Video Games and Social Competence

Rachel Kowert

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138548978
• eBook ISBN: 9781317620136
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Aspects in Computer Science
• Index: Psychology

Despite their popularity, online video games have been met with suspicion by the popular media and academic community. In particular, there is a growing concern that online video game play may be associated with deficits in social functioning. Due to a lack of empirical consistency, the debate surrounding the potential impact of online video game play on a user's sociability remains an active one. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the potential impact of online video game involvement on social competence outcomes, theoretically and empirically. Through empirical research, Kowert examines the relationships between online video game involvement, social goals, and social skills and discusses the underlying mechanisms of these effects.

1 Rising Social Concerns of Online Gaming

1.1 The Problem Area

While video game play was once considered a niche activity, today, it is a global, multibillion-dollar, worldwide enterprise (Bacon, 2011; Cucuel, 2011; Hinkle, 2011; Johns, 2005). From a reported $200 million dollar industry in 1978 (Aoyama & Izushi, 2003), to a value of $74 billion in 2011 (Hinkle, 2011), the video game industry will likely remain the fastest growing current form of media, with projected sales figures expected to rise to $82 billion by 2015 (Bacon, 2011). This market has experienced incredible growth, particularly in comparison to other media markets (Zimmerman, 2002). By 2008, the global video game industry had overtaken the combined worldwide music and movie industry in sales (Global Industry Analysts, Inc. 2009). This new form of media is also highly engaging, as representative data of American players acquired by the Pew Internet and American Life Project survey reports that 21% of all users engage in video game play daily (Lenhart, Jones, & Macgill, 2008).

The proliferation of affordable and accessible Internet has widened this medium’s scope by incorporating ‘real-time’ social services within a shared interactive environment, providing shared gaming spaces in which millions of individuals across the globe regularly participate. This new, interactive medium is being consumed at a staggering rate. In 2008, there were a reported 1.5 billion unique registered accounts of online games worldwide (TMachine.org, 2008). This market continues to grow; in the U.S. alone, the online gaming community is reportedly growing at 10 times the rate of the total U.S. Internet population (Alvarez, 2009). By the end of 2013, over 700 million people, 44% of the world’s population, were reportedly engaging in online game play (Spil Games, 2013). While the exact number of hours dedicated to online game play has not been assessed among representative samples (such as in the Pew Internet and American Life Project survey), opportunity samples of dedicated game players have found that users often devote 10 to 20 hours a week to online game play (Griffiths, 2010; Lemmens, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2011).

Due to its popularity and intensity of play, researchers have grown concerned as to whether or not engagement within online video gaming environments is physically, socially, and psychologically healthy. These concerns have reinvigorated old debates, such as video games’ potential to incite violence and aggression, as well as spawned new concerns about the potential negative influences of online games on users’ sociability. In particular, there is a growing concern that online video game (OVG) play may be associated with deficits in social functioning, such as hindering one’s ability to form and maintain reciprocal offline relationships (Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Shen & Williams, 2010) or to develop effective social and emotional skills (Chiu, Lee, & Huang, 2004; Kim, Namkoong, Ku, & Kim, 2008; Peters & Malesky, 2008; Shen & Williams, 2010). While the validity of these claims remains tenuous (the rise of online gaming and its corresponding concerns is discussed in more detail in the following section), the theoretical ways in which OVG play may be associated with poorer social outcomes for players has been widely discussed.

There are two ways in which OVG play may be associated with social (in)competence. The first is that engaging in OVG play offsets social development because players are spending less time than non-players socially interacting in offline contexts. This is referred to as the social displacement hypothesis, which assumes that online and offline social interactions are zero-sum. That is, that there is a substantial trade-off between online and offline friendships, relationships, and interactions and that offline interactions are more ‘socially valuable’ than online ones in terms of promoting the development and maintenance of social skills (Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Hussain & Griffiths, 2009; Lo, Wang, & Fang, 2005; Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2003; Shen & Williams, 2010). From this perspective, online gaming does not directly cause social deficits, but rather, social deficits are an indirect consequence of play caused by the displacement of offline social interaction. In this sense, the potential negative social impact of OVG play would be no different than the effects of other activities that ‘displace’ offline interactions, such as online gambling or offline gaming. However, there is a sub-type of the displacement hypothesis that argues gaming does directly affect social competence by influencing cognitive development. For example, Sigman (2009) has hypothesized that a lack of ‘real’ social networking (i.e., socialization that involves face-to-face interaction) may alter the way genes work and negatively influence mental performance. However, the research in this area remains largely exploratory.

The other way OVG play may be associated with social competence is if people with lower levels of social resources (e.g., poor social skills, greater social anxiety, lower quality or quantity of offline friendship circles, etc.) are drawn to this activity. This is referred to as the social compensation hypothesis. From this perceptive, online gaming spaces hold particular qualities (e.g., visual anonymity, few non-verbal cues, etc.) that are attractive to individuals who are lacking in social competence or social opportunity. Again, there is no sense in which playing games is directly detrimental to social competence. While displacement effects could exacerbate the pre-existing disposition (e.g., lead to increased rates of loneliness, depression, and social anxiety), a certain degree of social inadequacy is believed to pre-exist among those who are motivated to engage within online gaming spaces (a more detailed discussion of the theoretical constructs underpinning the social displacement and compensation hypotheses is presented in chapter 3).

