants who were unemployed were coded as 1. Where two parents/guardians gave their occupations, the occupation in the higher social class was used to code SES. 653 missing data could be predicted using other variables in the data set. The multiple value imputation function was used in SPSS 20 for this purpose. Secondly, a different strategy was used in relation to missing data in the Computer/Video Game Habits Questionnaire (Prot et al., 2014). The majority of the missing values in this measure were not MAR. This was due to the fact that participants who did not play games were instructed to leave the questionnaire blank. A small number of missing values that were MAR (eg. Participant who played video games but had omitted an item rating the game’s content) were inputted by the researcher using knowledge of the game’s content. ‘Prior knowledge’is a strategy used to input missing data in situations in which the researcher has sufficient knowledge to input missing values (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2014). Other cases in which the same game was rated were examined by the researcher. In addition video clips of gameplay were watched by the researcher to obtain knowledge of the game’s content. Thirdly, missing values for the SES variable were inputted using mean substitution. A mean of 5.25 was inputted into the data set. This corresponded approximately to Social Class 3, which was coded as 5. These values were not MAR as it was difficult to ascertain if parents/guardians did not see this item on the information sheet or decided not to disclose this information. A total of 133 parents/guardians out of the 538 participants did not disclose or omitted to disclose their occupations on the information sheet, which meant that 24.7% of the SES data was missing. While some authors caution against the use of mean substitution when there are a large percentage of missing cases (Tabacknick&Fidell, 2014), for the purposes of multiple linear regression listwise deletion would have reduced the number of cases substantially. Finally, in relation to the SDQ, there were missing items for 17 participants. These 17 cases were excluded from data analysis. The majority of the missing cases were due to teachers omitting to complete the questionnaire in relation to particular students, while a small number of cases were excluded due to the teacher submitting an incomplete questionnaire. As this variable was not being used in the multiple linear regression it was not necessary to increase the number of cases. 2.5. Ethics Ethical approval for this project was received on 14th November 2013 from the University College Dublin Human Research Ethics Committee. Parents/guardians were required to give written consent before their child could participate in the study. Participants were also asked to give their assent by signing an assent form on the day of data collection. 3. Results Table 1 displays mean scores, standard deviations and range of scores for the main scales of interest. Table 2 displays bivariate correlations between video game use and a variety of prosocial behaviours. The negative correlations between prosocial video game use and helping behaviour, normative behaviour, empathy and the teacher evaluation of prosocial behaviour appear to contradict the predictions of the GLM which predicts a positive association between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour. However as can be seen in Table 5 prosocial video game use had a significant positive association with cooperation and sharing, the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships and empathy in the multiple linear regressions. It is possible that this is a suppression effect (Tzelgov & Henik, 1991). 654 B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 Table 1 Mean scores, standard deviations and range of scores for main scales of interest. Variable N M SD Range Socio-economic status Prosocial video game use Violent video game use Weekly game play Empathy Helping behaviour Co-operation and sharing Affective relationships Normative behaviour Prosocial behaviour (Teacher evaluation) 538 532 532 538 537 530 537 537 537 521 5.25 28.99 23.18 9.13 21.75 34.55 23.15 38.77 35.79 8.23 1.33 48.08 45.96 11.06 5.08 3.66 2.55 3.55 3.92 2.24 1e7a 0e504b 0e504c 0 he84 h 0e32 (max ¼ 32) 17e42 (max ¼ 44) 13e28 (max ¼ 28) 22e44 (max ¼ 44) 23e44 (max ¼ 44) 0e10 (max ¼ 10) a SES (1 ¼ unemployed; 2 ¼ social class 6; 3 ¼ social class 5; 4 ¼ social class 4; 5 ¼ social class 3; 6 ¼ social class 2; 7 ¼ social class 1). See Section 2.3 Measures for more detailed information in relation to professions corresponding to each social class. b Scores are calculated by multiplying average ratings over 3 games by average time playing a game. Therefore a score of 0 approximates to either ratings of 0 for prosocial content or no video game play. A score of 510 approximates to 84 hours weekly game play multiplied by an average prosocial rating of 6 (e.g. a rating of “Almost Always” for each of the items measuring prosocial video game use). c The procedure for calculating violent video game use is identical to the procedure for calculating prosocial video game use. See footnote b above. Table 2 Bivariate correlations between video game use and prosocial behaviours. Variable Helping behaviour Cooperation and sharing Affective relationships Normative behaviour Empathy Prosocial behaviour (teacher evaluation) Prosocial video game use 0.11* Violent video game use 0.16** Weekly game play 0.17** ** p < 0.001 * 0.07 0.16** 0.14** 0.05 0.16** 0.14** 3.1. Empathy and prosocial video game use Empathy was regressed onto the variable prosocial video game use after controlling for gender, age, school type, SES, weekly game play and violent video game use. The value of R2 for empathy indicates that approximately 17.7% of the variance in the dependent variable, can be attributed to the variance of the independent variables (See Table 4). Prosocial video game use was positively related to empathy (b ¼ 0.308, p < 0.001) in a multiple linear regression (See Table 5). Table 3 Bivariate correlations between participants’ self-report of prosocial behaviour and teachers’ evaluation of participants’ prosocial behaviour. Variable (Participants’ self-report) Prosocial behaviour (teacher evaluation) Helping behaviour Cooperation and sharing Affective relationships Normative behaviour 0.20** 0.21** 0.15** 0.25** p < 0.001. 0.10* 0.22** 0.21** 0.11* 0.16** 0.14** p < 0.05. In addition the correlation between prosocial and violent video game use was high (r ¼ 0.75, p < 0.01). Multicollinearity occurs when different predictors in a multiple linear regression are highly inter-related. In this case the individual predictors become redundant as all the predictors are measuring the same construct. Multicollinearity diagnostics were carried out. Variance Inflation Factors were less than 10 in relation to each of the regression coefficients. Therefore the assumption of multicollinearity was not violated (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2014). Finally, Pearson’s Product Moment Correlations revealed that the teachers’ evaluation of students’ prosocial behaviour was positively correlated with the students’ self-report of helping behaviour (r ¼ 0.20, p < 0.001), cooperation and sharing (r ¼ 0.21, p < 0.001), affective relationships (r ¼ 0.15, p < 0.001) and normative behaviour (r ¼ 0.25, p < 0.001) (See Table 3). ** 0.12** 0.21** 0.17** 3.2. Theoretically relevant confounding variables such as sociodemographic factors and weekly game play Each prosocial behaviour was regressed onto the variable prosocial video game use after controlling for the following theoretically relevant confounding variables: gender, age, school type, SES, weekly game play and violent video game use. While all of the regression models were significant, the R2 values for cooperation and sharing as well as affective relationships are of particular interest given the positive associations between prosocial video game use and these variables in the regression models. The value of R2 for cooperation and sharing indicates that 8.6% of the variance in the dependent variable can be attributed to the variance of the independent variables. The value of R2 for affective relationships indicates that approximately 9.6% of the variance in the dependent variable can be attributed to the variance of the independent variables (See Table 4). Prosocial video game use was positively related to cooperation and sharing (b ¼ 0.190, p < 0.016) as well as the tendency to maintain affective, friendly and sympathetic relationships (b ¼ 0.222, p < 0.005) in the multiple linear regressions (See Table 5). 3.3. Violent video game use and prosocial behaviour Violent video game use was negatively associated with the tendency to comply with social norms (b ¼ 0.243, p < 0.003), the tendency to maintain affective, friendly and sympathetic relationships (b ¼ 0.189, p < 0.019) as well as empathy (b ¼ 0.153, p < 0.045) (See Table 5). 3.4. Results and the GLM These results are consistent with some of the predictions of the GLM which predicts that prosocial video game use will be positively associated with prosocial behaviour and that violent video game use will be negatively associated with prosocial behaviour. However previous research has found associations between prosocial B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 655 Table 4 Model summary for multiple linear regressions for prosocial behaviours. Dependent variable R R2 Adjusted R2 Std. error of the estimate Helping Cooperation and sharing Normative behaviour Affective relationships Empathy 0.292 0.294 0.269 0.309 0.421 0.085 0.086 0.073 0.096 0.177 0.073 0.074 0.060 0.084 0.166 3.524 2.456 3.797 3.397 4.643 Independent variables: Gender, age, school type, SES, violent video game use, prosocial video game use, weekly game play. video game use and other prosocial behaviours such as helping behaviour (Gentile et al., 2009; Prot et al., 2014). 