Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”Įmpathy is an emotional response that corresponds to the feelings of another person, such as feeling distress when seeing another person in distress. “Empathy is about standing in someone else's shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Overall, our study shows who is most affected by the exposure to sexist-violent video games, and why the effects occur. Masculine beliefs, in turn, negatively predicted empathic feelings for female violence victims. Our results supported the prediction that playing violent-sexist video games increases masculine beliefs, which occurred for male (but not female) participants who were highly identified with the game character. We found that participants’ gender and their identification with the violent male video game character moderated the effects of the exposure to sexist-violent video games on masculine beliefs. After gameplay, measures of identification with the game character, traditional masculine beliefs, and empathy for female violence victims were assessed. Participants ( N = 154) were randomly assigned to play a violent-sexist game, a violent-only game, or a non-violent game. We also hypothesized that the endorsement of masculine beliefs would reduce empathy toward female violence victims. We hypothesized that playing violent-sexist video games would increase endorsement of masculine beliefs, especially among participants who highly identify with dominant and aggressive male game characters.

This study investigates how exposure to sexist video games can decrease empathy for female violence victims. Empathy-putting oneself in another’s shoes-has been described as the “social glue” that holds society together.

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