Video game violence and confederate gender: Effects on reward and punishment given by college males

We examined reward and punishment behavior among male college students (N = 119) following video game play. Most participants (N = 96) were White, the remainder (N = 23) were African American; most were from middle- to upper- middle-class backgrounds. The participants played either a nonviolent (NBA Jam(TM)) or one of three levels of a violent (Mortal Kombat(TM)) video game . After playing the video game for 15 minutes participants rewarded and pun ished a male or female confederate in a teacher/learner paradigm. Participa nts rewarded male (but not female) confederates with significantly more jel lybeans under the basketball condition than under any of the martial arts c onditions. Participants rewarded confederates more under the NEA Jam condit ion than any of the Mortal Kombat conditions, bur the Mortal Kombat conditi ons did not differ significantly from one another. Participants punished co nfederates significantly more after playing Mortal Kombat II than after pla ying NEA Jam. While participants were punished more harshly under the Morta l Kombat II condition than the Mortal Kombat conditions, these differences were not significant. Post hoc analyses showed that females were punished s ignificantly more stringently as game violence increased but this finding s hould be interpreted with caution.