Cultivation Effects of Video Games: A Longer-Term Experimental Test of First- and Second-Order Effects

This experiment examined cultivation effects resulting from a repeated, longer-term exposure to a violent video game, Grand Theft Auto IV. Over a period of three weeks, participants in the treatment condition played a violent video game in a controlled laboratory setting for a total of 12 hours. Following this period, participants completed a questionnaire which included demographics as well as first- and second-order cultivation measures and their scores were compared with the control group of participants who did not play the game. The findings provide some support for first-order effects, but only very limited support for second-order cultivation effects. Unexpectedly, second-order effects were in the opposite direction from a theorized one, suggesting a possible counter-cultivation mechanism at work. The theoretical implications of the findings for cultivation research are discussed.

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