Moral disengagement in violent video games

Video games have become a major branch of the entertainment industry, even outnumbering the business of cinema movies in terms of sales revenues (Vorderer, Bryant, Pieper & Weber, 2006). Likewise and linked to the growing relevance, an increasing number of media and communication researchers turn to study video games, why and how they are used and what effects they foster. At the Annenberg School for Communication, the ASC Games Group has been established in 2002 to bundle the research efforts of USC Communication researchers involved in the study of video games. In this group, as well as in the emerging field in general, one of the most prominent line of research has been dedicated to the experience and effects of violent games use (Weber, Ritterfeld & Mathiak, 2006; see for an overview Anderson & Bushman, 2001). However, despite of intrigueing and clear-cut findings on the effects of violent game play, the actual playing experience has only received little attention in the past.

A recent project launched by Peter Vorderer and Tilo Hartmann of the ASC Games Group now takes a closer look of how players feel and think while playing violent video games, particularly ego-shooters (see also Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann & Vorderer, in press a, b). The project builds on theories of moral disengagement (Bandura, 2002) and moral exclusion (Opotow, 1990) that explicate how diverse situational cues and rationalization processes of the user can promote violent behaviour (e.g. “acting out of good moral intentions”, “neglect the consequences of own actions”, “perpetrating against humans or creatures”). In two empirical studies, experimentally manipulated versions of popular ego-shooters will be applied in order to test the assumption that contemporary violent video games are designed to elicit moral disengagement and thus enable enjoyment of violent play behaviour. Subjects’ feelings of guilt, moral concern and game enjoyment will be assessed in order to measure the degrees of moral disengagement during game play.

In order to strengthen cross-disciplinary research at the USC dealing with video games, the “Moral Disengagement”-project is laid out as a collaboration of the ASC games group and a group of the Viterbi School of Engineering lead by Anthony Borquez. Two students (Tyler Friddle and Thomas Lewis) of the engineer group will work on the editing (i.e. modding, source code programming) of the video game stimuli to be applied in the experiments. Whole new scenarios will be created by exploiting the abilities of two popular ego-shooters, Operation Flashpoint and Half-Life2.

Contact:
Peter Vorderer
E-mail: vorderer@usc.edu

Tilo Hartmann
E-mail: thartman@usc.edu

Christoph Klimmt
E-mail: klimmt@ijk.hmt-hannover.de

Readings

  1. Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2001). Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: A meta-analytical review of the scientific literature. Psychological Science, 12, 353-359.

  2. Bandura, A. (2002). Selective moral disengagement in the exercise of moral agency. Journal of Moral Education, 31 (2), 101-119.

  3. Klimmt, C., Schmid, H., Nosper, A., Hartmann, T., & Vorderer, P. (in press). Moral management: Dealing with moral concerns to maintain enjoyment of violent video games. In A. Sudmann-Jahn, & R. Stockmann (Eds.), Games without frontiers - wars without tears.

  4. Klimmt, C., Schmid, H., Nosper, A., Hartmann, T., & Vorderer, P. (in press). How players manage moral concerns to make video game violence enjoyable. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research.

  5. Opotow, S. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction. Journal-of-Social-Issues, 46(1), 1-20.

  6. Vorderer, P., Bryant, J., Pieper, K., & Weber, R. (2006). Playing video games as entertainment. In P. Vorderer & J. Bryant (Eds.), Playing video games: Motives, responses, and consequences (pp. 1 - 7). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

  7. Weber, R., Ritterfeld, U., & Mathiak, K. (2006). Does playing violent video games induce aggression? Empirical evidence of a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Media Psychology, 1, 39-60.