However, it has also been suggested that OVG play may not contribute to poorer social outcomes, but rather increase social competence through training social skills, increasing social self-esteem, and developing online friendships. For example, it has been suggested that online gaming spaces may be ideal for cognitive-social learning (Bandura, 1962, 1977, 1986), a framework that is often employed in social-skill training programs (Evers-Pasquale & Sherman, 1975; Gresham & Nagel, 1980; Keller & Carlson, 1974; Ladd & Mize, 1983), as they can provide a venue for social observation, rehearsal, and feedback. Steinkuehler and Williams (2006) have also postulated that the social immersion provided by online games could even contribute to an increase in one’s overall sociability by expanding and diversifying one’s world views (the potential role of social learning through OVG play is discussed in more detail in section 3.2.4.1).

While the social displacement and compensation hypotheses differ in the proposed origin of social differences among the online game playing community, they both contend that social differences do exist and either originate from or are exacerbated by an increase in time spent within online gaming environments. However, empirical evidence in support of these hypotheses has been mixed. For example, Griffiths (2010) found that high-frequency game players achieved poorer outcomes than low-frequency players on the Social Situations Questionnaire (SSQ) (Bryant & Trower, 1974), indicating that more frequent players exhibit greater social inadequacies. Framed in the context of the social displacement hypothesis, these results are presented as evidence that displacement effects due to OVG play exist and are negatively influencing players’ social skills. This is in contrast to a 2009 investigation by Barnett and colleagues, which concluded that video game players exhibit no social skill differences as compared to non-players as both groups chose assertive, rather than aggressive, responses when administered the Novaco Provocation Inventory (Novaco, 1994), indicating socially competent behavior. Empirical support for social compensation processes has been more straightforward, as researchers have consistently found that more involved OVG players display higher rates of the symptoms associated with loneliness, depression, and social anxiety (Caplan, Williams, & Yee, 2009; Kim et al., 2008; Lemmens et al., 2011; Lo et al., 2005; Shen & Williams, 2010; Williams, Yee, & Caplan, 2008). However, the majority of this work has focused on the relationships between psychosocial outcomes and problematic video game playing and/or video game addiction (Caplan et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2008; Lemmens et al., 2011). As problematic/ addicted play is associated with a range of other psychosocial components (e.g., tolerance, mood modification, conflict and problems, etc.), it is difficult to determine if the relationships uncovered within this research are related to OVG play specifically or would be evident among media-addicted populations regardless of the nature of the activity. Additionally, a lack of longitudinal research in this area has made it difficult to determine if these particular psychosocial dispositions are a cause (i.e., compensation motivation) or consequence (i.e., displacement effect) of play (the empirical links between social displacement and compensation processes and video game involvement are overviewed in more detail in chapter 3).

The variability of findings in support of, or disputing, the underlying role of social displacement and compensation processes in the relationship between OVG involvement and social outcomes is partially attributable to inconsistencies in research design (i.e., employed outcome measures, sample selection and assessment focus, and assessment strategy) and the conceptualization of the two primary variables of interest: video game involvement and social competence. For example, while play frequency has been the most commonly employed characteristic to differentiate between varying levels of video game involvement (M. Barnett et al., 1997; Colwell & Kato, 2003; Griffiths, 2010; Kolo & Baur, 2004; Lo et al., 2005; Senlow, 1984; Shen & Williams, 2010; Smyth, 2007), there has been a lack of standardization within these categorizations. For example, Barnett et al. (1997) identified frequent video game players as those who played at least 1 hour per week of video games, Kolo and Baur (2004) identified frequent video game players as those who played between 5 and 15 hours a week, and Griffiths’s (2010) criteria for a frequent player was more than 7 hours a week of video game play. In lieu of play frequency categories, other researchers have conceptualized play frequency on a spectrum (Colwell & Kato, 2003; Lo et al., 2005; Shen & Williams, 2010). Similar inconsistencies have been evident in the conceptualization of social competence. While some researchers have taken a relationship approach and assessed variability in the size and quality of players’ social circles (Cole & Griffiths, 2007; Hussain & Griffiths, 2009; Kim et al., 2008; Shen & Williams, 2010; Smyth, 2007; Williams, 2006), others have adopted a more psychosocial approach by examining the relationships between OVG play and social anxiety (Lo et al., 2005), loneliness (Caplan et al., 2009; Lemmens et al., 2011; Morahan-Martin & Schumacher, 2003; Shen & Williams, 2010; Visser, Antheunis, & Schouten, 2013), and depression (Caplan et al., 2009; Williams et al., 2008). Additionally, some researchers have taken a social skill approach to conceptualizing social competence (J. Barnett, Coulson, & Foreman, 2009; Chiu et al., 2004; Griffiths, 2010; Lemmens et al., 2011; Liu & Peng, 2009). While this variability is not inherently problematic, as social competence is a broad concept that can, and does, incorporate a wide variety of variables (Rose-Kransor, 1997), the inconsistency in quantifying this variable has made it difficult to establish the exact nature of the relationship between social outcomes and OVG involvement (see chapter 3, section 3.3 for a more detailed discussion of these limitations).

Due to a lack of empirical consistency, the debate as to whether or not OVG play has detrimental effects (either direct or indirect) on users’ social resources remains an active one. The aim of this monograph is to contribute to this debate by providing further evidence for the effects of OVG involvement on social competence by addressing the following research questions:

RQ1: Are there significant associations between video game involvement and social competence?

RQ2: If so, are these relationships more attributable to social displacement or social compensation phenomena?

1.2 Rising Concerns of Online Gaming

Since the advent of the telegraph, popular media has approached new forms of technology wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Rising Social Concerns of Online Gaming
• 2 What Is Social Competence?
• 3 Social Implications of Online Video Game Involvement
• 4 Social Goals, Social Skills, and Online Video Game Involvement
• 5 Social Skills and Video Game Involvement: A Replication
• 6 Social Skills, Insecure Attachment, and Video Game Involvement
• 7 Research Findings and Implications
• 8 Sociability and Online Video Games: What We Know Now
• Appendices
• Index