Abstract
Research has indicated that many video games are saturated with stereotypes of women and that these contents may cultivate sexism. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between video game exposure and sexism for the first time in a large and representative sample. Our aim was also to measure the strength of this association when two other significant and well-studied sources of sexism, television exposure and religiosity, were also included in a multivariate model. A representative sample of 13520 French youth aged 11–19 years completed a survey measuring weekly video game and television exposure, religiosity, and sexist attitudes toward women. Controlling for gender and socioeconomic level, results showed that video game exposure and religiosity were both related to sexism. Implications of these results for future research on sexism in video games are discussed.
Highlights
The media are a powerful socializing agent of the modern era
Television exposure (r = 0.08, p < 0.001) and video game exposure (r = 0.15, p < 0.001) were both related to sexism at a bivariate level
We introduced in a second step interactions between video games exposure and age, gender, socioeconomic level, and religiosity
Summary
Video games represent one of the most popular forms of media entertainment around the world, with a global market of more than 90 billion dollars in 2015. While the proofs of biased depictions in video games showing women as passive beings, kidnapped princess to rescue or sex objects to win or to use are numerous and indisputably recorded (Provenzo, 1991; Beasley and Collins Standley, 2002; Burgess et al, 2007; Dill and Thill, 2007; Near, 2013), their effect on gamers’ stereotypes of women remains debated (Breuer et al, 2015) despite some preliminary experimental demonstrations (Dill et al, 2008; Behm-Morawitz and Mastro, 2009; Fox and Bailenson, 2009; Yao et al, 2010; Driesmans et al, 2015; Gabbiadini et al, 2016)
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