This is especially true in adolescence, when peers are increasingly influential (Brown & Larson, 2009).Īdolescents are one of the biggest target demographics of the video game industry. Thus, the social environment plays an important role in enhancing or mitigating the effects of violent games on aggressive behavior (Gentile, 2011). Furthermore, not only does acceptance of aggressive norms increase the likelihood of lasting violent gaming effects, but also habitual exposure to violent games can increase normative acceptance of aggression (Krahé & Möller, 2004). These social influences can occur deliberately through explicit regulation of media use, or more candidly through the prevailing norms of family or peers (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). When exposure to violence increases a person's short‐term aggression, any positive responses by the environment to this newly adopted aggressive behavior might solidify the effect. A person's environment can encourage or discourage the use of aggression, which exacerbates or dampens the long‐term effects of exposure to media violence (Anderson et al., 2010). The GAM and other social‐cognitive models, such as Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1973) and the Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013), specify the moderating role of the social context for persistent and long‐term changes in aggression.
Furthermore, repeated exposure to violent media leads to changes in the chronic accessibility of aggression‐related knowledge structures, causing long‐term changes in individuals’ personality. In turn, this impacts on appraisal and decision‐making processes (Bushman, 2016), leading to aggressive behavior in the short‐term. Together, personal and situational variables increase individuals’ aggressive affect, aggressive cognitions, and physiological arousal. This association is commonly explained through the General Aggression Model (GAM Anderson & Bushman, 2002), which posits that aggressive behavior is based on idiosyncratic personal variables, such as gender or trait aggression, and situational or environmental variables, such as the amount of violence in a video game. Several meta‐analyses have reported positive associations between exposure to violent games and aggression (Anderson et al., 2010 Greitemeyer & Mugge, 2014 but see Ferguson, 2015).
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