Measuring aggression-related emotion regulation in adolescents: Do computer games form a viable method?

Abstract

How well children can regulate their emotions is an important indicator of how adaptive their development is. This study examined whether computer games form a viable method to induce frustration, with the goal of measuring aggression-related emotion regulation (ER) in adolescents, by looking at whether computer games are able to induce frustration as a research method, what type of computer game (cognitive vs. reaction-time) induces more frustration, whether there is a difference between boys and girls, and whether there is an effect of exposure. Participants (N=27), ranging between 13 and 17 years of age (M=14, SD=1), played two computer games steeply increasing in difficulty, where they were motivated to gain as many points as possible. Frustration levels were measured before and after gameplay with use of a self-report questionnaire. There was a two week period in between the two games, and participants were randomly divided into two groups deciding which game was played first. No statistically significant results were found, suggesting no frustration effect of this method, no statistically significant differences between game types, gender and levels of game experience, and no effect of previous exposure to the method. This study was the first to look into these particular subjects and its results are tentative. It does, however, provide several points of interest for further research aiming to examine this subject further.