professional men and women) were more tolerant of sexual harassment against a female college student by a male professor In another study, female college students who embodied sexualized video game characters (vs. In one study, male college students who saw photos of sex-typed male and female video game characters (vs. Rather than being punished for such behaviors, players are often rewarded (e.g., through points, extra health to their character, etc.).Īlthough sex-typed video game characters in the virtual world might affect perceptions of men and women in the real world, there is a dearth of research on this topic. For example, after paying a prostitute for sex, players can kill her and get their money back. In contrast, the female characters are portrayed as sexual objects-usually prostitutes or pole-dancers-who are peripheral to the game narrative and whose sole purpose is to entertain the main male characters. GTA main male characters are always depicted as hyper-masculine, dominant, and aggressive men. In some video games, such as the very popular Grand Theft Auto ( GTA) games, female characters are treated as sex objects rather than as individuals worthy of respect. People feel empathy for other individuals, not for objects. Numerous studies have shown that playing violent video games reduces feelings of empathy and makes people numb to the pain and suffering of others (for a meta-analytic review see ). Empathy does indeed make the world “a better place” to live and it is one of the best predictors of prosocial behavior. ![]() Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”Įmpathy is an emotional response that corresponds to the feelings of another person, such as feeling distress when seeing another person in distress. “Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. įunding: This work is supported by PRIN (2012)-20123X2PXT_003 grant to the first and the third authors, provided by MIUR, Ministry of Education, Universities and Research of Italy.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. All the original data points are available from the Open Science Framework public database. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper. Received: JAccepted: MaPublished: April 13, 2016Ĭopyright: © 2016 Gabbiadini et al. Geers, University of Toledo, UNITED STATES ![]() (200 words)Ĭitation: Gabbiadini A, Riva P, Andrighetto L, Volpato C, Bushman BJ (2016) Acting like a Tough Guy: Violent-Sexist Video Games, Identification with Game Characters, Masculine Beliefs, & Empathy for Female Violence Victims. Overall, our study shows who is most affected by the exposure to sexist-violent video games, and why the effects occur. Masculine beliefs, in turn, negatively predicted empathic feelings for female violence victims. Our results supported the prediction that playing violent-sexist video games increases masculine beliefs, which occurred for male (but not female) participants who were highly identified with the game character. We found that participants’ gender and their identification with the violent male video game character moderated the effects of the exposure to sexist-violent video games on masculine beliefs. After gameplay, measures of identification with the game character, traditional masculine beliefs, and empathy for female violence victims were assessed. Participants ( N = 154) were randomly assigned to play a violent-sexist game, a violent-only game, or a non-violent game. ![]() We also hypothesized that the endorsement of masculine beliefs would reduce empathy toward female violence victims. We hypothesized that playing violent-sexist video games would increase endorsement of masculine beliefs, especially among participants who highly identify with dominant and aggressive male game characters. ![]() This study investigates how exposure to sexist video games can decrease empathy for female violence victims. Empathy-putting oneself in another’s shoes-has been described as the “social glue” that holds society together.
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