The Effects of Prosocial Video Games on Prosocial Behaviors: International Evidence from Correlational, Longitudinal, and Experimental Studies

By D. A. Gentile, Craig A. Anderson, S. Yukawa, Nobuko Ihori, Muniba Saleem, L. Ming, Akiko Shibuya, A. K. Liau, Angeline Cheok Eng Khoo, Brad J. Bushman and 2 more. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2009

707 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although dozens of studies have documented a relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviors, very little attention has been paid to potential effects of prosocial games. Theoretically, games in which game characters help and support each other in nonviolent ways should increase both short-term and long-term prosocial behaviors. We report three studies conducted in three countries with three age groups to test this hypothesis. In the correlational study, Singaporean middle-school students who played more prosocial games behaved more prosocially. In the two longitudinal samples of Japanese children and adolescents, prosocial game play predicted later increases in prosocial behavior. In the experimental study, U.S. undergraduates randomly assigned to play prosocial games behaved more prosocially toward another student. These similar results across different methodologies, ages, and cultures provide robust evidence of a prosocial game content effect, and they provide support for the General Learning Model.

Subfields: Education, Literature and Literary Theory, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/045ab99499211483903d69e304b7c36515570750

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Citations in the corpus

Do Video Games Promote Positive Youth Development? (2013, background): “In contrast, developmental and social psychologists have examined the positive effects1 of video games, such as prosocial behavior or psychological well-being, in less than 30 empirical studies (e.g., Gentile et al., 2009).”
Reassessing media violence effects using a risk and resilience approach to understanding aggression (2012, background): “Importantly, this approach has been validated in research showing that child ratings correlate .75 with expert ratings (Gentile et al., 2009).”
Cross-Cultural Differences in Cyberbullying Behavior (2014, background): “…and Gentile (2012) made specific predictions regarding the predictors of cyberbullying derived from several social-cognitive models of learning and aggression (the General Learning Model: Buckley & Anderson, 2006; Gentile et al., 2009; and General Aggression Model: Anderson & Bushman, 2002).”
Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: a meta-analytic review. (2010, background): “However, some recent studies have found that prosocial games can increase cooperation and helping (Gentile et al., 2009; Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2009).”
Do gaming motives mediate between psychiatric symptoms and problematic gaming? An empirical survey study (2017, background): “…and more accurate attention allocation (Granic et al. 2014) and increased problem-solving skills (Prensky 2012), as well associal skill enhancement including learning social skills or prosocial behaviour (Ng & Wiemer-Hastings 2005; Gentile et al. 2009; Ewoldsen et al. 2012; Granic et al. 2014).”
Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on aggressive and prosocial outcomes (2010, background): “Finally, recent evidence (Gentile et al., 2009;Mares, Palmer,&Sullivan, 2008;Narvaez,Mattan,MacMichael, &Squillace, 2008) indicates that, just as violent game play can reduce prosocial tendencies, exposure to certain nonviolent games may elicit increased accessibility of positive, prosocial…”
The multiple dimensions of video game effects. (2011, background): “Conversely, if games include prosocial content where characters help each other in nonviolent ways, then this should predict prosocial behavior in both the short term and the long term, which studies have also demonstrated (Gentile et al., 2009).”
Violent Video Games, Delinquency, and Youth Violence (2013, methodology): “This approach of measuring violent media exposure has been used successfully with children in other studies (Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007; Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh, 2004) and has been validated with child ratings correlating with expert ratings at .75 (Gentile et al., 2009).”
“Media Time = Family Time” (2014, background): “For example, exposure to prosocial media has been associated with increased helping behavior, lowered aggression, empathy, cooperation, and sharing in adolescents (e.g., Gentile et al., 2009).”
Effects of Prosocial Media on Social Behavior (2011, background): “The GLM (and its predecessor, the general aggression model) is a model of social behavior that has been applied to account for when and why media exposure elicits behavioral responses (Buckley & Anderson, 2006; Gentile et al., 2009).”
Virtual Superheroes: Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior (2013, methodology): “A 17-item questionnaire adapted for a college population from a self-report subscale about helping behavior of the Prosocial Orientation Questionnaire [18] (POQ), used with young children in a study on prosocial video game [7].”