Presentation on Video Games: Stress, Aggression, and Cardiac Coherence

This presentation provides a comprehensive review of a research article investigating the relationship between violent video games, stress, and aggression. The article, by Hasan, Bègue, and Bushman (2013), uses quantitative methods to demonstrate that playing violent video games can induce stress in players and increase aggressive tendencies. The presentation summarizes the article's key points, including the definition of stress, the link between video games and physiological arousal (skin conductance, heart rate, blood pressure), and the use of cardiac coherence as a measure of stress. The methodology, involving participants playing violent or non-violent games while measuring cardiac coherence and aggression, is also detailed. The presentation highlights the strengths of the article, such as its comprehensive results and consistency with previous research, while also addressing weaknesses, including potential biases due to limited aggression measures and gender imbalance. The presentation concludes by reinforcing the potential of violent video games to trigger aggression and stress due to the violent situations presented within the games.

Article Review
Presentation
Student’s name
Institution affiliation

Introduction
The article is about a quantitative research
It proves that vicious video games stress the players
The games also makes them more belligerent (Hasan,
Bègue & Bushman, 2013 p.98).

Summary
 The author defines stress as a state which is undesirable
 The article links stress to vicious video games
 vicious video games expose the players to stressful
conditions
 Vicious video games increase physiological arousal like skin
conductance, heart rate, and blood pressure.
 Cardiac coherence is the bringing together of the breathing
and the heart rate rhythms
 The situation helps measure the balance in the autonomic
nervous system
 Cardiac coherence is a state of extremely regular
variability of heart rate
 For instance, cardiac coherence and a fluctuation in the
variability of the heart rate occur during times of positive
emotions.

Summary cont...
 Negative emotions lower cardiac coherence and increase
heart rate fluctuations.
 Cardiac coherence is used to study the effects of video
games because it is related directly to stress (Hasan et al.,
2013 p.100).
 Preference is based on:
 Less invasive compared to other physiological changes
 Stability against environmental disturbances
 Cheap measuring equipment and easy method of
measurement
 It is not subject to characteristics of demand

Methodology
The method involved 77 participants both gender
Participants played a non-vicious or a vicious
video game
Measures of their cardiac coherence were taken
Another method involved making the winner blast
the loser with strident noise via the headphones
Noise intensity and duration were measured
The results revealed that vicious video games
caused a decreased cardiac coherence and
increased aggression.

Important points drawn from article
Violent video games expose participants to inhuman
situations which include stress
For example a video game like the Call of Duty
involves shooting and a lot of fighting
Video game player aim to complete all the missions
successfully and unharmed
Participants aim at winning against the opponent in
violent or non-vicious video games played (Hasan et
al., 2013 p.101).
This triggers aggressiveness among participants as
winning involves killing the character of the opponent
player.

Important points –cont...
Video gamers try to imitate the actions of the
characters in video games in real life situations.
Characters of vicious video games are
programmed to act fiercely
Their actions rarely demonstrated kindness
This causes aggression in the participant
Teens and growing children are affected
psychologically when they play
Non-vicious games are better to vicious ones as
nothing bad is mimicked

Article Critique: Article Strengths
comprehensive results using graphs well-labeled
The graphs are related to researcher predictions
Graphs show decreased cardiac coherence among vicious video
game players
There intensity and duration results are also consistent with
researcher predictions
Conclusion is based on results that vicious video game players
were more aggressive than the non-vicious video game
participants
The results agree to previous researches that showed the same
correlation of vicious video games and aggressiveness (Hasan et
al., 2013 p.101).
They prove that vicious video gamers made more noise for a very
long time than individuals who played non-vicious video games.

Article weaknesses
These results, are subject to biasness
a. They only measured one aggressive behavior type
b. The research used more female participants than males
Aggression due to video game types vary from one behavior
type to another and it is not guaranteed
No proof that vicious games cause stress to players
Gender imbalance makes it difficult to test for the results
due to the gender differences
The research assumed other changes in the physiology like
the blood pressure, heart rate and the conductance of the
skin
This reduced chances of providing more accurate results
(Hasan et al., 2013 p.102).

Conclusion
Aggression and stress could be triggered and
by continuously playing vicious video games.
This is because the players are involved in
violent situations making them think that they
are in danger
This would lead to a reduction in the cardiac
coherence which increases the
aggressiveness of the participants

References
Hasan, Y., Bègue, L. and Bushman, B.J., 2013.
Violent video games stress people out and
make them more aggressive. Aggressive
behavior, 39(1), pp.64-70.