Group Aggression

Although research has suggested that there is no single way to define today’s game player, it has indicated that gaming environments such as those containing multiple players are growing in popularity. Massive multiplayer online gaming (MMOG) environments have provided researchers with innovative opportunities to integrate research areas such as interpersonal, group, and mass communication. Thus, grounded in the media effects and psychology literature as well as group dynamics research, this entry examines the influence of group size on video game play. Specifically, it connects the influence that group size can have on aggression.

Since the 1990s research regarding video game content and its effect on antisocial outcomes, such as aggression, has increased. Meta-analyses conducted by Craig Anderson and colleagues substantiate the positive relationship between violent video game play and aggressive outcomes. Within the field of communication, investigators have utilized several theories to explain human aggression, including arousal theory, excitation transfer, and social cognitive theory. From these theoretical frameworks, a model on human aggression known as the general aggression model (GAM) was developed by Anderson and colleagues.

The GAM merges the situational context of violent exposure with the individual’s person-attributes as a framework for understanding violent media effects. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman described the process as the “activation and application of aggression-related knowledge structures stored in memory (e.g., scripts, schemas)” (2002, p. 1680). The GAM is generally known through its single-episode model that demonstrates how the individual inputs of environment and person influence internal states of cognition (i.e., state hostility), affect, and arousal. Situational inputs in gaming research oftentimes include exposure to violent or nonviolent content. Person variables can include gender, attitudes, long-term goals, traits, and so on. In terms of violent game play, the game’s content and the player’s person-attributes combine to prime aggressive cognition, arousal, and aggressive affect. Because each gaming session is considered a learning opportunity for real-world behavior, over time and repeated exposures, knowledge structures made more accessible through confrontational situations become increasingly difficult to change. To this end, each time an aggressive response is performed through play, a knowledge structure is made or strengthened and may be called upon in contexts within and outside the gaming environment. In this way, the GAM indicates the activation and application of aggression scripts are nothing more than rehearsed knowledge structures and these structures are not medium dependent and thus learned behavior within game play can be activated during a real-world encounter.

The GAM is not without alternative voices. For example, when researching both hostility and prosocial effects from playing Asheron’s Call 2, a game where violent action during play was not forced or directed at other players and is generally considered a more community oriented game, Dmitri Williams and Marko Skoric observed increased prosocial feelings from play. Also supporting the potential for prosocial effects, Nick Yee asserts that given the socioemotional nature and amount of positive conversations taking place between players during play, MMOGs should be considered collaborative environments.