Effects of Violent-Video-Game Exposure on Aggressive Behavior, Aggressive-Thought Accessibility, and Aggressive Affect Among Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder
Recent mass shootings have prompted the idea among some members of the public that exposure to violent video games can have a pronounced effect on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Empirical evidence for or against this claim has been missing, however. To address this issue, we assigned adults with and without ASD to play a violent or nonviolent version of a customized first-person shooter video game. After they played the game, we assessed three aggression-related outcome variables (aggressive behavior, aggressive-thought accessibility, and aggressive affect). Results showed strong evidence that adults with ASD, compared with typically developing adults, are not differentially affected by acute exposure to violent video games. Moreover, model comparisons provided modest evidence against any effect of violent game content whatsoever. Findings from this experiment suggest that societal concerns that exposure to violent games may have a unique effect on adults with autism are not supported by evidence.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 34. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 July 2024.
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#1,452,260
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#1,801
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#14,355
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Outputs of similar age from Psychological Science
#32
of 54 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,792,213 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,539 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 85.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 60% of its peers.
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