ENG 225 Rhetoric and Gaming

Prescott, Sargent, and Hull use meta analysis to determine the links between video game violence, aggression, and ethnicity. The following is my annotation of their paper. This study seeks to determine the reliability and effects of the claim that exposure to video game violence causes aggression. It also seeks to find the effect, if any, that ethnicity has on exposure to video game violence and aggression. Aggression in the study is categorized as “overt physical aggression” in order to avoid false inflations of results for minor increases in aggression. As a result, a weak link was found between video game violence and aggression. In addition, this result varied by ethnicity. The strongest correlation was for white participants, and the weakest correlation was for Hispanic participants. In order to gain studies for meta analysis, this study sorted through a collection of databases with combinations of relevant keywords such as video games and aggressive behavior. All studies were ...

Yang, S. (2014). Effects of avatar race in violent video games on racial attitudes and aggression The article claims that the media frequently portrays Black characters as violent in video games. These characters reinforce racial stereotypes and aggression perpetuating racist or prejudice tendencies amongst White gamers. There were 126 White college students, which is 60% male and 40% female; the gender of the participants was not relevant to the experiment though. The participants were told that they were only being tested on their gaming skills. After giving their consent, participants played Saints Row 2, a game that is Grand Theft Auto, for 20 min on a Playstation 3. The participants were randomly assigned to play the game as either a Black or White male avatar. Prior to the participants’ arrival at the experiment, the experimenter set up the game with the appropriate avatar and rotated the game view, so that the avatar was seen face on by the participant when he or she star...