Cooper and Mackie

• year?

  1986
• aim?

  see whether video games have an effect on violent behaviour more than tv did; also wanted to see whether there would be any gender differences in the effects of violent behaviour
• hypothesis?

  playing aggressive video games would have more effect on violent behaviour compared to playing other games
• sample?

  84 9-11 year olds from New Jersey, USA
• type of experiment?

  lab
• IV?

  type of game played - violent, non-violent or paper-and-maze game
• type of measures?

  independent - in each pair, one child played and one watched (they swapped in second trial so all children ended up getting a chance to play)
• DV?

  aggression levels of children displayed after playing the game

  -> this was measured in 2 ways: covertly observing how long children played with certain types of toys from a choice of aggressive toy, active toy, skill toy and quiet toy AND other was test activity where children showed how much they'd punish an imaginary child who'd been naughty (measured by how long they pressed a buzzer for) - this was a measure of interpersonal aggression
• results?

  measured by questionnaire the children completed
• study found?

  • questionnaire showed boys performed better on violent game compared to girls & enjoyed playing it more
  • research concluded children (mainly girls) played more w violent toy after playing violent game bc of some level of imitation; game didn't affect interpersonal aggression bc game itself didn't involve human characters
• study found?

  • ppts in aggressive game condition spent more time playing w aggressive toy than ppts who played 1 of other 2 games - truer of girls than boys
  • type of games played had no effect on interpersonal aggression, but children showed higher levels of aggression when they played a game rather than watched
• Criticisms:

  • lacked ecological validity bc carried out in artificial conditions - video games would normally be played at home/in arcades rather than in lab under strict conditions
  • used independent measures so possible violent video game condition showed higher levels of aggression bc of individuals who happened to be allocated to that group - may have been more violent on average by nature/reasons outside of experiment
• Criticisms:

  • sample wasn't age or culturally representative as only carried out with American children and a narrow age group
  • only immediate effect of video games was tested whereas in reality playing games like this has more of an effect over time
  • findings are out of date as computer games are v different nowadays - with better graphs and more realism, today's have more influence on aggressive behaviour