Liberty city in a fine city : an aggression and cultivation research study amongst youths in Singapore.

Abstract

This study is the first controlled, longitudinal experiment that attempts to examine the long-term effects of violent video game in a lab setting. Participants played Grand Theft Auto IV for two hours per session, two sessions a week over a period of three weeks and were compared to a control group on trait aggression, attitudes toward violence, empathy, and first and second-order cultivation measures. The findings did not support the assertion that playing violent video games increases aggression nor reduces empathy as predicted by the General Aggression Model. However, playing violent video games did strengthen proviolence attitudes. Results also show that those who were most satisfied with playing violent video games were more aggressive than those who were least satisfied. Playing violent video games also changes an individual‟s perception of the world when measured for game related issues in both first-order and second-order judgments. For first-order judgments, those who played the game overestimated the prevalence of deaths from car accidents and deaths from drug overdose. Interestingly, they also reported feeling safer from robbers while walking along the streets, and thought it was harder to steal a car when tested for second-order judgments. The cultivation findings were discussed using Shrum‟s Social Cognition Approach.