Violent Video Games Effect On Moral Cognition Among Chinese Adolescents

Nowadays,with the increasing of media technology,video games have become an indispensable part of people's everyday life.Mobile phones,TV,i Pad and Computers have been becoming the main carriers of all kinds of electronic games.However,almost of video games in the market are fulled with violent content.In order to attract players,video game developers constantly included the stimulant elements,such as violence,blood,pornography,and so on.Investigates reported from American Psychological Association,which 80% of the games on the market includings a part of violence(e.g.,fighting,shooting,attack,etc.,),and which 50% of the games contains a lot of violent context.Previous studies have found that frequently exposure to violent video games could produce aggressive cognition,generate anger,and increse physiological arousal.However,violent video games were not only including the violent elements,but also contain many other social elements,such as morality.Previous studies have found that virtual media violence can lead to changings in virtual moral cognition,which further results in changing the real moral cognitive structure.In the field of moral psychology,many researchers have paid attention to the effect of media violence on children's unethical behaviors(e.g.,aggressive behavior).Moreover,according to Social Cognition Theory,children learn and observe television violence and unethical behaviors in the view of themselves,which will continue to process and internalize the moral elements,with formation of new moral cognition.Social cognitive theory also emphasizes children will be actively dynamic cognitive processing of information according to the environments.In fact,few studies have done systematically explored the effect of violent video game on moral cognition,and little research has been done on the whole youth and adolescents(e.g.,from early adolescents to late adolescents).The moral cognition has a key stage for development(in particular,the early late childhood,and adolescents is a critical period of moral cognitive development),from a development perspective to understand violent video games as contextual factors how to affect the individual's moral cognition,which is significant for them.Possible effect of violent video games on teenagers' moral cognition in a certain period of development more sensitive to individual differences in the view of development,which shows that only one stage of the young people(for example,contains a large number of risk factors,such as addiction,rebellion etc.)may be more susceptible to the negative impact of violent electronic.Besides,teenagers' self-control ability is unmatched.Therefore,game addiction and exposure to game violences are very common among young adolescents.The present study will be to investigate whether violent electronic games are an important factor for the effect on moral cognition among young adolescents.This present research,taking Chinsese adolescents as the participants,systematically explored effects of violent electronic games on the development of teenagers' moral cognition.This research is divided into 5 studies.Study 1 used correlated methods to investigate the relationship between violent video games exposure and moral cognition,which answered the question whether the problems of violent video game exposure is related to moral cognition from a cross-section study.Study 2 used experimental methods to investigate the short-term effect of violent video games on moral judgment;of study 3,using the method of experiment further investigated the short-term effect of violent video games on moral cognitive processing;of study 4 using experimental methods to explore the short-term effect of violent video games on adolescent implicit moral cognition.The studies of 2,3,and 4 answered the question how short-term effects of violent video games on the impact of moral cognition.Study 5,using a longitudinal study,explored the long-term effects of violent video games exposure on the development of moral cognition.With the example of the development of moral disengagement,this investigation answered the question whether violent video games players change over time,whether moral disengagement varies with time,and whether the development speed of violent video games can predict the development speed of moral disengagement.The following 5 studies have getten these results.(1)There is a significant positive relationship between violent electronic games exposure and moral identity,and negative relationship between violent video games exposure and moral disengagement.And the interaction of violent video games exposure and moral identity can predict on moral disengagement,which conformed to the social cognitive theory model,in particular,for the early adolescents.When adolescents with higher moral identity,moral disengagement will be reduced with the decreasing of violent video games exposure,but not appears in adolescents with low moral identity.(2)Violent video games as a novel stimulus increased the girls‘ moral judgment for immoral events for immoral value.Further,violent game players will reduce the immortal events of moral judgment.The interaction of moral identity and violent video game exposure significant can predicte moral judgment.(3)Short-term exposure to violent video games can reduce individual's moral cognition,showing that teenagers' response to ethical words is slower and the accuracy is lower.For junior middle school students,especially,violent video games can significantly decrease their reaction rate to moral words,and decrease their reaction speed to moral words.Short term playing violent games have a developmental effect on the development of moral cognition,that is,the moral cognition of junior high school students is more likely to be influenced by situational factors of violent video games than those of senior high school students.(4)Short-term exposure to violent video games may not affect the implicit moral cognition among adolescents.However,implicit moral cognition is not significantly related to individual moral identification,which indicates that there is likely to be separation between implicit and explicit moral cognition.(5)The analyses of cross-lagged model shows that exposure to violent video games will positively predict subsequent moral disengagement,especially for junior middle school students.However,moral disengagement of senior high school students will predict their subsequent violent video games contacts.Inter-individual and intra-individual analyses all suggested that violent video games could positively predict moral disengagement,and in turn,moral disengagement can positively predict self-reported and peer-reported aggression.Furthermore,violent video games exposure and the moral disengagement are best matched for the latent growth model.Violent video games exposure was a linear increasing with time,but in the junior and senior will reduce moral disengagement linearly decrease with time,but will rise in the junior and middle school.And the average intercept of violent video games(the initial value)will intercept and linear positive predicted moral disengagement,in addition,decreasing slope,slope of violent video games will also increase linearly decreasing slope of linear positive prediction of moral disengagement.Taking home points,violent video games exposure will reduce moral cognition among adolescents,especially for early adolescents.However,it may be different from the individuals among adolescents.The effect of violent video games on children and adolescents is not "sensational" but more and more ?clear?.Families and schools should be work together to prevent exposure to violent video games(e.g.,recognizing on moral disengagement,training for moral identity)in order to promote the development of moral cognition for children and adolescents.