Reducing Aggression Flashcards
Prosocial Video Game Study
o College Students were asked to play a video game for 20 minutes
• Pro-social game (have to help one-another to win)
• Violent game
• Neutral game
• Then P’s were asked to assign tangram puzzles
• Assigned to a partner: easy, medium, or difficult
o They could help the partner win $10 by assigning easier puzzles
o DV: helpful and hurtful behaviors towards partner
o Results: those who played prosocial game were more helpful towards their partner than those who played the violent game
Self-Regulation and Violence Study
o P’s completed an ego-depleting task, and then a measure of tendencies towards intimate partner violence
o P’s were assigned to 3 conditions
• Physical regulation task: p’s used their non-dominant hand in mundane tasks (e.g. eating or brushing their teeth)
• Verbal regulation task: p’s regulated their speaking habits (e.g. saying the word “yes” instead of “yeah” avoiding slang)
• Control Condition
o 2 weeks later, P’s came back to the lab and went through the same procedure in the first session
o How did the intimate partner violence tendencies change in 2 weeks?
o P’s in the two self-regulatory training conditions showed decreases in violent tendencies
o Increasing sense of self-worth
• Developing high and stable self-esteem
o Attribution training
• Minimize hostile attributions when interpreting intent in other’s behaviors
Attributional Intervention Study
o Intervention for aggressive boys (4 through 6th graders) twice per week for 6 weeks
• Attribution intervention
To improve ability to accurately detect intentionality and not to infer hostile internet in ambiguous situations
Role playing, discussions, activities. E.g. “your peer spills milk on you in the lunchroom. What are the possible causes?”
• Attention training
• Control
• Decrease in aggressive behavior ratings by teachers in the attribution intervention group
• Changes in interpretations of ambiguous behavior and aggressive intentions
