Exposure to Gun Violence in Video Games Increases Interest in Real Guns
Condition: Psychology, Social; Adolescent Behavior
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      More American children die by accidental gun use than children in other developed countries.
      One factor that can influence children's interest in guns is exposure to media containing
      guns. The objective of this study is to test whether children who play a video game
      containing guns will handle a real gun longer, will pull the trigger more times, and pull the
      trigger while pointing the gun at themselves or another than children who see the same movie
      without guns.
    

Detailed description: 
      The design will be a 2 (player vs. observer) x 3 (nonviolent, violent with sword, violent
      with gun) between-subjects study. Participants will randomly be assigned to conditions.
      Participants will be tested in pairs. The participant in the player condition will play a
      video game while the participant in the watcher condition will watch. The participants will
      be in the same room, seated next to each other.

      Video games will be chosen for the three conditions which have no violent content (nonviolent
      condition), violent content with a sword as a weapon for the player (violent with sword
      condition), and violent content with a gun as a weapon (violent with gun condition). All
      games chosen will be age appropriate (rated E) and have a consistent perspective (i.e., 1st
      person or 3rd person) between conditions. Participants will be asked how familiar they are
      with the video game used to control for experience with the stimulus. Gameplay will last for
      20 minutes.

      The measures for experiment 3 will include the media habits, aggressive behavior, attitude
      toward guns, and guns in the home measures listed for experiment 1. In addition, parents will
      be asked if their children have taken a gun safety course and a behavioral measure will be
      whether or not children handle a real (but non-firing) gun and whether they pull the trigger.

      Participants will be tested in pairs, with a sibling or friend. Participants will be placed
      in a room containing toys, with a camera on the wall. Participants will be told that they can
      play with any of the toys in the room for the next 20 minutes. The toys will be placed will
      be placed in drawers inside a cabinet. Inside the room, two brightly colored plastic Nerf
      dart guns and two handguns will be placed in separate drawers, as in previous research. The
      handguns will be modified so they cannot fire. Inside the magazine, the handguns contain no
      bullets. They do, however, contain a sensor that counts the number of times the trigger is
      depressed with sufficient force to discharge the weapon. This allows us to distinguish
      reliably the children who pull the trigger from those who only handle the gun. Parents will
      be asked to predict whether their child will handle the real gun and pull the trigger. The
      researcher and the parents will be able to watch the session via a monitor in a control room.
      A thorough debriefing will follow (see attachment). The investigators also have received
      letters of support from the Director of the School of Communication and from the Chief of
      Police (see attachments). The investigators predict the highest levels of playing with guns
      and firing them among participants who see a violent clip containing guns.
    

Intervention name(s): Video games and violence
Intervention type(s): Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Participants will be randomly assigned to play a video game which contains either (1) no violent content, (2) violent content with swords, or (3) violent content with guns. The game, rated E, is age appropriate and modded to include guns in the appropriate condition.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Factorial Assignment
Intervention model description: Participants are randomly assigned to play a non-violent video game, a violent video game containing swords, or a violent video game containing guns.
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Other
Keywords: adolescent; gun; violence; media