IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0093440.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

I Am Right, You Are Wrong: How Biased Assimilation Increases the Perceived Gap between Believers and Skeptics of Violent Video Game Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Tobias Greitemeyer

Abstract

Background: Despite hundreds of studies, there is continuing debate about the extent to which violent video games increase aggression. Believers argue that playing violent video games increases aggression, but this stance is disputed by skeptics. The present study addressed believers' and skeptics' responses to summaries of scientific studies that do or do not present evidence for increased aggression after violent video game play. Methods/Principal Findings: Participants (N = 662) indicated whether they believed that violent video games increase aggression. Afterwards, they evaluated two opposing summaries of fictitious studies on the effects of violent video play. They also reported whether their initial belief had changed after reading the two summaries and indicated again whether they believed that violent video games increase aggression. Results showed that believers evaluated the study showing an effect more favorably than a study showing no effect, whereas the opposite was observed for skeptics. Moreover, both believers and skeptics reported to become more convinced of their initial view. In contrast, for actual attitude change, a depolarization effect was found. Conclusions/Significance: These results suggest that biased assimilation of new information leads believers and skeptics to become more rather than less certain of their views. Hence, even when confronted with mixed and inconclusive evidence, the perceived gap between both sides of the argument increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Tobias Greitemeyer, 2014. "I Am Right, You Are Wrong: How Biased Assimilation Increases the Perceived Gap between Believers and Skeptics of Violent Video Game Effects," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-7, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0093440
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093440
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093440
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0093440&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0093440?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam Corner & Lorraine Whitmarsh & Dimitrios Xenias, 2012. "Uncertainty, scepticism and attitudes towards climate change: biased assimilation and attitude polarisation," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(3), pages 463-478, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robin Bayes, 2022. "Moral Convictions and Threats to Science," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 700(1), pages 86-96, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Douglas Guilbeault & Damon Centola, 2020. "Networked collective intelligence improves dissemination of scientific information regarding smoking risks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-14, February.
    2. András Szeberényi & Tomasz Rokicki & Árpád Papp-Váry, 2022. "Examining the Relationship between Renewable Energy and Environmental Awareness," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-25, September.
    3. Lorraine Whitmarsh & Dimitrios Xenias & Christopher R. Jones, 2019. "Framing effects on public support for carbon capture and storage," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(1), pages 1-10, December.
    4. Ganga Shreedhar & Susana Mourato, 2020. "Linking Human Destruction of Nature to COVID-19 Increases Support for Wildlife Conservation Policies," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(4), pages 963-999, August.
    5. Lawrence C. Hamilton, 2016. "Public Awareness of the Scientific Consensus on Climate," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(4), pages 21582440166, November.
    6. Bruce Tranter & Zlatko Skrbis, 2014. "Political and Social Divisions over Climate Change among Young Queenslanders," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 46(7), pages 1638-1651, July.
    7. Charles A. Ogunbode & Rouven Doran & Gisela Böhm, 2020. "Exposure to the IPCC special report on 1.5 °C global warming is linked to perceived threat and increased concern about climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 361-375, February.
    8. Mary Guillard & Ghozlane Fleury-Bahi & Oscar Navarro, 2021. "Encouraging Individuals to Adapt to Climate Change: Relations between Coping Strategies and Psychological Distance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-15, January.
    9. Walter Leal Filho & Robert Stojanov & Franziska Wolf & Newton R. Matandirotya & Christian Ploberger & Desalegn Y. Ayal & Fardous Mohammad Safiul Azam & Tareq Mohammed Ali AL-Ahdal & Rebecca Sarku & No, 2022. "Assessing Uncertainties in Climate Change Adaptation and Land Management," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-15, December.
    10. Grant R. McDermott, 2021. "Skeptic priors and climate consensus," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 1-23, May.
    11. Amanda Hinnant & Roma Subramanian & Rachel Young, 2016. "User comments on climate stories: impacts of anecdotal vs. scientific evidence," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 138(3), pages 411-424, October.
    12. Whitmarsh, Lorraine & Nash, Nick & Upham, Paul & Lloyd, Alyson & Verdon, James P. & Kendall, J.-Michael, 2015. "UK public perceptions of shale gas hydraulic fracturing: The role of audience, message and contextual factors on risk perceptions and policy support," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 419-430.
    13. Marie Lisa Kapeller & Georg Jäger, 2020. "Threat and Anxiety in the Climate Debate—An Agent-Based Model to Investigate Climate Scepticism and Pro-Environmental Behaviour," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-25, February.
    14. Binbin Ni & Fuzhong Wu & Qing Huang, 2023. "When Artificial Intelligence Voices Human Concerns: The Paradoxical Effects of AI Voice on Climate Risk Perception and Pro-Environmental Behavioral Intention," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-20, February.
    15. Walton, Andrea & McCrea, Rod, 2020. "Understanding social licence to operate for onshore gas development: How the underlying drivers fit together," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    16. Stuart Capstick & Nicholas Pidgeon, 2014. "Public perception of cold weather events as evidence for and against climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 122(4), pages 695-708, February.
    17. Rachel A. Howell & Stuart Capstick & Lorraine Whitmarsh, 2016. "Impacts of adaptation and responsibility framings on attitudes towards climate change mitigation," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 445-461, June.
    18. Emilio Chuvieco & Mario Burgui-Burgui & Anabel Orellano & Gonzalo Otón & Paloma Ruíz-Benito, 2021. "Links between Climate Change Knowledge, Perception and Action: Impacts on Personal Carbon Footprint," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-19, July.
    19. Chad Zanocco & Hilary Boudet & Roberta Nilson & Hannah Satein & Hannah Whitley & June Flora, 2018. "Place, proximity, and perceived harm: extreme weather events and views about climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 349-365, August.
    20. Zakaria Babutsidze & Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg & Andreas Chai, 2023. "The effect of traditional media consumption and internet use on environmental attitudes in Europe," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 309-340, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0093440. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.