Does playing aggressive card games make people more aggressive?
Playing an aggressive card game helps reduce negative emotions and boost positive ones without increasing post-game aggression or aggressive thinking.
Source
Short-term exposure to aggressive card game: releasing emotion without escalating post-game aggression
What they did
Researchers recruited 168 undergraduate students in China to play the card game Saboteur. Players were assigned to either the aggressive 'saboteur' role or the cooperative 'miner' role. The game sessions lasted an average of 25.65 minutes. Afterwards, players completed a spatial cueing task consisting of 10 practice trials and 60 formal trials, an emotional recognition test featuring 96 distinct facial photographs, and a behavioral task where they chose 11 mazes from a pool of 30.
What they found
The study found that playing the card game did not increase post-game aggressive behavior or make participants pay more attention to aggressive images. Instead, both groups showed an increase in positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions after playing. Interestingly, the aggressive 'saboteur' players experienced a larger boost in positive emotions and were more likely to mistake neutral facial expressions for happy ones compared to the 'miner' group.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This study only looked at the short-term effects of a brief card game session, meaning it cannot determine the long-term impact of regularly playing aggressive card games. Additionally, because aggressive behavior was measured using a maze-selection task in a lab, the results may not translate directly to real-world physical or verbal aggression. The research also relied on subjective self-reports to measure in-game aggression, which could introduce bias, and did not track physiological arousal to understand why these emotional shifts occurred.
Key terms
- General Aggression Model (GAM)
- A theoretical framework suggesting that personal and environmental factors trigger internal states (like hostile thoughts or angry feelings) that lead to aggressive actions.
- Cathartic effect
- The psychological theory that expressing aggressive energy or playing aggressive games helps release negative emotions and reduces overall feelings of anger.
- Attentional bias
- A tendency to pay selective attention to certain types of stimuli, such as aggressive images, over others in the environment.
- Spatial cueing task
- A cognitive test used to measure how quickly individuals shift their visual attention to targets preceded by different types of cues.
- Maze selection task
- A behavioral test where participants choose the difficulty of puzzles for another person, used to measure post-game aggressive behavior.
- Penn emotion recognition test
- A psychological assessment that uses facial photographs to evaluate how accurately people can identify different human emotions.
Flashcards
Want these cards to stick?
Save the deck to NoteFren and study it with spaced repetition.
Quiz yourself
Which theoretical model is commonly used to explain the acquisition of aggression from violent video games but was challenged by the findings of this card game study?
Common questions
Does playing aggressive card games make people more violent in real life?
No, the study found that a short session of an aggressive card game did not increase post-game aggressive behaviors or hostile thinking. Instead, it helped players release negative emotions.
Why did the 'saboteurs' feel happier after playing aggressively?
The researchers suggest that proactively executing aggressive game strategies provides a sense of fun and challenge, which triggers a positive emotional release (or catharsis).
How do card games differ from violent video games in their psychological effects?
Unlike video games, card games do not have flashing, highly stimulating screens that trigger strong physiological stress responses, and they involve real-life social interactions that help buffer negative feelings.
What role did the 'miner' role play in this study?
The 'miner' served as the control or comparison group, following cooperative game rules, allowing researchers to compare their psychological states against the aggressive 'saboteur' players.
More on Social cognition