Greitmeyer and Osswald (2010) Playing Prosocial Video Games Increases Empathy and Decreases Schadenfreude



Thesis/Purpose: Greitmeyer and Osswald analyze how empathy might increase by playing video games and decrease the pleasure for someone else’s misfortunes, as well as testing the idea that the more exposure to prosocial video games someone has the more their “schadenfreude” will decrease.

Methods: There were 56 students that participated in this study. There were 28 men and 28 women exactly. Each was randomly assigned to play either a prosocial or neutral video game. The participants were all tested individually as opposed to testing together. Each participant was a part of two different studies in order to get the best results to analyze whether the purpose of the study is affective. One of the studies was about the “enjoyment of classical computer games” and the other was about “impression formation.” The participants either played Lemmings which went under the category of a prosocial video game or they played Tetris which fell under the neutral game. They were told to play the game they were randomly assigned to for 10 minutes. After they completed this part, there was the second part of the study to complete. The participants were than handed an vignette which was titled: “Paris Hilton has to go to jail: At the end of February, the party girl drove with high speed and without light through Hollywood, although she had no driver’s license.” After each participant read the vignette, they were asked three different feelings regarding the topic of Paris Hilton. To check for manipulation, the participants were asked to rate the content of their video game on a scale of how prosocial it was. Same went for asking about the neutral game. Lastly, they were asked demographic questions and that was the end of the study.

Comparison to other material: In comparison to other materials I would say that this study was the most thought out and conducted in a statistical and formal manner. The outline of the study was not confusing by any means and made sense according to what the purpose of the study was trying to evaluate.

Keywords: media effects, video games, schadenfreude, empathy

On the (non)existence/impact/nature of bias: The amount of people who already knew about the Paris Hilton vignette would not have impacted them as much as other participants when asked what emotion they felt after reading it. The vignette was said in the article to have been on the major news articles so it would have made more sense to pick a conflicting topic that was not displayed yet to the public before the study was conducted.

On the nature of learning: The amount of exposure to prosocial video games helped to enhance empathy and decreased want to misfortune others outside of the game. This is important to learning especially since violent video games sometimes set empathy aside for the player. It is important to understand that playing prosocial video games can increase empathy and the want to help others and not cause misfortunes.

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