4. Discussion as cooperation and sharing as well as the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships. The significant association between prosocial video game use and the abovementioned prosocial behaviours while controlling for confounding variables strengthens the evidence of a prosocial video game effect. 4.1. Discussion of findings The main findings from this study indicate a positive and significant relationship between prosocial video game use and the following dependent variables: cooperation and sharing, the tendency to maintain positive affective relationships as well as empathy. Previous studies investigating the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour in children have found a positive relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour (Gentile et al., 2009; Prot et al., 2014). These studies found that prosocial video game use was positively associated with cooperation, helping behaviour and empathy in children and adolescents (Gentile et al., 2009; Prot et al., 2014). These studies did not measure normative behaviour or affective relationships. In sections 4.1.1 to 4.1.3 the findings of the present study will be discussed in relation to the three objectives outlined in the Introduction. 4.1.1. Objective 1: To determine if prosocial video game use was positively associated with empathy in children and adolescents The positive association between prosocial video game use and empathy in the multiple linear regression model is consistent with previous research which found that the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour was mediated by empathy (Prot et al., 2014). Bartlett and Anderson (2013) propose that “the affective processing route may be the most influential route in predicting short-term media effects on prosocial behaviour; however more work and replication is needed to support this claim” (Bartlett & Anderson, 2013, p.14). The findings from the present study support Bartlett and Anderson’s (2013) proposition. 4.1.2. Objective 2: To determine if the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour remained significant after controlling for theoretically relevant variables such as sociodemographic variables and weekly game play Multiple linear regressions were carried out with the following dependent variables measuring prosocial behaviours: helping behaviour, cooperation and sharing, normative behaviour, affective relationships. The following independent variables were controlled for: gender, age, school type, SES, weekly game play and violent video game use. As has been discussed in the Introduction, each independent variable could theoretically explain part of the variance in the dependent variables measuring prosocial behaviour. If the relationship between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour remains significant after controlling for theoretically relevant independent variables it could be argued that this provides stronger evidence for a prosocial video game effect (Prot & Anderson, 2013). In the multiple linear regressions prosocial video game use was positively associated with prosocial behaviours such 4.1.3. Objective 3: To determine if there was a negative relationship between violent video game use and prosocial behaviour in children and adolescents Finally, the negative relationship between violent video game use and a variety of prosocial behaviours is consistent with findings from previous research (Anderson et al., 2010; Gentile et al., 2009). In the present study violent video game use was negatively associated with affective relationships, normative behaviour and empathy. 4.1.4. Suppression Another unique aspect of the present study is the issue of suppression. One of the assumptions underlying multiple linear regression is that the independent variables are highly correlated with the dependent variable and have low correlations among themselves. However if an independent variable has a low correlation with the dependent variable and a high correlation with another independent variable and then is a significant variable in the multiple linear regression, suppression has occurred (Hinkle, Wiersma, & Jurs, 1994). In the present study prosocial and violent video game use were highly correlated with each other and had a low correlation or were not significantly associated with each of the dependent variables. As has been discussed earlier, prosocial and violent video game use were positively and negatively associated respectively with empathy and a variety of prosocial behaviours in the multiple linear regressions. Therefore it is possible that this is due to suppression. For example, in the present study prosocial video game use was negatively associated with empathy in a bivariate correlation. Nevertheless, prosocial video game use was positively associated with empathy in the multiple linear regression. This is an example of negative suppression (Tzelgov & Henik, 1991). Violent video game use was negatively associated with empathy both in a bivariate correlation and the multiple linear regression. Therefore suppression effects did not occur in relation violent video game use. In the present study prosocial and violent video game use were highly correlated. Participants engaged in both prosocial and violent video game use. Therefore it could be concluded that the participants were subject to the long-term influence of both prosocial and violent video game content. For example, a video game such as Call of Duty involves prosocial behaviours such as cooperating with members of an army unit as well as violent behaviours such as fighting enemy armies. In the bivariate correlations, the negative correlation between prosocial video game use and empathy was lower than the correlation between violent video game use and empathy. It could be argued that prosocial video game use has a protective role against the effects of violent video game use causing less of a decline in empathy. 656 B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 Table 5 Regression coefficients for associations between prosocial video game use and prosocial behaviour. Prosocial variable Helping behaviour Gendera Age School typeb SESc Weekly game play Violent video game use Prosocial video game use Cooperation and sharing Gender b t p 0.210 0.051 0.051 0.043 0.174 0.068 0.137 4.766 1.181 1.054 0.926 1.705 0.843 1.736 0.001 0.238 0.292 0.355 0.089 0.400 0.083 4.348 0.001 3.456 0.001 0.407 0.684 0.549 0.583 1.424 0.155 1.942 0.053 2.416 0.016 3.388 0.001 1.384 0.167 0.397 0.692 1.690 0.092 0.029 0.977 2.995 0.003 1.138 0.256 2.911 0.004 3.923 0.001 1.454 0.147 3.073 0.002 1.451 0.147 2.363 0.019 2.845 0.005 7.599 0.001 0.153 0.878 3.051 0.002 1.060 0.290 2.098 0.036 2.005 0.045 4.127 0.001 0.190 Age 0.148 School type 0.019 SES 0.025 Weekly game play 0.145 Violent video game use 0.157 Prosocial video game use 0.190 Normative behaviour Gender 0.150 Age 0.060 School type 0.019 SES 0.078 Weekly game play 0.003 Violent video game use 0.243 Prosocial video game use 0.090 Affective relationships Gender 0.127 Age 0.167 School type 0.069 SES 0.140 Weekly game play 0.147 Violent video game use 0.189 Prosocial video game use 0.222 Empathy Gender 0.316 Age 0.006 School type 0.138 SES 0.046 Weekly game play 0.202 Violent video game use 0.153 Prosocial video game use 0.308 a b c Gender (1 ¼ male; 2 ¼ female). School type (1 ¼ disadvantaged; 2 ¼ non-disadvantaged). SES(1 ¼ unemployed; 2 ¼ social class 6; 3 ¼ social class 5; 4 ¼ social class 4; 5 ¼ social class 3; 6 ¼ social class 2; 7 ¼ social class 1). B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 However when the variance associated with violent video game use is controlled for in the multiple linear regression the positive contribution of prosocial video game use to the variance associated with empathy becomes apparent. Finally, it should be noted that the area of suppression in relation to multiple linear regression is a complex topic and the abovementioned conclusions are possible interpretations of the data. These findings further outline the complexity of studying video game use in young people. Behaviour in the virtual reality of a video game environment cannot be neatly compartmentalised into a dichotomy of purely prosocial or violent behaviour. In the same way that individual human behaviour can contain both prosocial and violent components, behaviour within a video game environment can be influenced by both prosocial and violent motives. 