Sexist games=sexist gamers? A longitudinal study on the relationship between video game use and sexist attitudes

Predicting hostility towards women: incel-related factors in a general sample of men

Hostility towards women is a type of prejudice that can have adverse effects on women and society, but research on predictors of men's hostility towards women is limited. The present study primarily introduced predictors associated with misogynist involuntary celibates (incels), and then investigated whether loneliness, rejection, attractiveness, number of romantic and sexual partners, right-wing authoritarianism, and gaming predicted hostility towards women among a more general sample of men. A total of 473 men (aged 18-35, single, heterosexual, UK residents) recruited via Prolific answered the hostile sexism subscale, the misogyny scale, the self-perceived sexual attractiveness scale, the right-wing authoritarianism scale, the game addiction scale for adolescents, the adult rejection-sensitivity scale, the UCLA loneliness scale, and self-developed questions regarding number of sexual and romantic partners, and time spent gaming. We found a strong positive relationship between right-wing authoritarianism and hostility towards women, as well as a strong convex curvilinear relationship between attractiveness and hostility towards women. The number of sexual partners showed a moderate concave relationship with hostility towards women. We did not find sufficient support for a relationship between gaming and hostility towards women, and there was no support that loneliness, rejection, or romantic partners predicted hostility towards women among a general sample of men. Our study supports right-wing authoritarianism and self-perceived attractiveness as potential strong predictors in understanding men's hostility towards women in the wider community. Pre-registration: https://osf.io/ms3a4.

Examining Cybersexism in Online Gaming Communities: A Scoping Review

Cybersexism in the context of online gaming communities, as epitomized by the Gamergate incident back in 2014, has been an issue for a while for gamer women, yet it has not received proper attention. In this scoping review, we have aimed to assess its main characteristics, its consequences for gamer women, its triggers and predictors, and related prevention and mitigation policies provided by the existing research. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines were applied to the design of the scoping review. Empirical studies were accessed via database searches. The following databases were prospected: Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, PsycINFO, PubMed, and ACM from March to May 2021. A total of 33 studies were included in the final analysis after database searching, filtering, and snowballing. Most of the selected studies (66%, n = 22) were focused on the manifestations of cybersexism in gaming communities, with gender-driven trash-talking being the main one. The main drivers and triggers behind cybersexist behaviors were also the research topic in 66% (n = 22) of the studies and the consequences and coping strategies were studied in 52% (n = 17) of the articles. Furthermore, 12% (n = 4) of the studies assessed policies and actions to prevent cybersexism. Cybersexism and its manifestations are a reality that conditions gamer women, provoking avoidance and ultimately withdrawal from gaming and, therefore, creating inequality, impairing full digital citizenship, and widening the digital gender gap.

Sexist Attitudes in Online Video Gaming: Development and Validation of the Sexism Against Women Gamers Scale in Spanish and English

Sexism is an increasingly prevalent problem in the gaming community. However, until now, assessment instruments focused on the construct “sexism against women gamers” are lacking. We present an eight-item self-report scale: Sexism Against Women Gamers Scale (SAWGS). We studied the reliability and validity of the scores of Spanish and English versions across five independent samples ( N = 2,437), with participants from Spain and the United States. Scores on both versions demonstrated high reliability, while exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported their unidimensional structure. The analysis established configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender. SAWGS was invariant at the configural level across countries. SAWGS scores were independent of social desirability, positively correlated with myths about intimate-partner violence against women, sexism, and social dominance orientation, and correlated negatively with feminism. Using two fictitious scenarios of sexism in online gaming, we found that gamers with higher scores on SAWGS showed a greater tendency to downplay a sexist incident and proposed a less severe punishment for toxic gamers. The SAWGS explained additional variance on responses to scenarios beyond that explained by other measures. The detection of sexism should make it possible to develop programs for its eradication and avoid negative consequences for women gamers. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843231162837

Sexualised video games, sexist attitudes and empathy towards victims of rape: Correlational evidence for a relationship is minimal in an online study

BACKGROUND

There is continued debate about whether sexualisation in games can influence sexist attitudes and reduced empathy towards women in real life. There is research evidence both supporting and refuting the possibility.

