Short Report
Like a Magnet: Catharsis Beliefs Attract Angry People to Violent Video Games
Psychological Science 21(6) 790–792 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0956797610369494 http://pss.sagepub.com
Brad J. Bushman1,2 and Jodi L. Whitaker1 1
Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, and 2VU University Amsterdam
Received 9/29/09; Revision accepted 10/28/09
Violence as a form of entertainment has existed for centuries. Ancient Egyptians watched plays reenacting the murder of their god Osiris, and ancient Romans watched gladiator games. In 380 B.C., Saint Augustine lamented that society was addicted to gladiator games and “drunk with the fascination of bloodshed” (quoted by Bok, 1999, p. 31). The most recent form of violent entertainment is video games. What attracts players to violent games? In surveys, many players claim that violent games help them “get their anger out” (e.g., Kutner & Olson, 2008). The term for this effect is catharsis (from the Greek katharsis), which means to cleanse or purge. According to catharsis theory, acting aggressively or even viewing aggression purges angry feelings and aggressive impulses into harmless channels. Unfortunately for catharsis theory, research shows that playing violent video games increases aggression (Anderson et al., 2010). The present research was not concerned with testing the validity of catharsis theory. Rather, we tested the hypothesis that belief in catharsis increases attraction to violent games, especially among people who want to get rid of their anger. Instead of relying on more problematic self-report data (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), we used experimental data. We manipulated belief in catharsis in Experiment 1 and measured belief in catharsis in Experiment 2.
Experiment 1 Method Participants. Participants were 120 college students (44 men, 76 women), who received course credit for their voluntary participation. Procedure. Participants were told the study concerned impression formation. After giving their consent, participants were randomly assigned to read a bogus newspaper article refuting catharsis, supporting catharsis, or unrelated to catharsis (see Bushman, Baumeister, & Stack, 1999). Participants rated how credible, authoritative, believable, persuasive, and interesting the article was (1 = not at all, 10 = extremely).
Next, participants were randomly assigned to angered and nonangered conditions. Participants in the angered condition wrote an essay about a time when they became very angry. Afterward, they received negative ratings on their essay from an ostensible partner, along with the following handwritten comment: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve read!” Participants in the nonangered condition received positive ratings and the following handwritten comment: “This is one of the best essays I’ve read!” Our previous research has validated this anger manipulation (e.g., Bushman & Baumeister, 1998). After receiving their partner’s evaluation, participants completed an interest survey that included descriptions of eight fictitious video games (four violent, four nonviolent). Participants rated how much they wanted to play each game (1 = not at all, 10 = extremely). They also listed their three favorite video games. Habitual exposure to violent games was indexed by the number of M-rated (age 17+) games participants listed. Finally, participants were debriefed.
Results and discussion The three articles did not differ in how credible, authoritative, believable, persuasive, and interesting they were judged to be. Habitual exposure to violent games did not influence the results. Participants’ desire to play violent video games was analyzed using a 3 (procatharsis, anticatharsis, or control article) × 2 (angered or not angered) × 2 (participant’s sex) analysis of variance. As expected, there was a significant interaction between the type of article participants read and whether they were angered, F(2, 108) = 3.15, p < .05, prep > .878. Planned contrasts showed that angered participants who read the procatharsis article wanted to play violent games more than other participants did (Ms = 4.99 and 4.06, respectively), F(1, 108) = 5.09, p < .03, prep > .908, d = 0.43. Interestingly, participants in Corresponding Author: Brad J. Bushman, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thomson St., Ann Arbor, MI 48106 E-mail:
[email protected]
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Catharsis Beliefs and Attraction to Violent Video Games
Experiment 2 Method Participants. Participants were 155 college students (49 men, 106 women), who received course credit for their voluntary participation. Procedure. The procedure was the same as for Experiment 1 with one important difference. Instead of manipulating belief in catharsis using a bogus newspaper article, we measured belief in catharsis using the 8-item (e.g., “To improve my mood when angry or furious I do things like slam doors”) Anger-Out subscale of the Angry Mood Improvement Inventory (Bushman, Baumeister, & Phillips, 2001; Cronbach’s α = .75). Our previous research has shown that this measure of catharsis beliefs and our manipulation of catharsis beliefs produce parallel findings (Bushman et al., 2001).
