Descriptive statistics
Sixty-five students participated in the current study. The majority of the students were freshmen taking an introductory psychology course, and the mean age was 18.9 years. The sample demographic, 39 male and 26 female, was more balanced than expected. Of the 65 students surveyed, 33 (54%) reported playing video games “occasionally” within the past 30 days, while another 15 students (25%) indicated they played “often”; four students (6.2%) identified not playing any video games. Overall, 97.4% of college males and 88.4% of females surveyed played video games. Games with violent content were preferred among participants; 53.8% of students wrote down a violent-themed game as their most played. Of those, 59% of the violent games contained moderate-to-extremely bloody or gory graphics.
Main analysis …show more content…
One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to compare the effect of playing violent video games on aggression levels. There was a statistically significant man effect, F (2,62) = 7.98, p =.001. A Tukey post-hoc test revealed that the mean score for the violent video game condition (M = 59.6, SD = 12.4) was significantly different from the nonviolent video condition (M = 47, SD = 10.1). However, the no video game play condition (M = 55.5, SD = 22.4) was not statistically different from the violent video game condition. Table 1 contains the means of the total trait aggression, and Table 2 contains the results of the aggression subscales (physical aggression, verbal aggression, and