4.2. Limitations This study had a number of methodological weaknesses. Firstly, the sample was a convenience sample rather than one drawn by random sampling. Although the sample was not necessarily representative it was diverse, drawn from ten schools representing various socio-economic groups. Therefore it could be argued that the sample was an accurate reflection of the diversity of 9e15 year old young people. Secondly, the internal reliability estimates of a number of the measures of prosocial behaviour were below 0.70. However previous studies which have used these measures of prosocial behaviour have found similar levels of internal reliability (Cheung et al., 1998). Thirdly, the present study used a number of self-report measures which carries the risk of participants having a social desirability bias. Researchers have noted that prosocial behaviours are highly socially desirable (Eisenberg & Mussen, 1989). Nevertheless attempts were made to control for self-report by including a teacher evaluation of the participants’ prosocial behaviour, which was positively correlated with the participants’self-report of prosocial behaviour. Although video game use was also measured by self-report, comparison of expert ratings and participant’s ratings of video game ratings have been highly correlated in previous research (Gentile at al, 2009). Finally, a significant methodological weakness of this study was its cross-sectional correlational design. Difficulties establishing causation mean that it could be argued that children with a preexisting prosocial orientation may choose to play prosocial video games. However it could also be argued that children tend to choose to play games due to their popularity and quality of game play rather than explicitly choosing a game based on its content. Therefore a child with high levels of prosocial behaviour could choose to play a violent video game due to the power of market forces such as advertising (Calvert, 2008). 4.3. Theoretical issues In the following section a number of theoretical issues in relation to prosocial video game effects will be discussed. The present study has been guided by the predictions of the General Learning Model (GLM) (Gentile et al., 2009). The GLM is an extension of the General Aggression Model (GAM) (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). However while the GAM can explain violent video game effects, the GLM has a broader scope that can be used to explain other issues such as prosocial video game effects and gender stereotypes in games. Both the GAM and the GLM are integrative theories. Each model integrates elements of five different socio-cognitive theories of personality theories in an attempt to explain video game effects. These five theories are Cognitive Neo-Associative Theory (Berkowitz, 1984), Excitation Transfer Theory (Zillmann, 1971), Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1977), Script Theory (Huesmann, 657 1986) and Social Information Processing (Crick & Dodge, 1994) (as cited in Bartlett & Anderson, 2013). Gentile et al. (2009) note that prosocial and antisocial behaviour are not binary constructs. It is possible to be hostile towards enemies while behaving prosocially towards friends. As has been noted in the Introduction, the GLM proposes that two short-term processes explain prosocial video game effects. Firstly, the cognitive effect of priming scripts predicts that games with prosocial content will result in prosocial behavioural scripts being primed and rehearsed. Secondly, changes in cognitions, feelings and levels of physiological arousal while playing a prosocial video game are reciprocally reinforced through both classical and operant conditioning. However there is a possible theoretical weakness in relation to the GLM and prosocial video game effects. In the present study prosocial video game effects were strongly associated with affective processing. The GLM is a theory which while containing emotional constructs has a strong focus on cognitive constructs consistent with the social cognitive theories of personality, which are integrated in this model (Prot et al., 2014). It could be argued that theories focussed on an individual’s emotional response to a stimulus might explain prosocial video game effects more clearly. Two theories from positive psychology could be advanced to explain prosocial video game effects. Elevation has been defined as “an emotion triggered by people behaving in a virtuous, pure, or superhuman way” (Haidt, 2003, p.281). Observing video game clips of individuals such as Mother Teresa behaving prosocially has induced elevation in participants in experimental studies (Haidt, 2003). It is theoretically plausible that a prosocial video game such as Peacemaker (http://www. peacemakergame.com) might induce elevation in players which could mediate prosocial video game effects. The Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotion (Friedrickson, 2001) hypothesises that positive emotion broadens thought-action repertoires in the actual moment. Therefore experiencing positive emotion through participating in prosocial video game play could create an upward spiral of positive emotion. This broadening of thought-action repertoires could potentially mediate the performance of prosocial acts. 4.4. Practical implications The practical implications of prosocial video games are numerous. Video games have been used to train visual skills in adults (Achtman, Green, & Bavelier, 2008), to teach civics to middle school students (www.icivics.org) and to teach geometry and social studies to elementary school students (https://minecraftedu.com). The video game Secret Agent Society is used for social skills instruction for children with Asperger’s Syndrome (http://www.sstinstitute.net). Based on the evidence from the present study video games with prosocial content could be used by educators to develop empathic concern and improve affective relationships in a diverse population of youth. 4.5. Future research Disadvantaged populations could particularly benefit from the use of prosocial video games in educational and clinical settings. Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with lower levels of academic achievement (Mc Loyd, 1998). Furthermore, longitudinal research has found that prosocial behaviour in childhood predicted academic achievement in adolescence (Caprara, Barbaranelli, Pastorelli, Bandura, & Zimbardo, 2000). Video games do not depend exclusively on formal literacy and numeracy to teach skills and convey social messages. Therefore video games with prosocial 658 B. Harrington, M. O’Connell / Computers in Human Behavior 63 (2016) 650e658 content could become a vital pedagogical tool in the educational provision for youth from disadvantaged communities. Future research in the area of prosocial video game effects could address this gap in the research by using experimental and longitudinal designs in order to establish causal relationships. 5. Conclusions These findings are consistent with previous research which found that prosocial video game use was positively associated with prosocial behaviour and empathy in children and adolescents (Gentile et al., 2009; Prot et al., 2014). However, the findings from the present study suggest that emotions rather than cognitions could explain prosocial video game effects. Therefore future studies using models from positive psychology such as Haidt’s (2003) construct of elevation or the Broaden and Build Theory of Positive Emotion (Friedrickson, 2001) could explain prosocial video game effects in children and adolescents more clearly. Video games can be conceived as ‘virtual teachers’ that can teach both prosocial and anti-social behaviours. The findings from the present study contribute to an increasing body of evidence that is succinctly summarised in the maxim: “Video games are exemplary teachers” (Gentile & Gentile, 2008). Parents and educators should bear this maxim in mind when weighing up the risks and benefits of these virtual teachers in relation to the healthy development of the young people in their care. References Achtman, R. L., Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2008). Video games as a tool to train visual skills. Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, 26(4e5), 435e446. Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: a meta-analytic review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353e359. Anderson, C. A., Gentile, D. A., & Buckley, K. E. (2007). Violent video game effects on children and adolescents: Theory, research, and public policy. New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., et al. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in Eastern and Western countries: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151e173. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bartlett, C. P., & Anderson, C. A. (2013). Examining media effects: the general aggression and general learning models. In E. Scharrer (Ed.), Media effects/Media psychology: Vol. 5. The international encyclopedia of media studies (pp. 1e20). London: Blackwell. Berkowitz, L. (1984). .Some effects of thoughts on anti- and prosocial influences of media events: a cognitive neoassociation analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 95(3), 410e427. Biernacki, P., & Waldorf, D. (1981). Snowball sampling: problems and techniques of chain referral sampling. Sociological Methods and Research, 10(2), 141e163. Bijvank, M. N., Konijn, E. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2012). “We don’t need no education”: video game preferences, video game motivations, and aggressiveness among adolescent boys of different educational ability levels. Journal of Adolescence, 35(1), 153e162. Boxer, P., Huesmann, R. L., Bushman, B. J., O’Brien, M., & Moceri, D. (2008). The role of violent media preference and cumulative developmental risk for violence and general aggression. