| How is the influence of violent video game on young adults’ physical and mental development? This question has been a hot topic for a long time. Vast results showed that long-term exposure to violent video games will cause individual more aggression behavior, aggression affect, aggression cognitive, physiological arousal, and less helping behavior. Carnagey et al. (2007) proposed the violence desensitization mechanism in more detail. Meanwhile, vagal tone is a vital physiological mechanism of helping behavior (the polyvagal theory) (Porges,2007). Researchers have found that higher baseline vagal tone and a higher level of vagal suppression could help individuals to participate in social activities, and is associated with well social competence and emotion regulation. Based on this, first, this study is to verify the desensitization of long-term exposure to violent video games of the students in the physiology and psychology. Second, we want to investigate whether long-term exposure to violent video games could reduce college students’helping behavior under another real-life violent environment. Finally, this study also wants to explore the mediating role of vagal tone between violent video game and individuals’helping behavior among college students.This study employed 30 undergraduate students (15 boys, mean age was 19 years old) to evaluate the emotion evoking of films. The result showed that the real life violent video clip was the more adequate video materials to stimulate participates’ anger emotion. Then, we recruited another 110 undergraduate students (70 boys, mean age was 18.53 years old) to participate our next physical experiment research and received questionnaire measurement. We collected the signal of heart rate, respiratory rate value with a Biopac MP150 integrative system, and calculated the RSA (index of vagal tone) through the Acqknowledge software. The Game Habits Questionnaire, The Interpersonal Reactivity Index Scale, The Aggressive Questionnaire, and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule were used to evaluate students’violent video game experience, empathy trait, aggression personality and the emotional state. Helping behavior was measured by helping will ("1" represented " have no willing", "7" represented " very willing to") and helping time (from 5 minutes to 60 minutes, every 5 minutes as an interval). Finally, the results showed that:(1) High violent games experience individuals showed no significant change of heart rate, whereas, low violent games experience individuals showed a significant increase in heart rate when they were exposed to real life violent clip. No significant difference in RSP.(2) There were significant differences in physiological function of the vagus nerve between the two groups. Specifically, compared with higher violent video game experience students, lower violent video game experience students showed a higher baseline RSA, and produced relatively more RSA withdrawal(that is equal to RSA suppression) during the violent clip. The results broadened the scope of the mechanism of violence desensitization, and founding that the difficulty of vagal withdrawal might be an important biological mechanism of college students who often playing violent video game.(3) The regression effect of violent video game experience to college students’ helping behavior was significant, under the condition of controlling the age and aggression personality. The more students play violent video games, the less they would act helping behavior.(4) Vagal suppression partially mediated the relationship between violent video games experience and students’helping behavior. That is, violent video games experience not only could directly and negatively predict students’helping behavior, but also can indirectly inhibit the occurrences of helping behavior through interfering the withdrawal of vagus nerve.In summary, our study suggested that college students, who have long term experience of violent video game, will produce physiological desensitization while encountering with a real life violent events. Specifically, difficulty of vagal withdrawal might be a vital nerve physiological basis for students who had long term exposure to violent video game, and might be an interference factor in the mechanism of helping behavior. Our results provide theoretical basis for clinical diagnosis of violent video game addiction, and provide a scientific basis for the improvement of college students’ moral education system. |
