The Effect of Violent Video Game Exposure on the Aggression Level of Undergraduates

Abstract

Video game violence has seen to be one of the factors that cause aggressive behaviour and this act of aggression can be a potential source of violence. This study provide a better understanding on how video game will influence an individual level of aggression through examining the possible contributing factors such as the time spent on playing violent video game, the type of video game with violent content or non-violent content. 100 undergraduates from Universiti of Tunku Abdul Rahman Perak Campus were invited to participate in this study using convenience sampling method. This quantitative research adopted Habitual Video Gaming Violent (HVGV) questionnaire to measure the frequency of video gaming and Buss and Perry (1992) aggression questionnaire to measure the aggression level of participants. The main findings of this study were the content (violent or non-violent) of video game and the frequency of violent video game played will affect an individual’s aggression level. In future research, a larger scale experiment may be carried out in different state of Malaysia and have a more diverse sample, including people of other races and ages to generate a more reliable data.