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 38, 417e428. Calvert, S. L. (2008). Children as consumers: advertising and marketing. The Future of Children, 18(1), 205e234. Calvo, A. J., Gonzalez, R., & Martorell, M. C. (2014). Variables relacionadas con la conducta prosocial en la infancia y adolescencia: personalidad, autoconcepto y nero/Variables related to prosocial behaviour in childhood and adolescence: ge personality, self-concept and gender. Infancia y Aprendizaje: Journal for the Study of Education and Development, 24(1), 95e111. Caprara, G. V., Barbaranelli, C., Pastorelli, C., Bandura, A., & Zimbardo, P. (2000). Prosocial foundations of children’s academic achievement. Psychological Science, 11(4), 302e306. Caprara, G. V., & Pastorelli, C. (1993). Early emotional instability, prosocial behaviour, and aggression: some methodological aspects. European Journal of Personality, 7, 19e36. Cheung, P. C., Ma, H. K., & Shek, T. L. D. (1998). Conceptions of success: their correlates with prosocial orientation and behaviour in Chinese adolescents. Journal of Adolescence, 21, 31e42. Crick, N. R., & Dodge, K. A. (1994). A review and reformulation of social informationprocessing mechanisms in children's social adjustment. Psychological Bulletin, 115(1), 74e101. Dietz, T. L. (1998). An examination of violence and gender role portrayals in video games: implications for gender socialization and aggressive behavior. Sex Roles., 38(5e6), 425e442. Eagly, A. H., & Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behavior: a meta-analytic review of the social psychological literature. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3), 283e308. Eisenberg, N., & Mussen, P. H. (1989). The roots of prosocial behaviour in children. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Entertainment Software Association. (2015). Sales, demographic and usage data: Essential facts about the video game industry. Ferguson, C. J., San Miguel, C., Garza, A., & Jerabeck, J. M. (2012). A longitudinal test of video game violence influences on dating and aggression: a 3-year longitudinal study of adolescents. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 46(2), 141e146. Friedrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218e226. Funk, J. B., Fox, C. M., Chan, M., & Curtiss, K. (2008). The development of the Children’s Empathic Attitudes Scale using classical and Rasch analyses. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 29, 187e198. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment, 1, 1e4. Gentile, D. A., Anderson, C. A., Yukawa, S., Ihoro, N., Kam Ming, L., Shibuya, A., et al. (2009). The effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behaviors: international evidence from correlational, longitudinal and experimental studies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35(6), 752e763. Gentile, D. A., & Gentile, J. R. (2008). Violent video games as exemplary teachers: a conceptual analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37(2), 127e141. Gentile, D. A., Li, D., Khoo, A., Prot, S., & Anderson, C. A. (2014). Mediators and moderators of long-term effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior. JAMA Pediatrics, 168(5), 450e457. Goodman, R. (1997). The strengths and difficulties questionnaire: a research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38(5), 581e586. Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. American Psychologist, 69(1), 66e78. Greitemeyer, T., & Mugge, D. (2014). Video games do affect social outcomes:A metaanalytic review of the effects of violent and prosocial video game play. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40(5), 578e589. Greitemeyer, T., & Osswald, S. (2010). Effects of prosocial video games on prosocial behaviour. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(2), 211e221. Guinote, A., Cotzia, I., Sandhu, S., & Siwa, P. (2015). Social status modulates prosocial behavior and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults. PNAS, 122(3), 731e736. Haidt, J. (2003). Elevation and the positive psychology of morality. In C. L. M. Keyes, & J. Haidt (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive psychology and the life well-lived (pp. 275e289). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Hinkle, D. E., Wiersma, W., & Jurs, S. G. (1994). Applied statistics for the behavioral sciences. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Hoglund, W. L., & Leadbetter, B. J. (2004). The effects of family, school, and classroom ecologies on changes in children’s social competence and emotional and behavioral problems in first grade. Developmental Psychology, 40(4), 533e544. Huesmann, L. R. (1986). Psychological processes promoting the relation between exposure to media violence and aggressive behavior by the viewer. Journal of Social Issues, 42(3), 125e139. Kazdin, A. E. (1987). Treatment of antisocial behavior in children: current status and future directions. Psychological Bulletin, 102(2), 187e203. Mazurek, M. O., & Engelhardt, C. R. (2013). Video game use in boys with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, or typical development. Pediatrics, 132(2), 260e266. Mc Loyd, V. C. (1998). Socioeconomic disadvantage and child development. American Psychologist, 53(2), 185e204. O’Hare, A., Whelan, C. T., & Commins, P. (1991). The development of an Irish censusbased social class scale. Economic & Social Review, 22(2), 135e156. Prot, S., & Anderson, C. A. (2013). Research methods, design and statistics in media psychology. In K. E. Dill (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of media psychology (pp. 109e136). New York: Oxford University. Prot, S., Gentile, D. A., Anderson, C. A., Suzuki, K., Swing, E., Lim, K. M., … Lam, B. C. P. (2014). Long-term relations among prosocial-media use, empathy and prosocial behavior. Psychological Science, 25(2), 358e368. Rideout, V. J., Foehr, U. L., & Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M: Media in the lives of 8-18 year-olds. Menlo Park, CA: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2014). Using multivariate statistics. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited. Tzelgov, J., & Henik, A. (1991). Suppression situations in psychological research: definitions, implications, and applications. Psychological Bulletin, 109(3), 524e536. Zillmann, D. (1971). Excitation transfer in communication-mediated aggressive behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7(4), 419e434. Psychology of Popular Media Culture 2019, Vol. 8, No. 1, 76 – 87 © 2017 American Psychological Association 2160-4134/19/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000159 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Gaining a Competitive Edge: Longitudinal Associations Between Children’s Competitive Video Game Playing, Conduct Problems, Peer Relations, and Prosocial Behavior Adam Lobel Rutger C. M. E. Engels University of Geneva Trimbos Instituut, Utrecht, the Netherlands Lisanne L. Stone Isabela Granic Pro Persona, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Radboud University Playful competition is an important hallmark of healthy child development. Playful competition facilitates moral learning, rewards perspective-taking skills, and challenges children to healthily regulate unpleasant emotions such as frustration, anger, and jealousy. Despite this, research on the effects of competitive video gaming has focused on antisocial outcomes, such as declines in prosocial behavior. Moreover, methodological shortcomings such as experimental studies using designs with poor generalizability, and a lack of longitudinal studies, leave open the influence of competitive gaming on social development among preadolescent children. This longitudinal study therefore investigated the relation between competitive gaming and changes in children’s social development across 3 measures: conduct problems, peer relations, and prosocial behavior. At 2 timepoints, 1 year apart, 184 Dutch children (8.31–12.68 years old) reported their gaming frequency and listed their favorite games to play, and their parents reported their children’s psychosocial health. Children’s nominations were coded as including or not including a competitive video game. Children who nominated a competitive game at the first time point were more likely to show a decrease in conduct problems and an improvement in peer relations. No interactions were observed between competitive gaming and gaming frequency. These results encourage future research to investigate the social benefits of playful competitive gaming among peers, and for future studies to take other variables such as violent content, cooperative play, and real world competitive play into account. Public Policy Relevance Statement Video games have become a cultural fixture and a staple of child development. This research describes the potential benefits which may come with children playing competitive video games, particularly for boys. Keywords: gaming, competitive play, child development, prosocial behavior, peer relations capacities of their own bodies and objects in their immediate environment (Piaget, 1962). Sensorimotor play remains popular throughout childhood; it is seen in hand– eye coordination games, such as catch, and in forms of pretend play, such as when children play by building. In pretend play, children’s imaginations allow them to fantasize about nonexistent entities, construct narratives for inanimate objects, and assume the roles of adults and professionals. Because these behaviors help children develop perspective-taking skills, and learn how to cooperate with others (Fein, 1981; Lillard et al., 2013), pretend play is important for children’s socialization (Denzin, 