Does it hurt? Playing violent video games affects the brain's response to painful pictures: an event-related potential study.

Miedzobrodzka, E., van Hooff, JC, Konijn, EA, and Krabbendam, L. (2022) Does it hurt? Playing violent video games influences the brain's response to painful pictures: an event-related potential study. Psychology of Popular Media, 11(1), 13-23. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000290

Commentary

Past research has investigated whether violent video game exposure (VVGE) affects the brain's empathy for pain and has shown mixed evidence.

In this study, an event-related potential (ERP) approach was used to investigate the effects of habitual and brief violent gameplay on top-down and bottom-up empathy for pain brain responses.

A total of 58 male participants with different levels of habitual VVGE performed a pain judgment task before and after 40 minutes of violent gameplay while their brain responses were recorded. Results showed that only the late cognitive appraisal ERP responses (P3, P625) were sensitive to the pain in the pictures and were affected by both habitual VVGE and brief violent gameplay.

As expected by the researchers, participants without habitual VVGE showed ERP pain effects prior to gameplay, with higher amplitudes for P3 and P625 for painful and non-painful images. In contrast, similar ERP pain effects were not observed in participants with higher VVGE before gameplay, suggesting habitual desensitization.

Thereby, brief violent gameplay reduced the amplitudes of P3 and P625 of painful pictures in the group without VVGE, indicating brief desensitization. The observed VVGE desensitizing effects are explained in terms of top-down regulation of empathic responses elicited by painful stimuli.

While such adaptations may be beneficial in violent gaming environments, further research is needed to determine the longer-term consequences that may be associated with reduced empathic responses in social contexts.