Heroic video game violence and prosocial behavior

Research into violent videogames has yet to investigate how violence used in videogames for prosocial purposes could affect prosocial behavior. We assigned participants to one of three videogame conditions: an antisocial violence game, a prosocial violence game, or a control game. After gameplay, participants were dismissed from the experiment, but a confederate approached them in the hallway and asked them to help the Red Cross with a blood drive. Contrasts found that participants in the hero violence condition were more prosocial than those in the gratuitous violence condition, but these conditions did not differ from the control condition. This finding is discussed in light of several limitations of the study, including the nonnormal distribution of the dependent variable and issues related to the size of the final sample.