1975). At the same time that children enact pretend play with others, they also begin to engage in games with rules. Due to their fixed structure, these rule-based games align with children’s interest in better understanding the world (Whitebread, Basilio, Kuvalja, & Verma, 2012) while also enabling children to playfully compete with peers. Recognized as a child’s right by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), play is essential for social development (Frost, Wortham, & Reifel, 2008; UNGA, 1959). Play comes in many forms, each with developmental benefits. As infants, children engage in sensorimotor play, toying with and discovering the This article was published Online First August 24, 2017. Adam Lobel, Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva; Rutger C. M. E. Engels, Trimbos Instituut, Netherlands institute of Mental Health and Addiction, Utrecht, the Netherlands; Lisanne L. Stone, Overwaal, Centre for Anxiety Disorders, Pro Persona, Nijmegen, the Netherlands; Isabela Granic, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adam Lobel, Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Chemin des Mines 9, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland. E-mail: adam@adamlobel.com 76 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. GAINING A COMPETITIVE EDGE Competitive play is crucial for social development. Playful competition is a hallmark of play in primates and mammals, whose young almost invariably engage in rough-and-tumble play (Power, 2000). In humans, rough-and-tumble play emerges early in child development, and often persists through adolescence and into early adulthood. Because of its intimate nature, and the necessity for mutual trust between players, this form of play facilitates emotion recognition and cultivates bonding between children and their peers and family members (Jarvis, 2010). But, as children’s working memory and executive function skills improve, competitive play in games with rules also emerges. These are games generally predicated on clear win- and loss-states, and they prescribe specific actions that may or may not be performed during play. Common examples are board games such as Checkers, Chess, and Monopoly, and physical games such as Hide and Seek and sports. Much like rough-and-tumble play, playing competitive games with rules also provides a valuable context for social development. For example, because it encourages players to predict their opponent’s strategies, competitive play may promote perspective-taking and the development of children’s theory of mind (Goodie, Doshi, & Young, 2012). Moreover, competitive play is highly relevant for both children’s moral development and peer relationships. Competitive play forces children to cooperate and take turns, abiding by the game’s rules and finding a common ethical ground. The pressure of competition may also elicit unpleasant emotional experiences, such as frustration, disappointment, and embarrassment. Sharing and working through these experiences with peers may promote bonding and prepare children to regulate these emotions with more facility outside of play contexts (Erikson, 1993; Russ, 2003; Wagner et al., 2014). Modern Video Gaming and Competitive Play Here, we apply this developmental lens to one of the most common “playgrounds” where children today are commonly found, video games. Indeed, video games have become a virtually universal aspect of child development, with over 90% of children and adolescents dedicating at least an hour per week to gaming (Lenhart et al., 2008). As modern video games have become increasingly social in nature (Olson, 2010). The impact of competitive video game play on social development seems particularly relevant. Today’s video games can be played alone, in person with small groups, or online with up to hundreds of people simultaneously. Video games therefore seem to represent a modern playground, inviting children to play in a myriad of ways. Reflecting the increased prevalence of gaming as a form of social play, nine of the 10 best-selling video games in the United States in 2016 extensively featured multiplayer functionality (NPD Group, as cited by Tassi in Forbes, 2017), with competitive game modes being central to the game’s design in eight of these releases (e.g., Battlefield 1, Overwatch, and Fifa 17). Competitive Gaming and Social Competencies Despite a body of literature supporting the socioemotional benefits of competitive play, research into the effects of competitive video game play has predominantly focused on the potentially deleterious effects of competition. Under a dichotomy of cooperative-versus-competitive gaming (Ewoldsen et al., 2012; 77 Greitemeyer, Traut-Mattausch, & Osswald, 2012; Schmierbach, 2010; Velez, Mahood, Ewoldsen, & Moyer-Gusé, 2014), competitive gaming has been widely studied as an antecedent to increased aggression and decreases in prosocial behavior. These hypotheses have their theoretical underpinnings in the General Learning Model (Buckley & Anderson, 2006; originally formulated as the General Aggression Model in Bushman & Anderson, 2002), a model developed within the more widely researched violent gaming field (see: Ferguson & Konijn, 2015). Under the General Learning Model, gaming fosters scripts about how to manage real world interactions. Under this model, violent video game playing biases players into more likely perceiving aggressive intentions in others, and to also perceive aggressive behaviors as a more viable solution to conflict. Importantly, however, not all competitive video games are violent in nature; for example, although many first-person shooter titles feature competitive game modes, racing and sports games center around competition without being violent (Adachi & Willoughby, 2016). Thus, when applied to competitive gaming research, the General Learning Model predicts that competitive video game playing biases players into perceiving more social situations as adversarial and as calling for aggressive behavior. However, research on the deleterious effects of competitive gaming has almost exclusively been conducted among adolescents or adults, and in short-term, lab-based settings (for a longitudinal study among adolescents and adults, see Adachi & Willoughby, 2016). This raises a several issues. First, findings regarding adolescents and adults may not generalize to children. This is because children are very much in the process of developing the cognitive and socioemotional skills needed to create and maintain relationships (Bigelow, 1977; Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Second, the observed effects of competitive gaming in lab-based studies may only operate in the short-term. Longitudinal designs are needed to demonstrate the potential lasting influences of competitive gaming. Third, the assignment procedures in lab-based studies precluded participants from playing competitively against their known peers. Competitive play against strangers—and against individuals that one may never meet in person—may have different consequences than competitive play against friends. For example, competition among friends seems more prone to instilling a playful spirit, and may also be based on feelings of mutual trust and respect. Competitive play among friends may also lack the sense of finality that play against random strangers might; when playing with friends, losses and victories can be contextualized within a history of competitive play where each player’s skills and tactics develop. There are therefore several gaps in the literature. Given the lack of research conducted on competitive gaming among children, longitudinally, and in naturalized environments, the developmental impact of competitive gaming in children remains largely unclear. Similarly, the relative focus on competitive gaming as an antisocial activity leaves open whether competitive gaming among peers could foster healthy relationships. This study therefore employed a longitudinal design to investigate the potential influence of competitive gaming on children’s conduct problems, peer relationships, and prosocial behavior. As an example of traditional competitive games with rules, sports provide an ideal point of comparison for illustrating these potential benefits. Sports are widely considered a valuable domain LOBEL, ENGELS, STONE, AND GRANIC This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 78 for moral development (Bailey, 2006; Fraser-Thomas, Côte, & Deakin, 2005; Kleiber & Roberts, 1981), and numerous sportbased interventions have been implemented in order to manifest psychosocial improvements (Gould & Carson, 2008; Hellison, 1998; Romance, Weiss, & Bockoven, 1986). A recent review indicated that among children and adolescents, playing sports was associated with psychosocial benefits, and that such associations were more pronounced in team-based sports (Eime, Young, Harvey, Charity, & Payne, 2013). This is due to several features. First, sports and other games with rules emphasize notions of fair play. Competitive play is known to heighten affective arousal, riling up children to become potentially more (physically) aggressive (Ensor, Hart, Jacobs, & Hughes, 2011). Second, children’s emotion regulation skills are challenged when experiencing the heightened emotional arousal that accompanies winning or losing a game. In victory, children must learn how to experience pride without overly bragging, and in defeat, they must learn how to overcome disappointment without unfairly disparaging their play partner. Sport