Video game use and social personality:

A panel study of male students

Fumika Kimura, Akira Sakamoto, Junko Sagara, Katsura Sakamoto, and Tetsuro Inaba*

Ochanomizu University, JAPAN *Ritsumeikan University, JAPAN

ABSTRACT

A panel study of 364 male high school and university students was conducted to examine causal relationships between their video game use and social personality, that is, empathy, social skills, and social anxiety. Results did not show the harmful influences of video game on the social personality.

INTORODUCTION

There is a popular belief that video game use would have harmful influences on children’s social personality (e.g., Brooks, 1983; Lepper, 1985, Lin & Lepper, 1987). Video game use might prevent children from interacting with real others, and lead children to the socially maladjusted personality. Some studies have already been conducted for this problem (e.g., Lin & Lepper, 1986; Sakamoto, 1994), but most of the studies examined only correlation between video game use and social personality, and they could not address causation between them. So, we conducted a panel study to examine the problem. If a panel study is conducted, in general causation can be estimated to some degree (Finkel, 1995). The model of this study is shown in Figure 1. In this study, we examined the effects of use of video games in a personal computer as well as those of video game machine, that is, Nintendo’s “Family Computer.” In addition, we investigated the influences of other media to compare with those of video game use. The effects of video game use might be moderated by whether players use video games with others or not. When players use them with their friends, they will be able to interact with them and to develop their own socially adjusted personality. We therefore examined whether this factor moderated the effects of video game use or not.

METHOD

Subjects

Male students of high school and university participated in a two-wave panel study (186 high school and 178 university students). The questionnaire survey was conducted twice for the subjects at the interval of five months.

Questionnaire

Media Usage We measured the frequencies of subject’s use at home of seven media: “Family Computer”, video games in a personal computer (“PC-games”), other softwares in a personal computer, television, video machines, books (without comic books), and comic books. We also asked the subjects whom they played video games with.

Social Personality Variables.　�@fourteen-item social skill scale (Horike, 1985), �Asix-item social anxiety scale (Oshimi, Ishikawa, & Watanabe, 1979), �B32-item (include 5 items which were excepted because of low α coefficient) empathy scale (Kato & Takagi, 1980). All were two-point scales. The α coefficient of each scale is shown in Table 1.

RESULTS

Media Usage

First, the media usage of high school students was compared with that of university students. The result showed a significant difference indicating that the university students more often watched videos and comic books than the high school students did (Table 2).

An Estimate of Causation between Media Use and Personality

Video games. A regression analysis was conducted. An independent variable was either Family Computer use or PC-game use measured at the first survey, and a dependent variable was each social personality variable measured at the second survey. The effect of the social personality variable measured at the first survey was controlled. This analysis was conducted for the subjects of each school type (high school or university).

Standardized partial regression coefficients were shown in Table 3. It was showed that the Family Computer use reduced university students’ empathy. But there were marginal significant effects indicating that the Family Computer use also reduced high school students’ social anxiety, and the PC-game use increased high school students’ empathy. In addition, the results were not found to vary dependently on whether the subjects played video games with others or not.

Other media. As for other media uses, we conducted the same analysis as that of video game use (Table 3). We found only a significant effect, that is, the book reading reduced university students’ empathy.

DISCUSSION

As we mentioned above, there is a popular belief that video game use would have harmful influences on children’s social personality. But our results did not support this view.

It was showed that the Family Computer use reduced university students’ empathy. This result is consistent with the popular belief. As for high school students, however, there were marginally significant effects indicating that the Family Computer use reduced their social anxiety, and the PC-game use increased their empathy. These results are not consistent with the belief. In addition, the results of university students’ empathy showed a negative influence on the book reading as well as on Family Computer use. Therefore the influence of Family Computer use is not prominent.

Thus, the results of this study did not support the popular belief as a whole. At least, it does not show that the Family Computer use has more negative influences on the people of wide range of age than other media.

It is noted that the results of high school students and university students were different. It may be because the function of video games is different between the high school students and the university students. There is a belief that the video game use would have the harmful influences, but the video game use can provide some topics of conversation (e.g., Ito, 1994; Kayama, 1996). Therefore for the high school students, it might be that the video game use had them get along with their friends, and this role of video game use made positive influences on their social personality. On the other hand, for the university students, it might be that the video game use did not have that role, and consequently lead to negative influences.

Thus, it is needed to examine this explanation and other possibilities to reveal the processes of influences of video game use on social personality.

REFERENCES

Brooks, B. D. (1983). Videogames and social behavior. Paper presented at the Symposium on “Videogames and Human Development: A Research Angenda for the ’80s” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.

Finkel, S. E. (1995). Causal analysis with panel data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Horike, K. (1986). An investigation about the concept and the scale of self-monitoring. Bulletin of Tohoku Welfare University, 11, 185-199.

Ito, K. (1994). The therapeutic effects and availability of present-day hardware. Psychotherapy, 20 (6), 13-20.

Kato, T., & Tkagi, H. (1980). A trait of the emotional empathy in adolescence. Studies in psychology, Tsukuba University, 2, 33-42.

Kayama, R. (1996) Terebigehmu to iyashi [Video games and heeling]. Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten. (In Japanese.)

Lepper, M. R. (1985). Microcomputers in education: Motivational and social issues. American Psychologist, 40, 1-18.

Lin, S., & Lepper, M. R. (1987). Correlates of children’s usage of videogames and computers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 72-93.

Oshimi, T., Ishikawa, T., & Watanabe, N. (1985). An investigation of the scale of self-sognition. Studies in psychology, St. Paul’s University, 28, 1-15.

Sakamoto, A. (1994). Video game use and the development of sociocognitive abilities in children: Three surveys of elementary school students. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24, 21-42.

Note； Averages and SDs are calculated from every total of each scale.

Note: The unit of M and SD is “minutes”.