Abstract
Theories regarding the influences of electronic games drive scientific study, popular debate, and public policy. The fractious interchanges among parents, pundits, and scholars hint at the rich phenomenological and psychological dynamics that underlie how people view digital technologies such as games. The current research applied Martin Heidegger’s concept of interpretive frameworks (Heidegger, 1987) and Robert Zajonc’s exposure-attitude hypothesis (Zajonc, 1968) to explore how attitudes towards technologies such as electronic games arise. Three studies drew on representative cohorts of American and British adults and evaluated how direct and indirect experiences with games shape how they are seen. Results indicated this approach was fruitful: negative attitudes and beliefs linking games to real-world violence were prominent among those with little direct exposure to electronic gaming contexts, whereas those who played games and reported doing so with their children tended to evaluate gaming more positively. Further findings indicated direct experience tended to inform the accuracy of beliefs about the effects of digital technology, as those who had played were more likely to believe that which is empirically known about game effects. Results are discussed with respect to ongoing debates regarding gaming and broader applications of this approach to understand the psychological dynamics of adapting to technological advances.
Highlights
Electronic games are a dominant entertainment technology (Lenhart et al, 2015)
In the current work we explore how these general, cohort-level, and specific, individual-level patterns of experience with games relate to the internal and empirical accuracy of beliefs held about these technologies
In line with Hypothesis 1, results from zero-order bivariate analyses indicated that younger people tended to report more regular experience with games, r = −.25, p < .001, and lower negative attitudes, r = .27, p < .001, as well as higher levels of positive attitudes, r = −.22, p < .001, towards games
Summary
Electronic games are a dominant entertainment technology (Lenhart et al, 2015). Half of households in many developed countries have gaming consoles and it has been estimated hundreds of millions of hours are invested in gaming each week (Dutton & Blank, 2015; McGonical, 2011). This explosion of interest has driven discussions in popular, political, and academic circles regarding the impact technologies such as games could be having on individuals and on society more broadly.
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