Social cognition
Does playing aggressive card games make people more aggressive?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Playing an aggressive card game helps reduce negative emotions and boost positive ones without increasing post-game aggression or aggressive thinking.
Key findings
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.
Methodology
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.
Limitations
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.
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