ISSN 1671-3710
CN 11-4766/R

Advances in Psychological Science ›› 2016, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (10): 1600-1612.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1042.2016.01600

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The effects of prosicial video games on foreign teenagers’ behavior

ZHANG Yi1; CHEN Rong5; LIU Yan-ling1,2   

  1. (1 Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China) (2 Laboratory of Mental Health Education and social adjustment, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China) (3 Research Center of Mental Health Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China) (4 Key Laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China) (5 Chengdu Aeronautic Polytechnic, Chengdu 610100, China)
  • Received:2015-06-15 Online:2016-10-15 Published:2016-10-15
  • Contact: LIU Yan-ling, E-mail: ssq@swu.edu.cn

Abstract:

The research on the effects of video games focuses mainly on the violent video games and their harmful effects on adolescents. With the research going on as well as the emerging of the positive psychology, more and more researchers show interests in the positive effects of prosocial video games on the adolescents. Most of the research is based on the General Learning Model (GLM). According to this model, prosocial video games can influence adolescents’ prosocial behavior by affecting a person’s internal state, consisting of cognition, affect, and arousal that are related to the prosociety. Existing studies show that playing a prosocial video game increases helping behavior and reduces aggressive behavior. Various methods have been used to explore the psychological mechanism and the results are consistent with the GLM. In the future, it is necessary to examine the influence of several more factors such as gender, age and culture, and explore the mechanism from the cognitive neuroscience perspective.

Key words: prosocial, video game, prosocial behaviour