Cooper and Mackie (key study) (criminal)

Question 1

What was the background?

Answer 1

Many studies had shown that aggression on TV could be responsible for violent behaviour (because people were imitating role models). Cooper and Mackie wanted to test if the same applied for video games as they’re much more active than TV.

Question 2

What was the hypothesis?

Answer 2

Playing an aggressive video game would lead to increased aggression in children.

Question 3

What was the design?

Answer 3

Lab experiment using an independent measures design.

Question 4

What was the independent variable?

Answer 4

Type of game played/observed

Question 5

What was the dependent variable?

Answer 5

Measured aggression levels after playing/observing the game

Question 6

What was the sample?

Answer 6

84 9-11 year olds from the suburbs of New Jersey

Question 7

How were the children grouped?

Answer 7

In pairs where they were the same sex and age. The first child would play the game and the second would watch.

Question 8

What were the materials?

Answer 8

• Missile command (video game)
• Pac Man (video game)
• Paper and pen maze games
• Warrior figure
• Basketball set
• Pinball machine
• Building blocks
• Buzzer
• Questionnaire (for recording previous experience of video games)
• Questionnaire (for rating games played in the experiment)

Question 9

What was the procedure?

Answer 9

Participants were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 conditions: Playing/observing either an aggressive video game (missile command), a non-aggressive video game (PAC man), or a paper and pen maze game.
- Participants played/observed their game for 8 min.
- After playing, the player and observer were split up, one was taken to a playroom and another was taken to do a test.
- In the playroom, there was an aggressive toy (warrior figurine), an active toy (Basketball), a skilled toy (pinball machine), and a quiet toy (building blocks).
- The participant was asked not to disturb the experimenter in the room, who was covertly observing which toys the participant played with and for how long.
- In the test room, each participant performed an activity to measure their level of interpersonal aggression. They were asked how badly they would punish a bad child and how well they would reward a good child.
- The child in the playroom and test room were swapped
- Participants took a questionnaire rating their experience of the game they had been given.

Question 10

How were extraneous variables controlled?

Answer 10

• Participants had 8 minutes of playing/observing
• If participants didn’t know the game, they had 2 minutes to learn the game beforehand
• It was randomly selected which participant went to the test room or the playroom first (counterbalancing)

Question 11

What was the observation?

Answer 11

Structured, covert, non participant

Question 12

What were the results?

Answer 12

• Girls who played the aggressive game spent much more time playing with the aggressive toy than girls in the other conditions.
• Boys spent more time overall playing with the aggressive toy, but it wasn’t affected by which game they played.
• Children who played the game had higher interpersonal aggression scores than people who observed the game
• The game played had no effect on interpersonal aggression scores

Question 13

What were the conclusions?

Answer 13

• Maybe because girls were less experienced with violent video games, they reacted more to the aggressive video game than the boys; this lead them to imitate some of the behaviours witnessed.
• Maybe because the girls played a violent video game, they felt it was more socially acceptable to play with a violent toy.
• The children could distinguish between violence towards people and violence towards objects, as their interpersonal aggression scores were not affected by the game played.
• The study supports SLT as the children imitated the behaviours observed in video games.

Question 14

What were the criticisms?

Answer 14

• Ungeneralisable as it only investigated a limited age range and culture.
• Low ecological validity as it was in an artificial setting
• Aggressive behaviour was measured in a very unreliable way as one remained the same after playing games and one changed
• Children all had different experiences with violent video games
• Only the immediate effects of aggressive video games were tested

Question 15

What were the ethical considerations?

Answer 15

• The parents consented to having their children participate as children cannot consent