This study investigated whether media interactivity would influence the short-term effects of violent content on audience aggression. The general aggression model, social cognitive theory, and character identification offered the theoretical framework. A random sample of 102 male college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: video game playing, recorded game-play watching, or movie watching. The results indicated that video game players (mediated enactive experience) experienced greater increases in aggressive affect, aggressive cognition, and physiological arousal than participants who watched recorded game play or comparable movie scenes (mediated observational experience). The study indicated that media interactivity in video game exacerbated the violent effect on short-term, aggressive responses. Character identification did not mediate the effect of media interactivity on aggression. Future studies should incorporate more comprehensive measures of character identification to investigate inconsistent findings regarding media interactivity and identification.
Over the past few decades, research has shown a positive association between media violence and the audience’s aggression and violent behavior (Anderson et al., 2010 and Bandura et al., 1961). More recently, there has been a shift in attention from a focus on violence in TV and film to that in video games (Anderson et al., 2004 and Anderson and Dill, 2000). Based on the general aggression model (GAM), exposure to video game violence has been found to increase players’ short-term physiological arousal, aggressive thoughts, aggressive affect, and aggressive behavior and long-term aggression (Anderson and Bushman, 2002 and Bushman and Anderson, 2002). With the rapid growth in popularity of video games, researchers have started to question whether the relative magnitudes of violent effects vary between video games and TV (Dill and Dill, 1998 and Dominick, 1984).
There are two lines of argument regarding the comparative magnitudes of violent effects stemming from video games and TV. Arguments that support the position that violent video games may have weaker effects on aggression than does TV emphasize the unrealistic graphics, abstract violence, and non-human characters of games. Researchers have argued that the realism of depicted violence affects the audience’s imitation and aggression (Potter, 1999). A meta-analysis (Sherry, 2001) showed a positive association between video game violence and aggression, but the relationship was weaker than what was found in TV violence. On the other hand, arguments that suggest violent video games may have greater effects on players’ aggression than TV emphasize media interactivity and behavior rehearsal in games. A longitudinal report on risk factors for aggressive behavior showed that the overall effect size of video game violence was .30 compared to .17 for other media violence (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007). Moreover, researchers argued that violent video games allow players to identify themselves with characters, which increases imitation of aggressive behaviors (Dill and Dill, 1998 and Gentile and Anderson, 2003).
Whether media interactivity would intensify the violence-aggression relationship is important to our society because the findings help to make sense of such effects, and understanding the underlying mechanism provides further insights for educators and policy makers to set guidelines for violence prevention and violence literacy education. However, very little prior research has directly addressed the issue of media interactivity with regard to violent effects (Gentile & Anderson, 2003). What is the difference between interactive media, such as video games, and non-interactive media, such as TV and film? While researchers (Dill and Dill, 1998 and Klimmt et al., 2009) usually distinguish these two based on “interactivity,” this is an ambiguous concept that is currently mentioned more implicitly (McMillan, 2002). The mechanism and theoretical distinction between video games and TV/film have not been clarified. This study employed the GAM and social cognitive theory (SCT) to continue to explore this issue. This study tested the effects of interactivity on aggressive outcomes and character identification as the mediator between the relationship of interactivity and aggressive outcomes. In addition, prior studies have been confounded by uncontrolled, manifest differences in content between modalities, including the amount of violence displayed. This study kept violent content across media constant to compare the effects of video games and corresponding recorded game play and movie sections.
In conclusion, the results in this study showed that media interactivity had greater effects on audience aggression after keeping the amount of violent content constant across different media formats. This study focused on comparing the effects of video game playing versus video game watching, and video game playing versus movie watching, on audience aggression. Results of these two pairs of comparisons indicated that video game playing caused a greater increase in aggressive affect, a higher proportion of aggressive cognition, and a greater increase in blood pressure than the two watching conditions. The results indicated that media interactivity is one of the important situational factors in GAM, which would intensify the triggered aggressive outcomes in the mediated contexts. Active participation in violent content has caused greater effects on aggression as opposed to passive observation in the context of video games. An orthogonal design incorporating an interactive movie condition is needed to further examine whether active video game play would exert greater influence on aggression than active movie watching, and comparing active movie with passive movie watching, in order to further clarify the effect of media modality on aggression. This study did not find the hypothesized, mediating role of character identification on the effects of media interactivity on aggression. Media interactivity did not affect audience aggression through character identification. Participants who played the video game did not perceive more to be like the character in the game, as compared to those in watching conditions, which did not further influence their aggression. Future research is needed to further investigate the underlying process.