and competitive play therefore help instantiate the importance of moral behavior, and encourage children to exercise their perspective-taking skills and to be gracious to their peers even in emotionally charged instances (Denzin, 1975). It is important to determine whether competitive gaming can afford similar benefits. Competitive gaming seems a particularly important domain to investigate in this regard for several reasons. First, the last years have seen children migrate from outdoor activities and sports to video game play (Hofferth, 2010). Second, perhaps more so than sports and other traditional games with rules, competitive gaming is a potential hotbed for aggressive interactions. Derogatory banter and “rage quitting” (when a player angrily and abruptly quits a game; Linderoth, Björk, & Olsson, 2012) commonly occur in competitive games. These behaviors are socially alienating; indeed online games often give rise to selfpolicing communities which reject players who are notorious for being a poor sport (Williams, Caplan, & Xiong, 2007). Because preadolescent children typically play (competitive) video games with their friends, children may be learning how to work through these aggressive urges, maintain composure, and respond in a normative, playful manner. In sum, competitive gaming may foster an environment that is ideal for teaching children to suppress antisocial urges and to resolve social conflicts. The Present Study This study was designed to address the gaps of past research by (a) using a longitudinal design, to (b) investigate competitive gaming and the development of social competencies among (c) preadolescent children. Children between the ages of 8 and 11 were interviewed twice, one year apart. Children described their gaming behavior and nominated their favorite video games, and parents were asked to report on children’s social competencies. We hypothesized that children who played competitive video games would show improvements in conduct problems, peer relationships, and prosocial behavior. For exploratory analyses, we investigated a potential dosage effect whereby those children who played competitive video games with greater frequency may show additional benefits. Method Participants Data were collected during home visits one year apart (days between visits: range: 194 – 462, M ⫽ 347.65). For recruitment, we invited participants in Stone and colleagues (2013) to participate in a three-wave longitudinal study; the present study used data collected in its second and third waves. We left out the first wave of data from our analyses because there was an insufficient degree of variation in the sample with regards to children playing competitive video games; whereas over 50 children reported preference for a competitive video gaming in the study’s second and third waves, only 26 children did so at Year 1 of the longitudinal study. This may largely be attributed to the age of study’s sample, a quarter of which was younger than eight years old, and none of which was 12 years or older at the study’s first wave.1 For hypothesis testing, we segmented out nongamer children because our hypotheses specifically concerned differences in gaming behavior. In these tests, therefore, competitive gamers were compared against other gamers from our sample (see Planned Analyses, below). The study’s procedures were approved by the Behavioral Science Institute’s Ethical Review Board under the Radboud University, and informed-consent forms were collected at all timepoints. Descriptive statistics for the sample at Year 2 and Year 3 (Y2 and Y3, respectively) are reported in Table 1. Ten participants from Y2 (n ⫽ 184; male ⫽ 48.9%) declined to participate at Y3 (n ⫽ 174; male ⫽ 47.78%). Data from 10 parent reports were missing at Y2 because their data were not properly saved by the recording software, and three parents failed to complete their online questionnaires at Y3. Procedure Children provided self-reports during a private, face-to-face interview with an experimenter. Data were collected by the first author and a team of senior Bachelor’s students enrolled in the Radboud University’s Pedagogical Sciences program. Mandatory for their studies, these students were formally trained for conducting interviews with children; under supervision of the first author and prior to data collection, students were further trained in the study’s protocols and interview procedure. During each interview, the experimenter hand-recorded the participant’s responses. To ensure that these data were properly transferred to a digital dataset, hand-written data were twice annotated to a computer. Parents provided their survey responses via an online questionnaire. Families were rewarded a 30 and 50 Euro voucher check (per child) for their participation at Y2 and Y3, respectively. Measures Social competency measures. Three social competencies were measured by parent’s reports on subscales of the Dutch version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ (Goodman, 1997); Dutch version (van Widenfelt, Goedhart, Treffers, & Goodman, 2003)). The SDQ uses a 3-point Likert scale 1 The characteristics of the sample at Year 1 are described in Lobel and colleagues (2014). GAINING A COMPETITIVE EDGE 79 Table 1 Child and Parent Demographics at Y2 and Y3 Children This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Sex Y2 Y3 Age Y2 Y3 Parents n Male Female n Male Female 184 174 90 (48.9%) 83 (47.7%) 94 (51.1%) 91 (52.3%) 174 174 24 (13.8%) 19 (11%) 150 (86.2%) 153 (89%) Range M SD Range M SD 8.31–12.68 9.30–13.53 10.23 11.16 1.14 1.14 30.68–52.42 31.7–53.58 42.83 43.72 3.76 3.68 (0 –2 Not true to Very true). Of the SDQ’s five subscales, the three social competency subscales used were: (a) conduct problems, (b) peer problems, and (c) prosocial behavior. Consistent with Stone and colleagues (2013) reliability was calculated using ␻; this reliability index has repeatedly been shown to yield more accurate estimates than ␣, particularly so when data are skewed, as is the case with the SDQ (Stone et al., 2015; Zinbarg, Revelle, Yovel, & Li, 2005). All subscales showed acceptable to good reliability at Y2 and Y3: (a) conduct problems (sample: Often fights with other children or bullies them; Y2: M ⫽ 0.84, SD ⫽ 1.46, ␻Y2 ⫽ .89; Y3: M ⫽ 0.78, SD ⫽ 1.22, ␻Y3 ⫽ .81); (b) peer problems (sample: Rather solitary, tends to play alone; Y2: M ⫽ 0.97; SD ⫽ 1.27, ␻Y2 ⫽ .68; Y3: M ⫽ 0.92; SD ⫽ 1.33, ␻Y3 ⫽ .78); and (c) prosocial behavior (sample: Shares readily with other children; Y2: M ⫽ 6.9; SD ⫽ 1.31, ␻Y2 ⫽ .78; Y3: M ⫽ 6.82; SD ⫽ 1.49, ␻Y3 ⫽ .86). Gaming frequency. Gaming frequency was measured with child reports for the number of hours they had played video games during the past week. Given the potential difficulty of children recalling their gaming hours across an entire week, this measure was scaffolded by an additional measure of gaming frequency: In interviews, children looked over a calendar with the experimenter and indicated for each day over the past full week whether or not they had played a video game in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Parents separately reported via an online questionnaire regarding the number of hours their child played on average per week. Moderate correlations were observed across the three frequency measures at each time point (Y2: r ⱖ .44, p ⬍ .001; Y3: r ⱖ .56, p ⬍ .001). “Video games” were explicitly described to parents and children as any game that can be played on an electronic device, and several example games were listed. We specifically used child reports of gaming frequency. This was done so that our analyses would rely on different reporters for the predictor and predicted variables; again, the social competency outcome variables were reported by parents. This cross-reporter analysis avoids the potential single source bias that is introduced by relying on a single reporter (Burk & Laursen, 2010; Lobel, Granic, Stone, & Engels, 2014). Both parent and children’s reported hours of gaming were Windorized with a cut-off at 3 SD above the mean; at Y2, two outliers were present based on both child and reports, and at Y3 four outliers were present in child reports and two in the parent report (Y2: M ⫽ 5.92, SD ⫽ 5.9; Y3: M ⫽ 5.59, SD ⫽ 5.46). Competitive gaming. Similar to previous studies (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Prot et al., 2014), children were asked to report their favorite video game(s) from the past several weeks. Competitive gaming was therefore computed as a dichotomous variable; children who listed a competitive video game among their favorite games were assigned a 1, and those who did not were assigned a 0. Children listed over 140 games as favorites2, with Minecraft being the sample’s most popular game (n ⫽ 46) and Fifa the most popular competitive game (n ⫽ 21). As in Adachi and Willoughby (2015), games were deemed competitive if their design was predominantly built around competition. Games were assigned jointly in consultation between the study’s first and final author (see Appendix for full listing and coding). Competitive games came from a diverse array of genres, such as puzzle games (e.g., Ruzzle, n ⫽ 1), strategy games (e.g., Clash of Clans, n ⫽ 12), sports games (e.g., games from the Fifa series, n ⫽ 21), racing games (e.g., games from the Mario Kart series, n ⫽ 16), and (violent) firstperson shooter games (e.g., games from the Call of Duty series, n ⫽ 8). In all such games, the primary form of interaction involves players trying to perform better than