EFFECTS OF VIDEO GAMES & COMPUTERS.

VIDEO GAMES

WHAT?

Playing video games is different from watching t.v as people are actively involved, the impact of the game is affected by computer graphics which makes games more realistic.

STUDY - GAMES AND CONTENT - DIETZ 

Examined 33 popular games by Nintendo & Sega, he found that 80% contained aggressive images and 21% showed violence against women. More recent research found 94% contained aggression. Suggests that games today contain more aggressive content. 

EVALUATION

Although games might contain aggression and might affect aggressive behaviour.

Gentile et al found that pro-social games can have a positive impact. 

161 college students were randomly assigned to play pro-social games and behaved more helpfully afterwards than those who played violent behaviour and the effects were long-lasting.

Temporal validity - modern games and graphics which reflects on recent behaviour patterns of young people.

Populational validity - college students might be different from non college students, on the other hand, the games affected students negatively when playing aggressive games so they might show the full range of reactions to both pro-social and aggressive games.

Ecological validity - tested real behaviour rather than just attitudes, which can be different from real behaviour. I.e your attitude to something is differnt from acting on it (behaving)

Cross cultural - study took placce in three different countries which adds to cross cultural dimensions of behaviour. However all the countries were Western rather than Non Western. This is important to remember as collectivist behaviour is more common in western countries and so pro-social behaviour may be more common in non-western societies than western making the sample limited as behaviour in Non-western countries were not measured.

Further research - Pardilla found in a survey of 813 university students that there was a correlation between times spent playing video games and quality of…