WK 8-1 NOTES AGGRESSION

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Videogames and Aggression

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Professor’s Name

Date

Videogames and Aggression

Introduction

The objective of this study is to establish a correlation between aggression and the time spent playing video games. Aggression is considered normal human behavior and plays a huge role in development, especially in boys. In the experiment, variable A will be the time spent playing video games, while variable B will be aggression. Variable A can be averagely defined as the maximum number of hours per week spent playing video games. In contrast, Variable B will be operationally defined as a number derived from the aggression scale (Przybylski & Weinstein,2019). This study seeks to establish that if there is a rise in the hours spent playing video games, then the figure on the aggression scale rises. This, therefore, prompts the null and alternative hypotheses to be as follows:

H0: There is no association between the time spent playing video games and aggression

Ha: There is an association between the time spent playing video games and aggression.

Methodology

Random selection of the study participants will occur in a local middle school where every child will be given an equal opportunity to be selected hence avoiding bias. There will be a random selection of 5 children who volunteered to be part of the study (Senthilnathan,2019). The children are to be aged between 11 and 15 years. Naturalistic observations come in handy for collecting the number of hours children spend playing video games each week. Aggression can also be expressed through physical or verbal aggression (Drummond et al.,2021). Aggressive behavior can be measured through the use of the aggressive behavior scale.

Results and Discussion

Correlations
	Time spent playing video games	Aggression
Time spent playing video games	Pearson Correlation	1	.056
	Sig. (2-tailed)		.928
	N	5	5
Aggression	Pearson Correlation	.056	1
	Sig. (2-tailed)	.928
	N	5	5

Since the study yielded a correlation of 0.56, there is a positive association between the time children spend playing video games and aggression. With a strength of 0.56, the correlation can be deemed moderately strong, and positivity implies an association between the variables (Senthilnathan,2019). Therefore, there is a 0.56 probability of a child exhibiting aggression if their playing time is high. Some reasons for this outcome may be the nature of the video games played by children, the lack of social skills as a result of spending much time alone, less time doing chores, or participating in other activities like schoolwork. The study's main limitation is that it operated upon observational data and is hence subject to bias (Chen & Talha,2022).

Conclusion

Aggression is common, especially during the adolescent stage. The study aimed to establish if there was an association between the time that children spend playing video games and aggressive behavior. The study revealed a positive correlation between the time spent playing video games and aggressive behaviors. Using naturalistic observations and the aggressive behavior scale, data were collected from randomly selected children in a local school. There was the discovery of several simple reasons that facilitated aggressive behavior among children that spend much time playing video games. This topic is vital since video games have become extremely popular among children and adolescents. The study is necessary to psychologists and society since it facilitates an understanding of how different environmental factors impact behavior.

References

Chen, J., & Talha, M. (2021). Audit data analysis and application based on correlation analysis algorithm.  Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine,  2021, 1-11.

Drummond, A., Sauer, J. D., Ferguson, C. J., Cannon, P. R., & Hall, L. C. (2021). Violent and non-violent virtual reality video games: Influences on affect, aggressive cognition, and aggressive behavior. Two pre-registered experiments.  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,  p. 95, 104119.

Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein, N. (2019). Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents' aggressive behavior: Evidence from a registered report: Royal Society open science,  6(2), 171474.

Senthilnathan, S. (2019). The usefulness of correlation analysis. Available at SSRN 3416918.