Although anti-social behavior seems to be a result of video games, there is more pro-social behavior from electronic game play than anti-social behavior. Pro-social behavior is behavior that benefits society and others such as sharing or donating. Pro-social behavior that occurs from video games is civic engagement. Civic engagement is when someone has the “ability to organize a group and lead like-minded people in social causes” (Olson et al.). Civic engagement happens within video games when people have to work as a team to reach a certain goal or are fighting for the same cause. Video games help to promote this behavior through motivational benefits. These benefits come from the incremental theory that intelligence is innate and when people get praise for their efforts in games, their intelligence increases (Granic, Lobel, Engels 71). Using this theory, gamers can improve their behavior by becoming more pro-social. This happens when gamers have a positive attitude towards failure in a game because this action increases their academic performance (Granic, Lobel, Engels 71). The reason is because the gamers are “relentlessly optimistic” therefore they do not give up because they have motivation to win the game (Granic, Lobel, Engels 71). The motivational benefits within video games can be beneficial because the more pro-social games a children plays then “the more likely they are to exhibit helpful behavior later that year” (Granic, Lobel, Engels 73). Also more pro-social behavior happens because “three- quarters of teens play games with others” rather than the “one quarter of teens” who play alone (Lenhart et al). By playing alone, gamers have less interaction with others and less motivation to win which decreases the pro-social behavior from video games. This can lead to problems such as anti-social behavior or bullying. However by playing video games, studies relating to children with pre-mental problems show that trait aggression and electronic game play interact in a way to reduce bullying (Ferguson and Olson 6).
|
AuthorHi my name is Megan and I currently go to college. I have lived in 5 different states and moved 8 times in my life. For my college project in English Composition, I made my topic about the benefits of video games to society because games were influential on me growing up. My research topic is towards society as a whole because video games is a large part of society. ArchivesCategoriesWorks Cited
|