their opponents, whereas popular noncompetitive games were Minecraft (n ⫽ 46)—a game where players (cooperatively) build structures—Flappy Bird (n ⫽ 18) and Subway Surfer (n ⫽ 15)—reaction time (RT) games playable by only one player at a time—and games from the Mario Brothers series (n ⫽ 17)— bright, fantastical games about collecting items while avoiding physical contact with enemies and environmental hazards. Sixty-one children identified a competitive game among their favorite games at Y2 (31.4%). To check the validity of this coding scheme, children were also asked to report how often their gaming sessions involves them “playing against others; that the game is competitive” (5-point Likert scale, Never to Every time or almost every time). Children who identified a competitive game among their favorite games reported playing competitively more often (competitive M ⫽ 3.07, SD ⫽ 1.28 noncompetitive M ⫽ 2.47, SD ⫽ 1.18; t(177) ⫽ 2.83, p ⫽ .002). Planned Analyses All analyses were performed in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS; Version 23). As stated above, we segmented out nongamer children we intended to determine whether gaming competitively could be beneficial or detrimental compared 2 This figure collapses games within the same series as referring to one game. For example, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 and Call of Duty: Ghost are counted as the same title. LOBEL, ENGELS, STONE, AND GRANIC This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. 80 (␤ ⫽ ⫺.20, t ⫽ ⫺2.55, p ⫽ .012). Contrary to expectations, competitive gaming was not associated with changes in prosocial behavior (␤ ⫽ ⫺.09, t ⫽ ⫺1.27, p ⫽ .205). Outside the purview of our hypotheses, we also observed a positive association between gaming frequency and prosocial behavior (␤ ⫽ .13, t ⫽ 1.99, p ⫽ .049). Violent gaming was not associated with changes in any of the social competencies (␤ range: ⫺.07 to .06; t range: ⫺.833 to .82; p range: 0.406 to .645). Finally, no interaction effects were observed (conduct: ␤ ⫽ ⫺.01, t ⫽ ⫺0.15, p ⫽ .881; peer: ␤ ⫽ .066, t ⫽ 0.77, p ⫽ .442; prosocial: ␤ ⫽ .059, t ⫽ 0.12, p ⫽ .902), suggesting no dosage effect of competitive gaming.5 with gaming in noncompetitive ways. Children who regularly played video games were defined as children who played for more than one hour per week (98.27% of children at Y2, n ⫽ 171).3 For preliminary analyses, independent t tests and a chi-square test were used to determine whether there were gender differences on all variables at both timepoints. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to investigate our hypotheses. Competitive gaming among children who regularly played video games was tested as a main predictor of changes in three separate social competencies, conduct problems, peer problems, and prosocial behavior. As a follow-up, we next explored whether the amount of competitive gaming may have a dose effect. These subsequent models therefore added an interaction term to each of the previous models. This interaction term was derived from centering children’s gaming frequency and multiplying this value by the competitive gaming variable. Age, gaming frequency, and violent gaming4 were included as direct predictors as control variables. As a backup check, all models were also run using parental reports of children’s gaming frequency. When running these models on the boys in the sample, competitive gaming showed the same relationship to changes in social competencies; among girls, however, no associations were observed (see Table 4). Violent gaming did not predict changes in social competencies for boys nor girls. Also, among boys, gaming at Y2 was not associated with an increase in prosocial behavior. Results Discussion Preliminary Analyses No age differences were observed between competitive gamers and the remainder of the sample (Y2: t(166) ⫽ ⫺.32, p ⫽ .750; Y3: t(155) ⫽ ⫺.48, p ⫽ .632). Likewise, no differences were observed in the time between visits, t(158) ⫽ ⫺1.19, p ⫽ .236. Gender differences were observed at both time points for social competencies, gaming frequency, and for competitive gaming (see Table 2). Regarding social competencies, boys showed less prosocial behavior than girls at both timepoints, t(160) ⫽ ⫺2.33, p ⫽ .02; Y3: t(151.12 ⫽ ⫺2.41, p ⫽ .017), and at Y3, boys showed more peer problems, t(157) ⫽ 1.98, p ⫽ .050. (Despite the emergence of a gender difference in peer problems at Y3, paired-samples t tests indicated that peer problems remained constant among boys and girls from Y2 to Y3; boys t(76) ⫽ ⫺.655, p ⫽ .514, girls t(75) ⫽ 1.35, p ⫽ .181.) Boys also reported gaming more hours per week at both Y2, t(165.13) ⫽ 3.64, p ⬍ .001 and Y3, t(138.69) ⫽ 4.81, p ⬍ .001. As a result of these gender differences, we added gender as a control variable. Boys were also more likely to nominate a competitive game, with 52.8% of boys compared with 16.5% of girls listing a competitive game among their favorites (␹2(1) ⫽ 24.09, p ⬍ .001). Because of this disparity, and the fact that so few girls nominated a competitive game, we chose to additionally run our main analyses separately among boys and girls. Gaming, Competitive Gaming, and Social Competencies Two regression models were run for each of the three social competencies: one model with the dichotomous competitive gaming variable as main predictor, and a second which added the interaction between competitive gaming and gaming frequency. Table 3 contains the correlations between the predictor and predicted variables used in the first models. In line with our predictions, competitive gaming was associated with decreases in conduct (␤ ⫽ ⫺.20, t ⫽ ⫺2.66, p ⫽ .009) and peer problems Gender-Specific Outcomes This study investigated the relationship between playing competitive video games and changes in children’s social competencies. Children who reported playing a competitive video game showed improvements over one year in conduct problems and peer relationships. No associations were observed between competitive gaming and changes in prosocial behavior. Gaming frequency did not moderate any of these findings. The observed main effects of competitive gaming support the notion that, like more traditional forms of competitive play, competitive gaming may provide a context for the development of adaptive social competencies. Changes in prosocial behavior were not associated with competitive gaming. This is in line with neither past findings that competitive gaming negatively predicts prosocial behavior (Ewoldsen et al., 2012) nor our hypotheses to the contrary. Past research describes competitive gaming as a domain that promotes antisocial cognitions and behaviors (Schmierbach, 2010). In this light, competitive gaming encourages children to view relationships as being adversarial, and helping behaviors as being costly. However, as our null findings indicate, competitive gaming is likely more complex. For one, competitive gaming requires a certain fundamental level of cooperation; players must collectively abide by the rules of the game. Second, competitive gaming sometimes allows for cooperation and prosocial goals (Adachi & Willoughby, 2013). Team-based competitive play requires coop3 The observed pattern of results remained the same when only including children who played for more than two (89.65%, n ⫽ 156) or more than three hours (77.58%, n ⫽ 135) per week. 4 Violent gaming was computed as a dichotomous variable using the same approach as in Lobel, Engels, Stone, Burk, and Granic (2017). As described in Lobel et al. (2017), there was some debate whether Minecraft be considered a violent game. In the reported analyses, Minecraft was not classified as a violent video game; however, the pattern of results was identical when Minecraft was coded as a violent video game. 5 With one exception, these patterns of results were identical when using parent reports for children’s gaming frequency. The only divergent finding was that parental reports of children’s gaming hours per week was not associated with changes in children’s prosocial behavior (␤ ⫽ ⫺.01, t ⫽ ⫺0.22, p ⫽ .825). GAINING A COMPETITIVE EDGE 81 Table 2 Gender Differences in Gaming Frequency and Social Competencies at Y2 and Y3 Y2 Boys This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Conduct problems Peer problems Prosocial behavior Gaming frequency Y3 Girls Boys Girls M SD M SD t p M SD M SD t p 1.08 1.06 6.65 7.62 1.56 1.25 1.41 5.84 0.68 0.91 7.13 4.71 1.41 1.30 1.17 4.60 1.72 0.74 ⫺2.33 3.64 .089 .460 .021 ⬍.001 0.96 1.12 6.51 7.76 1.24 1.39 1.66 5.95 0.58 0.71 7.08 3.98 1.24 1.27 1.31 3.81 1.96 1.98 ⫺2.41 4.81 .052 .050 .017 ⬍.001 eration despite players pursuing competitive, arguably antisocial goals. This allows for prosocial behaviors amid competition, for example, in games that specifically enable players to heal or protect their teammates. Similarly, competitive games may vary greatly in terms of violent content. The competitive games that were popular among children in this study were generally nonviolent. This may account for the discrepancy between our findings and past research, although we also observed that violent gaming was unrelated to changes in social competencies. Future studies should investigate the conditions under which competitive games may positively or negatively influence prosocial behavior in the long-term; cooperation and violent content may be relevant mediators. No dosage effects were observed as the frequency of competitive gaming seemed unrelated to changes in social competencies. This