The Influence And Mechanism Of Teammate Helping Behavior On Players’ Reactive Aggression In Violent Video Games

With the popularization of the Internet and electronic devices,violent online games are becoming more and more popular and increasingly enter the daily life of college students,which has a profound impact on their cognition and behavior.Previous studies on violent online games mostly focus on the influence of game content on players.However,in the face of colorful game interaction situations,players’ behavioral responses are increasingly complex,which will be affected not only by game content,but also by the behavior of online teammates.Therefore,It is important to examine the interaction between game content and teammate behavior on players’ reactive aggressive behavior.According to previous studies,hostility attribution bias is an important variable to explain reactive aggression behavior.This study will further investigate its mediating effect in violent online games.In addition,previous researches on the moderating factors of the negative effects of violent online games on players mainly focus on stable personality traits,but not all game players have such traits.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the moderating factors of universality from the clues of game mechanics.Previous studies have shown that game outcome factors in game content have a significant impact on players’ aggressive behavior,and the effect of this effect on violent online multiplayer games is worth further investigation.Therefore,in order to explore the interaction effect between game results and teammates’ helping behaviors,this study focuses on players’ different reactions to teammates’ helping behaviors under different game results,and explains the internal psychological mechanism of reactive aggression based on comprehensive cognitive model theory.On this basis,from the game mechanism(such as elimination of cues)to explore the moderating factors,to avoid the impact of interference violent online games on players’ reactive aggression.In the first study,a two-factor experiment design was used to investigate the effects of game outcome and teammate helping behavior on players’ reactive aggression by using 2(game result: win/lose)× 2(teammate helping behavior: rescue/no rescue).Eighty college students(37 male students)were selected as subjects to operate and set different scenes of the same game material,and the test players were randomly assigned to different groups for experimental research.The results showed that the reactive aggression level of the losing group was significantly higher than that of the winning group.The reactive aggression level of players in the non-rescue group was significantly higher than that in the rescue group.Reactive aggression was highest in the group where the game was lost and the team did not heal.On the basis of study 1,Study 2 further explores the psychological mechanism behind players’ highly reactive aggressive behavior caused by teammates’ non-rescue behavior in the context of game failure.With 88 college students(37 male students)as subjects,different game operation Settings of the same game were used to explore the influence of teammate helping behavior on reactive aggression of the tested players,the mediating effect of hostility attribution bias and the moderating effect of elimination cues(such as system elimination and enemy elimination).The results show that hostility attribution bias partially mediates the relationship between the two variables,and elimination cues mediate the first and second half of the mediation model.