New study links video games to racial prejudice

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Can playing video games make you racist? One recent study suggests it’s possible.

A scientific study from the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science produced some disturbing data which should give people of color pause.

Playing as a black avatar, white players act more aggressively after the game is over, have stronger explicit negative attitudes toward blacks and display stronger implicit attitudes linking blacks to weapons.

These results are the first to link avatar race in violent video games to real-world aggression.

The research involved two related experiments.

In the first, 126 white university students (60 percent of them males) played the violent game Saints Row 2.

They were randomly assigned to play the game either as a black or white male avatar. Those who played with a black avatar showed stronger explicit negative attitudes toward blacks than did those who played as a white avatar.

“After each violent mission we conducted the test,” Professor of Communication and Psychology Brad J. Bushman told theGrio. “From there we saw strong IAT responses when a white student used a black male avatar.”

Implicit Association Tests (IAT) are designed to reveal unconscious bias. “Because people are reluctant to vocally express racism in society, implicit racism is more common than explicit,” added Bushman.

The second test involved word association. After playing the popular wrestling game WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2010, subjects were asked to identify emotional words ( good, evil) and associated them with black faces.

A significant number of players viewed African-Americans  in a negative light.

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