AIMS

Our aim was to examine the relationship between sexualised content in video games and players' sexist attitudes and empathy. Our research question was, do any such relationships exist once other factors including gender and trait aggression are controlled?

METHODS

An online sample of 125 participants were recruited and asked to rate their video game playing experience, complete a trait aggression scale and record responses to a vignette about rape. Scores were first correlated, and then hierarchical multiple regression was employed followed by PROCESS examination of interactions between sexualised game content and trait aggression.

RESULTS

Exposure to sexualised content in video games was neither correlated with higher sexist attitude ratings nor with lower empathy scores. Sexualised content in games was associated with slightly lower sexist belief scores for those with higher scores on trait aggression (the 12.8% of our current sample at one standard deviation above the mean). No effects were observed for those low in trait aggression.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

While it is natural to be concerned about the impact of potentially arousing video games, actual effects may be counterintuitive, so if seeking to regulate, it is important to act from actual information. Further research with groups of particular concern will be important.

Victimization, Social Structure and Psychosocial Variables: The Case of Spain in 1999 and 2016

This article reviews the research on the factors influencing victimization and explores the case of Spain. The first section presents a comparative analysis of the data for 1999 and 2016 in terms of perceptions, profiles and the most significant sociodemographic and socioeconomic variables. The second section shows an explanatory analysis based on multivariate logistical regression models, using as independent variables sociodemographic and psychosocial items, and the dependent variable is whether one is described as one is described as a victim or no in the 2016 survey. The results point towards an explanatory model of victimization in which sociodemographic variables play a less important role, whereas psychosocial variables related to lifestyle and subjective perceptions make a significant contribution to greater understanding of the nature of being the victim of a crime and offer suggestions on how to improve Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED).

Are Associations Between "Sexist" Video Games and Decreased Empathy Toward Women Robust? A Reanalysis of Gabbiadini et al. 2016

Gabbiadini, A., Riva, P., Andrighetto, L., Volpato, C., & Bushman, B, (PloS ONE, 2016) provided evidence for a connection between "sexist" video games and decreased empathy toward girls using an experimental paradigm. These claims are based on a moderated mediation model. They reported a three-way interaction between game condition, gender, and avatar identification when predicting masculine ideology in their original study. Masculine ideology was associated, in turn, with decreased empathy. However, there were no main experimental effects for video game condition on empathy. The current analysis considers the strength of the evidence for claims made in the original study on a sample of 153 adolescents (M _age = 16.812, SD = 1.241; 44.2% male). We confirmed that there was little evidence for an overall effect of game condition on empathy toward girls or women. We tested the robustness of the original reported moderated mediation models against other, theoretically derived alternatives, and found that effects differed based on how variables were measured (using alternatives in their public data file) and the statistical model used. The experimental groups differed significantly and substantially in terms of age suggesting that there might have been issues with the procedures used to randomly assign participants to conditions. These results highlight the need for preregistration of experimental protocols in video game research and raise some concerns about how moderated mediation models are used to support causal inferences. These results call into question whether use of "sexist" video games is a causal factor in the development of reduced empathy toward girls and women among adolescents.

Video Games Exposure and Sexism in a Representative Sample of Adolescents

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.

Do Your School Mates Influence How Long You Game? Evidence from the U.S

The goal of this paper is to estimate peer influence in video gaming time among adolescents. Using a nationally representative sample of the U.S. school-aged adolescents in 2009–2010, we estimate a structural model that accounts for the potential biases in the estimate of the peer effect. Our peer group is exogenously assigned and includes one year older adolescents in the same school grade as the respondent. The peer measure is based on peers’ own reports of video gaming time. We find that an additional one hour of playing video games per week by older grade-mates results in .47 hours increase in video gaming time by male responders. We do not find significant peer effect among female responders. Effective policies aimed at influencing the time that adolescents spend video gaming should take these findings into account.