Cooper and Mackie

• Background:

  Studies had indicated that aggression on television could be responsible for violent behaviour. However, watching television is passive, playing video games is much more active. Cooper and Mackie (1986) wanted to see if this would make a difference (active- playing the game yourself OR passive – watching someone else play) in which behaviours were imitated. They also wanted to focus on gender – males have been shown to be more affected by observing aggression than females.
• Hypothesis:

  Playing aggressive video games compared to other types of games would lead to increased aggression in children.
• Design:


  -      Laboratory experiment

  -      Independent measures
• IV 


  type of games played or observed
• DV


  aggression levels after the playing or observing the game.
• Sample

  New Jersey, USA. Eighty four 9-11 year olds. Parents had consented. A week before the experiment the children filled out a questionnaire to assess their experience of video games. Students were put into pairs – matched on age and gender. One child played the game and the other was told to observe.
• Materials


  Missile Command (aggressive video game), Pac-man (video game), Star Wars and Tron paper and pen maze games. Warrior figure, basketball set, pinball machine, building blocks, buzzer, questionnaire for recording previous experience of video games, questionnaire for rating games played in the experiment.
• Extraneous variables were controlled by all the participants had eight minutes playing the game allocated. 2 minutes to familiarise themselves with the game. After the 8 minutes the pairs of watchers and players were split up. One of each pair was taken to a playroom, while the other was taken to a room to do a test.