Habitual engagement with violent video games does not translate virtual aggression to real-world emotional processing: insights from gaze behaviour metrics

Abstract This study examined the effects of habitual violent video gaming on emotional processing, focusing on its impact on the recognition of positive and negative facial emotions. Sixty habitual gamers participated, which included violent video gamers (VVGs; n = 30, M age = 20.03 years, SD = 0.92), who specifically engaged in playing first-person shooters (FPS), and non-violent video gamers (NVVGs; n = 30, M age = 21.23, SD = 3.64). Participants completed an emotional go/no-go task requiring them to recognise five basic facial emotions (i.e., happiness, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness). The results showed no difference between VVGs and NVVGs in recognising happiness, with both groups demonstrating higher accuracy and quicker response times for happy faces on go trials and lower false alarm rates on no-go trials. Eye-tracking metrics corroborated this happy-face advantage, showing an enhanced perceptual salience for happiness in the mouth region. In contrast, the recognition capacity for negative emotions was substantially lower regardless of the gaming group. This reduced efficacy was mainly associated with a scattered gaze pattern rather than the desensitisation effects proposed by the General Aggression Model (GAM). Additionally, the study found lower aggression levels in VVGs, suggesting that habitual exposure to in-game violence is not associated with hostile information processing. Overall findings challenge the disproportionate emphasis placed on the negative effects of violent video games, asserting that broader psychosocial factors should be considered when evaluating their impact.