The effect of video games on positive and negative cognitions

Tailson Evangelista Mariano, Valdiney Veloso Gouveia, Carlos Eduardo Pimentel

Abstract


The effects of video games have attracted the attention of many researchers in psychology, especially when one suggests aggressive behavior related to violent games. Games with pro-social content have attracted less attention, but research in the field reveals that pro-social games increase positive cognitions and that violent games increase the incidence of aggressive cognitions. The objective of the current study was to verify the effect of violent and pro-social games on the cognitions of the players within two days of experiments. To this end, 30 undergraduate students played one type of game each day for 20 minutes and responded to a word-free association task to categorize their cognitions into either positive or negative. The main findings showed that violent games increased the occurrence of negative cognitions, but the pro-social games did not increase the pro-social cognitions. Finally, these findings are discussed based on previous research on the effect of violent and pro-social video game play.


Keywords


video games; aggression; cognition

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.18256/2175-5027.2020.v12i1.3172

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