On April 21, Dr. Laura Stockdale presented her research on the effect of media violence on behavior and emotional processing. Her goal was to determine the difference in neural activity pertaining to empathy in frequent vs infrequent violent video games players through a self-report measure as well as a stop-signal task with EEG. She hypothesized that frequent game players would be less empathetic, desensitized to affective stimuli, and recruit less neural resources during response inhibition. During the stop-signal task, she measured P100 (automatic processing), N170 (facial processing), and P200 (implicit emotional processing) amplitudes. The result of these measurements supported her hypotheses. In her presentation, she noted that frequent games players showed the same response inhibition as infrequent game players, but they required much less effort to do so. Dr. Stockdale is currently working on a longitudinal study for aggressive behavior and wants to fully understand the effect that media violence has on people.
After listening to this presentation, I was very curious about whether or not there is any research indicating that aggressive behavior is sex-dependent. Dr. Stockdale noted that she realized she needed to include all male participants, as the overwhelming majority of her frequent game players were male. I decided to search for an article on sex-related difference in aggression.
In the article “Assessment of Gender Differences on Aggressive Behavior among Undergraduates of Benue State University Makurdi, Nigeria,” the researchers aimed to determine if there was an influence of gender difference on aggression. They conducted a survey that included 150 participants from Benue State University, of which 73 were male and 77 were female. In the introduction, they included various articles that have examined this before and found a statistical difference in aggression between genders, and this was the basis of their study. Not only did these researchers survey physical aggression, but they also surveyed verbal aggression as well as anger levels. I think this was a really smart decision because it results in a more holistic view of the research question, as “aggression” can manifest in many different ways. Their research concluded that there was a statistically significant difference in physical and verbal aggression between males and females, but no statistically significant difference in anger levels. Males were more physically aggressive than females, while females were more verbally aggressive than males. I believe this has a lot of implications for how our environment and culture affects us.
I think this article is one in a long line of studies that will be helpful in determining social, cultural, and biological differences in males and females that contribute to aggression. I also think it would be really interesting for Dr. Stockdale to use this information in one of her studies, and I would like to see what differences between frequent and infrequent game players arise if all participants are female. I am interested to see what results she obtains in her longitudinal study, if there will be any significant sex-dependent differences, and how we will use that research in sociocultural definitions and explanations.
Stockdale, L., Morrison, R. G., Palumbo, R., Garbarino, J., & Silton, R. L. (2017). Cool, callous and in control: superior inhibitory control in frequent players of video games with violent content. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 12(12), 1869-1880.
No comments:
Post a Comment