Kill bandits, collect gold or save the dying: The effects of playing a prosocial video game.

Abstract

Violent video games are known to significantly increase aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior (Anderson, Gentile & Buckley, 2007). The effects of a prosocial video game were examined here. here were three video game conditions: violent (killing bandits), helping (saving people from dying by administering medicine), or neutral (collecting bags of gold), and two control conditions (game expectant but no game played, and no game). In the game playing conditions, participants played ten minutes of a video game built with tools from Neverwinter Nights and tried to earn points by carrying out the assigned task. All participants then completed three stories which were scored for prosocial, aggressive and neutral responses. MANOVA analyses showed a significant effect for the helping condition in increasing prosocial responses. There was no significant difference across conditions for aggressive responses. Findings are discussed in terms of how a helping-oriented game may promote a prosocial expectancy bias.