Violent Computer Games and their Effect on State Hostility and Physiological Arousal

Violent Computer Games and their Effect

Introduction

With the advent of modern technology , computer games are now more realistic . They mirror the real world . Some of the played computer games are violent and the main costumers of computer games are the youth These computer games are mostly played by children . These computer games are part of their childhood

In the recent years , many psychologists made studies on the influence of violent computer games to a child behavior . If playing violent computer games will lead to aggressiveness and juvenile delinquency . In a

survey conducted by psychologists , 32 of the youth tend to play fantasy violence , sport is 29 , general entertainment is 20 , human violence comprise to 17 and the least played computer game is educational games which is 2 of the Summary of the article review

Purpose

The main purpose of the research is to analyze the short-term effects of playing violent computer games on the affective states such as the state hostility and state anxiety and on the physiological arousal

Method

The study was conducted on the eighty-seven undergraduate students (53 male , 34 female ) from different courses and universities . The age ranges from 18 to 25 . Four treatments were used to students . The four treatments were Lotus , Flowers , Doom I , and HMD . The parameters to be obtained were , the time spent in playing violent computer games aggressiveness , anxiety , state hostility and arousal . The collection of data on the time spent , the researchers ' uses a scale that will estimate on the time spent , on aggressiveness the Portuguese version of the aggression questionnaire was used , on the anxiety , State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-form Y was used , on the state hostility , the Anderson and Morrow State Hostility Scale was used to assess the state hostility and in the arousal state , the heart rate level (HRL ) and skin conductance levels (SCLs ) were used to examine the arousal state of the participants

Result

The result obtained regarding on the time spent shows that boys spent more time playing computer games (M 2 .57 ) than girls (M 2 .03 , F (1 , 79 7 .45 ,

.01 . For the state anxiety , the result shows that there is main effect in the gender , F (1 , 78 4 .19 ,

.05 , with females having higher state of anxiety (M 34 .76 ) than males (M 32 . Students who played violent computer games exhibit higher state of hostility (M 62 .81 ) than those who did not play (M 54 .48 ) and (M 54 .79 ) for Lotus and Flowers respectively . In the arousal state , SCL , F (2 80 21 .97 ,

.001 , and HRL , F (2 , 77 7 .04 ,

.01 shows significant result . The SCL result was significant only when related to the gender and game condition Woman who played violent games has higher SCLs (M 9 .26 . And females has higher HRL (M 105 .59 ) than on males (M 93 .03 ) when playing computer games

Discussion

In this , the main purpose is to study the effects of playing violent computer games...