Noël Tania, Larøi Frank, Burnay Jonathan
Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy, and Education, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
Front Psychol. 2021 Mar 15;12:614502. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.614502. eCollection 2021.
The potential negative impact of sexualized video games on attitudes toward women is an important issue. Studies that have examined this issue are rare and contain a number of limitations. Therefore, it largely remains unclear whether sexualized video games can have an impact on attitudes toward women. This study examined the consequences of sexualized video game content and cognitive load (moderator) on rape victim blame and rape perpetrator blame (used as a proxy of rape myth acceptance), and whether the degree of humanness of the victim and of the perpetrator mediated these effects. Participants ( = 142) played a video game using sexualized or non-sexualized female characters. Cognitive load was manipulated by setting the difficulty level of the game to low or high. After gameplay, participants read a rape date story, and were then asked to judge the victim's and the perpetrator's degree of responsibility and humanness. Based on the General Aggression Model (GAM), it was hypothesized that playing the video game with a sexualized content would increase the responsibility assigned to the victim and diminish the responsibility assigned to the perpetrator. Further, degree of humanness of the victim and the perpetrator was expected to mediate this relation. The results were partially consistent with these predictions: Playing a video game containing sexualized female characters increased rape victim blame when cognitive load was high, but did not predict degree of humanness accorded to the victim. Concerning the perpetrator, video game sexualization did not influence responsibility, but partly influenced humanness. This study concludes that video games impact on attitudes toward women and this, in part, due to its interactive nature.
具有性暗示的电子游戏对女性态度的潜在负面影响是一个重要问题。研究这一问题的研究很少，且存在一些局限性。因此，性暗示电子游戏是否会对女性态度产生影响在很大程度上仍不明确。本研究考察了性暗示电子游戏内容和认知负荷（调节变量）对强奸受害者责备和强奸者责备（用作强奸谬见接受度的指标）的影响，以及受害者和犯罪者的人性程度是否介导了这些影响。参与者（(n = 142)）玩一款使用具有性暗示或非性暗示女性角色的电子游戏。通过将游戏难度设置为低或高来操纵认知负荷。游戏结束后，参与者阅读一个强奸约会故事，然后被要求判断受害者和犯罪者的责任程度和人性程度。基于一般攻击模型（GAM），研究假设玩具有性暗示内容的电子游戏会增加对受害者的责任归咎，并减少对犯罪者的责任归咎。此外，预计受害者和犯罪者的人性程度会介导这种关系。结果部分与这些预测一致：当认知负荷较高时，玩包含性暗示女性角色的电子游戏会增加对强奸受害者的责备，但不能预测给予受害者的人性程度。关于犯罪者，电子游戏的性暗示没有影响责任，但部分影响了人性。本研究得出结论，电子游戏会影响对女性的态度，部分原因在于其互动性质。
