Violent-Cooperative Play and Prosocial Behavior

Multiplayer elements and violence are at the core of all major game titles. In this light, does cooperating with others in a violent video game setting lead to anti-social or prosocial behavior offline? Here's a study that examines this question.

In today's virtual worlds, multiplayer games are everywhere, spanning across essentially all major gaming genres. The option to play video games as a group has many benefits, such as social interaction, peer play, and the development and maintenance of friendships.

Depending on the research question, researchers often divide games into violent and prosocial video games. However, today's MMOGs are complex and involve violent and prosocial content. For instance, in games such as Counter-Strike, Overwatch, or Fortnite, you have to be prosocial (share information, weapons, grenades, etc.) in order to win, while being violent (killing other players).

"These apparently contradictory behaviors raise the question of whether video games that are violent in nature but are played in teams and cooperatively with other players can generate prosocial and altruistic behavior "offline"." [1]

More specifically, the researchers in the study we'll be looking at today wanted to know whether playing MMOG in a co-player mode would increase prosocial behavior immediately after playing compared to a) single-mode game play (violent game), b) neutral game in co-play, and c) single-mode game play (neutral game).

The game they chose was Fortnite Battle Royale, where up to 100 players fight to be the last man standing. After playing for 15 min. in their single or dual mode (two players), they completed a questionnaire regarding the satisfaction of their psychological needs and two prosocial tasks (assisting the experimenter and donating money to charity). In total, 838 children aged 9-12 (625 boys and 213 girls) participated.

🤝 Let's be better together!

The first result that was kind of a shocker for me was that 37.4% played Fortnite about 1 h on average per day, 21.5% played 2 h a day, 23.1% played 3-4 h a day, and a stunning 18% played 5 h or more a day. Don't forget, we're talking about 9-12 year olds. Almost half of them (48.4%) played video games (not just Fortnite) almost every day, 38.7% played 4 or 5 times a week, and 12.9% played 2 or 3 times a week.

"The results indicated that in cooperative dyads, prosocial behavior increased, both in terms of readiness to help the experimenter and share resources with others in need, despite the violent content of the game." [1]

According to the researchers, the findings suggest that playing cooperatively fosters positive and prosocial behavior, even though the content of a game was violent (anti-social). Hence, the context of the game is important, not just its content.

"In the current study, children who cooperatively played a violent video game with another child displayed more prosocial behavior after the game than those who played the same video game individually. Moreover, children in the collaborative co-play violent video game condition exhibited more prosocial behavior than children in the single-player and co-player neutral video game conditions." [1]

That's kind of interesting. The children were more willing to be prosocial after playing a game that induced some kind of threat or violence to them. Furthermore, the prosocial scores increased as the satisfaction of psychological needs the video game covers increased. Meaning, the kids playing the violent cooperative game (Fortnite Duos) felt more competent and more related to other players and enjoyed the game more than the kids in any other condition (single player and neutral game).

"These findings suggest that it is not only the content or the social context of the game that is associated with a prosocial behavioral reaction to the game, but the psychological experience of each individual during the game." [1]

Have a great Sunday/week, everyone! Best,

Christian 🙂

References

[1] Shoshani & Krauskopf, 2021