Effects of Violent Video Game Play on Attitudes toward Behavioral Deviance: Mechanisms of Self Involvement, Affective Responses, and Motivated Attitude Change

Violent video games are immensely popular among children and adults, making it crucial to understand how these games affect the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of those who play them. The present research proposed an account by which video game effects are driven by elements of self involvement, affective responses, and motivated attitude change. According to this account, performing immoral behaviors in a virtual environment can cause an aversive affective response akin to cognitive dissonance. Players are motivated to reduce this aversive affect by shifting their attitudes to accommodate their immoral virtual behavior, increasing their tolerance of deviant behaviors overall. Importantly, such changes in affective responses and subsequent attitudes should be most likely if players believe their game play behavior was freely emitted and self-reflective. Accordingly, it was hypothesized that participants who believed they chose to play a violent video game would subsequently report greater tolerance toward deviant behaviors than those who were assigned to play a violent game or who played a non-violent game. Furthermore, these effects were predicted to be strongest among individuals high in private self-consciousness because they tend to reflect about themselves. Finally, it was hypothesized that affective responses to violent game play would mediate attitude outcomes in a manner consistent with dissonance reduction processes.;A series of five experiments tested this account by manipulating the extent to which participants believed they freely chose to play a violent video game and measuring their subsequent attitudes toward deviant behaviors. A variety of approaches (including subjective reports and psychophysiological recordings) were used to measure aversive affect before, during, and following video game play. Across experiments, the effect of violent video games on attitudes toward behavioral deviance was moderated by self-involvement (perceived choice and private self-consciousness) and mediated by changes in affective responses consistent with dissonance. These results suggest acting immorally in a virtual world can shift a player's moral compass, but the extent to which this happens is partially determined by how the player interprets the meaning of his or her own gameplay behavior. These results increase understanding of the circumstances under which video games have negative outcomes.