سادیسم روزمره اولویت های بازی رایانه ای خشونت آمیز را پیش بینی می کند

Playing violent video games has become an integral part of the lives of many people, although some people more than others may be predisposed to enjoy violent video games. Two cross-sectional studies examined the extent to which everyday sadism predicts the amount of violent video game play. Past research has shown that everyday sadists obtain pleasure from cruel behaviors. Hence, I reasoned that everyday sadists are drawn to violent video games because killing game characters might be an opportunity to satisfy their need for cruelty. In fact, results revealed a positive link between everyday sadism and the amount of violent video game exposure. Moreover, this relation statistically held when controlling for the impact of trait aggression, the Big 5, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

Playing video games is becoming more and more popular. One national survey showed that 88% of American youth between ages 8 and 18 play video games (Gentile, 2009). Another survey even indicated that about 97% of teens play video games regularly (Lenhart, Kahne, Middaugh, Macgill, Evans, & Vitak, 2008). Content analyses have shown that most video games contain violence (Dill, Gentile, Richter, & Dill, 2005) and that violent video games are highly popular (Buchman & Funk, 1996). The present research examines whether some individuals are particularly predisposed to enjoy violent video games. Concretely, I reasoned that individuals who score high on the personality trait of sadism would be more likely than others to play violent video games. Sadism can be characterized as deriving pleasure from being responsible for others’ experiences of pain. Everyday sadism is the nonclinical form of sadism (Buckels, Jones, & Paulhus, 2013a), “differing from clinical sadism in that the individual does not harm others out of the need for cruelty but rather for the pleasure derived from the act” (p. 64, Porter, Bhanwer, Woodworth, & Black, 2014). Recent research has confirmed that everyday sadists indeed find more pleasure in harming other people than do nonsadists. For example, Buckels et al. (2013a) showed that sadists obtain pleasure from cruel behaviors and that they are even willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent victim. Overall, it appears that everyday sadists more than others seek opportunities to indulge their appetites for cruelty (see also Buckels, Trapnell, & Paulhus, 2014). The main goal of playing a violent video game is to seriously harm other game characters. In fact, some modern video games involve highly realistic depictions of human injury and death. Moreover, many violent video games are played from a first-person perspective. In these first-person shooter games, the player experiences the weapon-based combat through the eyes of the player character. Hence, killing as many game characters as possible during violent video game play may be a welcome opportunity for everyday sadists to satisfy their need for cruelty. This reasoning is also in line with a uses and gratifications perspective (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974). According to this view, personality dimensions create certain needs in individuals and these needs in turn influence what kind of media individuals seek out for exposure. For instance, in one study (Slater, Henry, Swaim, & Anderson, 2003), trait aggressiveness was a significant predictor for the preference for violent media (although only concurrently but not over time). Abundant research has shown that playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior. Although some studies failed to find a link between violent video game play and aggression (for a review, Elson & Ferguson, 2014), two recent meta-analyses (Anderson et al., 2010 and Greitemeyer and Mügge, 2014) showed that playing violent video games significantly increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts, hostile affect, and aggressive behavior and that these effects are consistently found in experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies. The present research aims to document a link between the amount of violent video game exposure and everyday sadism. Because everyday sadism is related to trait aggression, I also examined whether the proposed link between violent video game exposure and everyday sadism would hold when controlling for the impact of trait aggression. Previous research has shown that some of the Big 5 personality dimensions are related to violent video game preferences. Anderson et al. (2004) found that violent video game exposure was negatively associated with agreeableness and conscientiousness. Chory and Goodboy (2011) also found that individuals low (vs. high) in agreeableness are more likely to play violent video games, but they did not replicate the association between violent video game exposure and conscientiousness. Instead, they further found a positive relation between violent video game exposure and openness. In any case, it appears that everyday sadism is related to some fundamental personality dispositions and thus the Big 5 might account for the proposed link between everyday sadism and amount of violent video game play. Hence, in the present studies, the Big 5 were assessed and their influence on the relation between everyday sadism and the amount of violent video game exposure was also examined. The hypothesis that everyday sadism predicts amount of violent video game play was examined in two cross-sectional studies. It should be noted that due to the correlational nature of the study design, no causal interpretations can be made. The present research was interested in the extent to which everyday sadism predicts violent video game exposure. But violent video game exposure may also cause everyday sadism. In fact, the two directions are by no means mutually exclusive. I will return to this issue in the General Discussion.

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