Steven Kirsh and Jeffrey Mounts concluded that just 15 minutes playing a violent video game can lend a negative bias to the way students interpret people’s facial expressions. Researchers speculate that the violent game may have predisposed students towards recognising threatening emotions.
“This attentional bias may then increase the likelihood of acting aggressively by priming aggressive scripts or by limiting the processing of information which could reduce the likelihood of aggression,” they warned.
They asked 197 students to play either 15 minutes of the violent House of the Dead 2, or 15 minutes of the game your Nana would approve of far more, Kayak Extreme.
Then, subjects looked at 60 faces that gradually morphed over 2.4 seconds from a neutral expression into either a happy or an angry expression. They were to indicate as quickly as possible whether the face was turning angry or happy. Typically on this kind of task, people are far quicker at recognising a happy face – a phenomenon that has been dubbed the ‘happy face advantage’.
Students who played the kayaking game showed the expected happy face recognition advantage.
By contrast, students who played the violent game showed slower responses to smiling faces.
This difference between the groups held even after controlling for effects of these games on emotional factors like frustration and enjoyment.
Source: Kirsch, S.J. & Mounts, J.R.W. (2007). Violent video game play impacts facial emotion recognition. Aggressive Behaviour, 33, 353-358.