The effects of habitual violent video gaming on players’ emotional processing: an experimental evaluation of the general aggression model

Abstract

This study examined whether habitual engagement with violent video games impairs emotional processing, as proposed by the General Aggression Model (GAM). According to this model, repeated exposure to violent content increases the accessibility of hostile cues and biases a person’s cognition, affect, and arousal. However, these claims have been criticized as overstated. The present research focused on whether habitual violent video gaming is associated with deficits in recognizing basic facial emotions, including happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear. Across three experiments, habitual violent video gamers were compared with different control groups using facial emotion recognition tasks. Experiment 1 investigated whether habitual exposure to violent media biases emotional information processing and whether such effects differ by mode of interactivity.