Playing a Video Game Video gaming and its effects on personality and aggressive behaviorIn recent years, technological advances have introduced many new forms of entertainment , one of the most popular being video games. Since their introduction, professionals and parents have been concerned about the addictive power that video games can have on people, especially children and adolescents. Today, concern has shifted from the addictive effects of video games to the possible effects they have on players' levels of aggression. Braun and J. Giroux (1989) determined that the most popular category of video games is war games. These are usually the most violent games, as most of them involve destroying objects and other people. This destruction can range from one-on-one combat to the mass annihilation of other humans or creatures. In 1982, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (Orlofsky, 1982) stated that video games may encourage children to imitate violence displayed on screen and that these games may have harmful physical and mental effects on adolescents. Since Koop's warning, parents have become increasingly concerned about the video games their children play. Defining aggression has been a problem in many previous studies. Edmunds and Kendrick (1980) used an interesting approach that classifies aggression into two categories: aggressiveness (general overt and direct behavior) and aggressiveness (usually represented by hostile feelings). A more refined approach is used by the Buss-Durkee inventory (1957), which has seven main subscales: aggression, indirect hostility, irritability, negativism, resentment, suspicion, and verbal hostility. One of the most commonly used personality assessment instruments to examine personality. The personality dimensions in these studies are the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) which consists of four scales: E (introversion-extraversion), N (stability-instability), P (hardness d 'mind) and L (social). desirability/lie scale). Because most research on television violence demonstrates a relationship between exposure to aggression and subsequent aggressive behavior, it is generally theorized that exposure to aggressive video games will produce a similar relationship. In this article, the effects of video game playing on personality and l...... middle of paper ...... particularly violent film, see computerized interpretations of violence are not as significant in comparison. For the most part, however, the fear that video games turn players into violent individuals who attack others in the real world has been shown not to be a theory supported by these studies. Bibliography Berkowitz, L (1974) . Some determinants of impulsive aggression: Role of mediated associations with reinforcement. Psychological Review, 81, 165-176. Carver, C. S. & Glass, D. C. (1978). Coronary-prone behavior pattern and interpersonal aggression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 361-366.Green, RG (1978). Some effects of observing violence on the behavior of the observer. BA Mahler (Ed.), Advances in experimental personality research (Vol. 8). New York: Academic Press. Green, R.G. and Berkowitz, L. (1967). Certain conditions facilitating the occurrence of an attack after the observation of violence. Journal of Personality, 35, 666-676. Orlofsky, S. (1982). The Surgeon General is blowing up video games. Facts on Record, 42, 879.Video Games – Fun or Serious Threat? (1982, February 22). U.S. News and.. 7.