DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0001 Empathy and Violent Video Games
Palgrave Studies in Cyberpsychology Series Editor: Jens Binder, Nottingham Trent University, UK Titles include John Waterworth and Giuseppe Riva FEELING PRESENT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD AND COMPUTER-MEDIATED ENVIRONMENTS Christian Happ and André Melzer EMPATHY AND VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES Forthcoming Sandy Schumann HOW THE INTERNET SHAPES COLLECTIVE ACTIONS DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0001
Empathy and Violent Video Games: Aggression and Prosocial Behavior Christian Happ University of Trier, Germany and André Melzer University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0001
Christian Happ and André Melzer 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-44012-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978 1 137 44013 6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-349-49441-5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. www.palgrave.com/pivot doi: 10.1057/9781137440136
Contents List of Figures Foreword: Why This Project? vi vii 1 Of Empathy and Media Content: Bringing Together Two Important Areas of Research 1 1.1 Empathy: a multifaceted concept 3 1.2 Media use and media effects 7 2 The E in Media is for Empathy 15 2.1 Empathy and violent media content 16 2.2 Empathy in video games: an overview 18 2.3 An empirical look at the effects of empathy in video games 19 3 What Empathy Does to the Video Gamer 30 3.1 The consequences of empathizing with the wrong game character 31 3.2 Explaining the complex effects of empathy 38 4 Dear Researcher, Gamers, Parents, and Teachers... 45 4.1 What did we find? 46 4.2 Concluding remarks 54 References 57 Index 78 DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0001 v
List of Figures 2.1 Number of stolen items (antisocial behavior) in the violent and the prosocial video game condition. Error bars indicate ±2 standard error of the mean 22 2.2 Percentage of returned questionnaires (prosocial behavior) as a function of text and game type 24 2.3 Aggressive behavioral intentions (min=1, max=4) as a function of video clip and game character. Error bars indicate ±2 standard error of the mean 28 2.4 Percentage of donations (prosocial behavior) as a function of video clip and game character 28 3.1 Prosocial behavior (picked up lost letter) for participants who had played the Joker or Superman (in per cent) 36 3.2 Hostile perception bias for participants playing the Joker or Superman as a function of having read the empathy or the neutral text. Error bars indicate ±2 standard error of the mean 37 4.1 The four propositions of the differential susceptibility to media effects model 48 vi DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0002
Foreword: Why This Project? Video games are now strongly related to the everyday life of many people; they are pervasive, ubiquitous, and no longer entertainment just for kids. At the same time, a general decrease in altruism, empathy, and charity are recurrently discussed, as is the case with the increase in selfishness in our society. Interestingly, the high rates of violence in video games and its increasingly realistic portrayal have been suggested as significant factors that further contribute to these societal tendencies. The great body of studies on the negative effects of exposure to violent video games seems to substantiate these concerns. The present project scrutinizes the role of empathy in this context: Will it matter if the player takes the perspective of a video game character and understands the character s feelings and, if so, how does this affect the player s feelings, thoughts, and behavior? Although empathy is a well-researched concept in the psychology of interpersonal relations, its role in media consumption and media effects has been largely overlooked. Only recently, empathy has been suggested as a potential moderating factor in understanding the effects of violent video game exposure (for example, Bartholow, Sestir, & Davis, 2005). Most other publications cover the state of the art regarding media effects, but do not extend their perspective towards other, untested factors in video game research (for example, Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007; Calvert & Wilson, 2010; Kirsh, 2012). While again, other books and journal articles focus on empathy research (Batson, 2009; Davis, 2004; Hoffman, DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0003 vii
viii Foreword: Why This Project? 2000; Nathanson, 2003), no research has yet systematically investigated the function and effects of empathy in the field of media effects research. It is the aim of the present project to close this gap in the literature and provide a concise and profound analysis of the role of empathy in violent video games. Based on in-depth analyses of the literature we present three empirical studies that explore the mechanisms behind the potentially moderating functions of empathy. We show that inducing empathy before playing a violent video game affects emotion and cognition, but also prosocial and aggressive behavior. However, our results also indicate that the effects of playing violent video games do not solely depend on the game content (that is, violent versus non-violent), but also on the character played (for example, hero vs. villain), as well as the players interpretations of the role of the character (for example, perpetrator vs. victim). Thus, the present project reveals new insights into empathy-based responses to violent media content. We argue that the distinctiveness of empathybased reactions in the media context (both as state and trait empathy) is an important factor in various research fields of media psychology (for example, media effects, cyberbullying and media competences). DOI: 10.1057/9781137440136.0003