ABSTRACT
People, especially parents, are usually concerned about controlling the media their children see and play—the idea being that overly violent or sexual media might have a deleterious effect on development or behavior. Violent video games known to produce physiological desensitization in a study influenced helping behavior and related perceptual and cognitive variables in theoretically expected ways in the Study. Participants who played a violent game took significantly longer to help, over 450 percent longer, than participants who played a nonviolent game. Furthermore, compared to participants who played a nonviolent game, those who played a violent game were less likely to notice the fight and rated it as less serious, which are two obstacles to helping. Although the helping delay increased as the number of bystanders increased, and women helped less often than men, these effects were not statistically significant and were not analyzed further.
