2. October 2015
A rhetorical Precis of “Associations Between Violent Video Gaming, Empathic Concern, and Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family Members”
Ashy Fraser, Laura Walker, Sarah Coyne, Larry Nelson and Laura Stockdale (2012), [students at Brigham Young University], in their article “Associations Between Violent Video Gaming, Empathic Concern, and Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family Members”, suggest that video games could affect prosocial behavior towards others. These students support this thesis by doing a study on 780 college and comparing different aspects of prosocial behavior. These authors reference other articles that claim violent video games could lead to lower SAT scores, greater drug use, drinking behavior, and lower perceived social acceptance. Then the authors go on to talk about a study that was done, they had college students play video games in a lab environment and then a fake fight was staged outside of the lab door. The students who played the violent videos games took 450% longer to notice a fight was going on, compared to students who have not played any. Now we get onto the study that was done by Ashy Fraser and her fellow students, they posted a questionnaire via the internet and offered students $20 to complete the survey. In the survey the asked each user how often they play video games; then they would try to understand how much empathic concern each of the students have. Finally they would look at prosocial behavior directly. In this study they found males who play video games tend to be less prosocial than females who also play video games. After analyzing the results they found that prosocial behavior towards strangers or friends was not affected, but prosocial behavior towards family was slightly effected. Then they go on to summarize that video games are going to cause more of an impact on direct family members and significant others more so than meeting strangers. Finally they talk about their limitations in this study, since they were only able to survey 780 students with over 50% of them being female, the do not believe the got a full understanding on how it affects prosocial behavior among college students. This study is also limited to young adults and therefore does not factor in the younger population. Work Cited
Ashley Fraser et al. “Associations Between Violent Video Gaming, Empathic Concern, and
Prosocial Behavior Toward Strangers, Friends, and Family Members” Youth and
Adolescence 41.5 (2012): 636-649. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.