June 2023 Negative emotions and pro-social behavior in video game contexts

Electronic games have become a way of life for teenagers. This study mainly explored the impact of electronic games on adolescent social behavior and emotions, and designed a 2 × The inter group experiment of 2 specifically focused on the role of game types and game perspectives. Using VibraImage technology, we measured 120 junior high school students' negative emotions when playing violent or nonviolent games from the first or Third-person pronoun perspective, and predicted their subsequent pro social behaviors using support vector machine (SVM) model. The results showed that violent games from the first person perspective led to an increase in impulsivity and a decrease in prosocial behavior among participants, while non violent games increased their stress and anxiety. However, there was no significant change in prosocial behavior among different game types. However, we found that the game perspective had a significant main effect on the prosocial behavior of participants, with the first person perspective leading to more prosocial behavior. Under the conditions of nonviolent games and Third-person pronoun perspective, our SVM model can significantly predict prosocial behavior. In general, nonviolent games predicted higher prosocial behaviors, while the Third-person pronoun perspective predicted lower prosocial behaviors. This study innovatively measured negative emotions and found the impact of game violence and perspective on teenagers, providing a new perspective for eliminating negative labeling of electronic games and educating teenagers in electronic games.