The Impact Of Prosocial Video Game On Fifth Graders’ Prosocial Thought And Prosocial Behaviors

As early as1970s, the impact of video game has aroused researchers’attention. Half centaury later, the world of video game has been wildly changed. Millions of video games with various styles and content has become a natural part of our daily since the ever stretching of the network and mobile devices. As to video game impact research, researchers have been long focused on the impact of violent video game on aggression. With the General Aggression Model expanding to General Learning Model, many researchers recently have turned their eyes to prosocial video games. They begin to look for the positive influence of video games on human social development. This is not an effort to justify video games, or an excuse to play, it is an attempt to look at video games more objectively and comprehensively. Now with video games step into our daily life, it is a wise decision to find out its positive meaning and make fully use of it.With this acknowledgement in mind, this study hopes to reveal the impact of prosocial video game on prosocial thought and behaviors among76fifth graders.. A3(game type:no game/neutral game/prosocial game)by3(stimulus type:non word/neutral word/prosocial word) mixed-design experiment was taken out to measure the priming effect of prosocial video game on prosocial thought. Tangram Puzzle Procedure and Prisoner’s Dilemma approach were revised to measure helping behavior and cooperation respectively in school setting while donation was examined by establishing real charitable event. Through out the whole study, children’s past video game experience, aggressive and prosocial trait, Chinese literacy, affect state and game property and enjoyment etc. were controlled.Results show that:the priming effect of prosocial video game on prosocial thought is not significant, i.e. the main effect of stimulus type is significant, but the main effect of game type and interaction are not significant.prosocial video game does not have obvious effect on children’s prosocial behaviors, including helping, cooperation and donation.Although the effect of prosocial game on prosocial behaviors are not statistically meaningful, according to the original number of children who cooperate and donate, children in prosocial game condition are more willing to cooperate and donate.