may also speak to the complex nature of competition. For example, the relationship between competitive gaming and social competencies may be nonlinear such that competitive play may be beneficial in small doses, whereas high levels of competitive gaming may be detrimental. Competitive gaming may therefore be best in moderation; a little amount may provide valuable contexts for moral development and bonding, but excessive competition may foster an unhealthy lens through which children perceive their social environment. The relative psychosocial impact of violence and competition in gaming remain a source of debate in the literature. In one series of lab experiments, competitive video games were compared with competitive video games high in violence, and playing the latter led to greater levels of aggressive cognition, affect, and behavior (Anderson & Carnagey, 2009). On the other hand, studies conducted by Adachi and colleagues have indicated the opposite (Adachi, 2015); when systematically controlling for violent content, competitive games led to more aggressive outcomes than noncompetitive games (Adachi & Willoughby, 2011). The present study adds to the complexity of these outcomes. First, violent gaming in this study was not associated with increases in aggressive or antisocial tendencies. Moreover, competitive gaming was associated with positive outcomes. Table 3 Correlations Between Social Competency, Gender, Age, and Gaming Measures at Y2 and Y3 Y2 Y2 Peer r Prosocial r Gender r Age r Frequency r Violent r Competitive r ⫺.13 ⫺.06 .18ⴱ — — — — .04 .09 ⫺.01 .19ⴱ — — — .21ⴱⴱ .06 ⫺.09 ⫺.27ⴱⴱ .04 — — .07 .11 ⫺.12 ⫺.48ⴱⴱ .03 .19ⴱ — .15 ⫺.08 ⫺.20ⴱ ⫺.38ⴱⴱ .03 .05 .41ⴱⴱ .31ⴱⴱ — — — — — — ⫺.11 ⫺.11 — — — — — Y2 Conduct r Peer r Prosocial r Frequency r Conduct Peer Prosocial Gender Age Frequency Violent (0, 1) Competitive (0, 1) .61ⴱⴱ .36ⴱⴱ ⫺.12 ⫺.16 .04 .16ⴱ .00 ⫺.21 .30ⴱⴱ .54ⴱⴱ ⫺.19ⴱ ⫺.16ⴱ .07 .15 ⫺.00 ⫺.15 ⫺.05 ⫺.24ⴱⴱ .68ⴱⴱ .19ⴱ .05 .07 ⫺.12 ⫺.22ⴱⴱ .23ⴱⴱ .15 ⫺.21ⴱⴱ ⫺.40ⴱⴱ ⫺.09 .39ⴱⴱ .23ⴱⴱ .17ⴱ Conduct Peer Prosocial Gender Age Frequency Violent (0, 1) Y3 Note. Gender coded as boys ⫽ 1; girls ⫽ 2. Correlations do not control for gender. ⴱ p ⱕ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⱕ .01. LOBEL, ENGELS, STONE, AND GRANIC 82 Table 4 Gender-Specific Outcomes for the Associations Between Competitive Gaming and Changes in Social Competencies Boys This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Conduct Peer Prosocial Girls Competitive ⫻ Frequency Competitive Competitive ⫻ Frequency Competitive ␤ t p ␤ t p ␤ t p ␤ t p ⫺.29 ⫺.28 ⫺.05 ⫺2.49 ⫺2.46 ⫺0.58 .015 .016 .566 .15 .16 ⫺.03 1.04 1.17 ⫺0.23 .301 .248 .818 ⫺.04 ⫺.12 ⫺.08 ⫺0.45 0.05 ⫺0.73 .654 .961 .470 ⫺.07 ⫺.04 ⫺.08 ⫺0.74 ⫺0.36 0.59 .461 .718 .557 One explanation for this discrepancy could lie in the measures used in these studies. Utilizing the SDQ, the present study measured conduct problems, which may reflect a broader array of psychological processes than simply aggressive tendencies. Only one item on the SDQ’s conduct problems scale concerns interpersonal aggression (“fights with other children or bullies them”), whereas the others may be more broadly related to children’s ability to control impulsive urges or to obey social rules (e.g., “generally obedient . . . ” and “often has temper tantrums”). Another explanation could be due to study design. The experimental designs like those used by Anderson and Carnagey (2009) and Adachi and Willoughby (2011), may lack ecological validity. As raised in the introduction, competitive gaming in the lab may miss the social function that competitive gaming has when voluntarily played in one’s home. In the latter, competition can be framed within a broader context of self-improvement and comradery with fellow players. Our sample’s age may also be highly relevant. First, to our knowledge, no longitudinal studies have been conducted regarding the effects of competitive gaming among preadolescent children. Second, given their age, children in this study were likely restricted by their parents in the video games they could play. Preadolescent children do not typically have money to buy their own games, and parents may have the final say in what games their children play. This allows parents to socialize their children, with some perhaps allowing or even preferring that their children game with others. Parental influence is also important to consider with regards to gender. Compared with girls, boys generally showed greater deficiencies in their social competencies. Boys also spent more time gaming than girls, and were far more likely to play competitively than girls. These gender differences in social development are commonly observed (Zimmer-Gembeck, Geiger, & Crick, 2005). Moreover, boys seem to generally prefer competitive play more than girls (Lever, 1976; Hartmann & Klimmt, 2006; Greenberg, Sherry, Lachlan, Lucas, & Holmstrom, 2010; Olson, 2010). This could indicate that competitive play is of particular relevance for male social development. For example, boys are more likely to become aggressive during competitive play (Ensor et al., 2011), which may indicate that competitive play is a better testing ground for them to develop their emotion regulation skills. Likewise, parents may be socializing their children along gender stereotypical lines, giving girls more cooperative games, and boys more competitive ones. In line with past research, while about half of the boys in this sample played at least one competitive video game, only a small minority of girls did (Hartmann & Klimmt, 2006; Olson, 2010). Whereas nearly 50% of boy gamers listed a competitive game among their favorites, just 13, compared with 66 girl gamers, listed a competitive game. As a result, it is difficult to interpret the null finding among girls that competitive gaming was unrelated to changes in social competencies. Notably, competitive gaming was associated with improvements in conduct and peer problems both among boys and across our entire sample (when controlling for gender). Paradoxically, despite improvements in peer problems among competitive boy gamers, however, boys showed more peer problems than girls at this study’s final measurement point. Although difficult to interpret, this may indicate a greater need to buffer male children’s ability to relate to their peers. Given the observed findings and boys’ proclivity toward video games, it is possible that competitive gaming helps meet this demand. Although competitive gaming may be uniquely beneficial to boys, it is also possible that competitive video games are disproportionately designed for male audiences. For example, the most popular competitive game in our sample was a soccer video game (Fifa); in the Netherlands, soccer is a predominantly male sport. It may therefore be important for studies to identify the competitive games favored by girls and to investigate their potential influence on girls’ social competencies. Similarly, it may be worthwhile for game designers to develop competitive games that target female audiences. Limitations and Future Directions This study had a number of limitations. First, our competitive gaming variable allowed some ambiguity. We chose to determine competitive gaming based on children’s nominations, a method used similarly in other studies (Adachi & Willoughby, 2016). This is a more naturalistic and likely less subjective method than using a Likert scale. However, children were able to nominate more than one video game among their favorites. Thus, although all children who nominated a competitive video game were considered competitive gamers, some of these children were likely more inclined to play competitively than others. Similarly, for our moder...
Purchase answer to see full attachment
Explanation & Answer:
2 pages
User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running Head: VIDEOGAMES ARE NOT HARMFUL TO CHILDREN

Videogames are not harmful to children
Student’s Name:
Professor Name:
Course Number:
Date:

1

VIDEOGAMES ARE NOT HARMFUL TO CHILDREN

2

Introduction
As media continues to become an essential part of our lives, there is a continuing concern
over the impacts of medias such as video games on children/young people. The growing
populace of computers and video games in the world is depicted by the rise in the sale of both
from $7 billion in 2003 to $15.4 billion in 2014 (Harrington & O’Connell, 2016). These statistics
indicate that more and more people are investing and spending on computers and video games.
According to some researchers, video games serve as critical teaching resources since the games
are founded on learning principles that enable the video game players to serve the role of
producers rather than consumers (Harrington & O’Connell, 2016). Hence, these researchers hold
that the use of video games in schools and clinical settings is healthy and positively contributes
to the growth of the students. Despite the positive implications of video games on young people,
much research on video games has focused on their antisocial impacts like decrease in prosocial
behavior among young players (Lobel, Engels, Stone & Granic, 2019). Due to the increased
focus on negative effects of video games, methodological shortcomings during these studies
leave open the positive impacts of video games on social development of young people.
Playful competition plays an integral role ...


Anonymous
Just what I needed. Studypool is a lifesaver!

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Similar Content

Related Tags