Killing for Fun: A Study of the Effect Violent Videogames have on the Player

Student's Name

Mike Goracke, Minnesota State University, Mankato

1st Student's Major

English

1st Student's College

Arts and Humanities

Students' Professional Biography

Mike Goracke was a Technical Communications student in the English Department at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Mentor's Name

Gretchen Haas Perbix

Mentor's Email Address

gretchen.perbix@mnsu.edu

Mentor's Department

English

Mentor's College

Arts and Humanities

Abstract

Many studies have been done to see if there are aggressive effects on people that play violent videogames. Even in the early 80s, there was concern that games like Pac Man were too violent for youth. Most studies have concluded that violent games have a negative effect on young people. Yet, I believe that many of these studies had flaws in the research methods. Therefore, I based my study on a previous study done by Bushman and Anderson (2002). My study consisted of a sample of 10 male Minnesota State University (MSU) students who listened to a scenario that would gage aggressive responses, then they were to write how they would react in that specific situation. Next, I had the participants play a violent videogame for 20 minutes. They completed a different scenario by writing how they would react to that specific situation. I compared the number of aggressive responses recorded in the two scenarios before and after playing the videogame. I wanted to see if there was a correlation between violent videogame playing and aggressive behavior/responses. Results from this study concluded that there is, in fact, an increase in aggressive behavior/responses after playing violent videogames.

Recommended Citation

Goracke, Mike (2006) "Killing for Fun: A Study of the Effect Violent Videogames have on the Player," Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato: Vol. 6, Article 7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56816/2378-6949.1114
Available at: https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/jur/vol6/iss1/7

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