Results and discussion Habitual exposure to violent games did not influence the results. Participants’ desire to play violent video games was analyzed using multiple regression analysis, with centered predictor variables. As expected, there was a significant interaction between belief in catharsis and provocation, F(1, 147) = 3.04, p < .05, prep > .878 (see Fig. 1). Simple-effects analyses revealed a significant positive relationship between belief in catharsis (as measured by Anger-Out scores) and desire to play violent video games in angered people, F(1, 73) = 13.51, p < .001, prep > .986, r = .40, but not in nonangered people, F(1, 73) = 0.11, p < .75, prep > .317, r = –.04. People with stronger catharsis beliefs had a stronger desire to play violent video games overall, b = 0.40, β = 0.20, F(1, 147) = 6.13, p < .01, prep > .950. Also, men wanted to play violent games more than women did (Ms = 6.22 and 3.10, respectively), F(1, 147) = 62.99, p < .001, prep > .986, d = 1.34. No other effects were significant. These findings replicate and extend the findings from Experiment 1. Belief in catharsis, whether manipulated or measured, increases attraction to violent games in angry people. During the debriefing, one participant with strong catharsis
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the angered condition who read either the anticatharsis article or the control article wanted to play the violent games less than other participants did (Ms = 3.57 and 4.54, respectively), F(1, 108) = 9.71, p < .002, prep > .979, d = 0.60. Also, men wanted to play violent games more than women did (Ms = 5.96 and 3.20, respectively), t(118) = 3.01, p < .003, prep > .974, d = 0.29. No other effects were significant. The majority of participants wanted to play violent games. However, angry people led to believe in catharsis wanted to play them most. In Experiment 2, we tested whether these findings could be replicated using people’s own natural tendencies to vent their angry feelings.
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Anger-Out Score Fig. 1. The interactive effect of belief in catharsis (as measured by AngerOut score) and provocation on desire to play violent games. The higher the Anger-Out score, the stronger the belief in catharsis.
beliefs said: “How could I squelch the urge to set my manager on fire if I couldn’t set people on fire in video games?”
General Discussion Why are people attracted to violent entertainment in general and violent video games in particular? Past research relied on surveys to answer this important question, but self-report data can be unreliable and invalid. This is the first research to use experimental methods to answer this question. Results showed that belief in catharsis partially explains attraction to violent video games. Even though catharsis theory is false, belief in catharsis still influences angry people to play violent games. Acknowledgments Experimenters were Nida Ali, Jasmyne Burbridge, Kelsey Ott, and Morgan Peterson.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
References Anderson, C.A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E.L., Bushman, B.J., Sakamoto, A., et al. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in Eastern and Western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 151–173. Bok, S. (1999). Mayhem: Violence as public entertainment. New York: Basic Books. Bushman, B.J., & Baumeister, R.F. (1998). Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does
792 self-love or self-hate lead to violence? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 219–229. Bushman, B.J., Baumeister, R.F., & Phillips, C.M. (2001). Do people aggress to improve their mood? Catharsis beliefs, affect regulation opportunity, and aggressive responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 17–32. Bushman, B.J., Baumeister, R.F., & Stack, A.D. (1999). Catharsis, aggression, and persuasive influences: Self-fulfilling or self-defeating
Bushman,Whitaker prophecies? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 367–376. Kutner, L., & Olson, C.K. (2008). Grand theft childhood: The surprising truth about violent video games and what parents can do (pp. 111–137). New York: Simon & Schuster. Nisbett, R.E., & Wilson, T.D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 8, 231–259.
