Atrocity Propaganda in Military-Themed
First-Person-Shooter Video Games
9th of July 2020
Word count: 8209 Author: Sean Steven Magee
12490067 Supervisor: Tom Dobber
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
Abstract
The present study examines whether military-themed First Person Shooter (FPS) video games can be used as a tool of atrocity propaganda in eliciting certain emotional states and perceptions of the in- and outgroups that their narratives project. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) was the key subject of this investigation, and two of its campaign levels were employed to gauge the effects of an atrocity-driven and non-atrocity-driven narrative on participants’ emotional states, and their
humanization, animalistic dehumanization and mechanistic dehumanization of the narratives’ projected Arab ingroup and Russian outgroup. The results showed that exposure to the atrocity-driven narrative had a significant and substantial effect on increasing participants’ levels of self-reported Fear, Disgust and Anger, in addition to other negative emotions, while also significantly lowering positive emotions. However the results did not show atrocity-driven FPS narratives to have any significant impact on manipulating individuals’ humanization, animalization and mechanization of the groups portrayed. Instead, the analysis suggests that simple visual exposure to FPS gameplay with a certain ingroup projected as the player or the player’s allies has a significant and moderate effect on humanizing the relevant ethnicity for viewers.
Introduction
The capacity of video games to trigger aggressive behavior and cognition in both the short- and long-term has been evidenced in numerous studies (Anderson & Dill, 2000; Bushman & Anderson, 2002; Hollingdale, Greitemeyer, & McCormick, 2014); particularly when an effort is made to convey violence as realistically as possible to players (Jeong, Biocca, & Bohil, 2012).
Although violent interaction through video gameplay has received ample attention over the years, the effects of violent video game story-narratives remain less well understood; a troublesome fact when one considers that violence-justifying narratives traditionally also tend to increase the probability of aggressive behavior (Geen & Stonner, 1974; Paik & Comstock, 1994). The question of game narrative is particularly relevant in light of the increasingly popular and realism-oriented military themed-FPS (First Person Shooter) genre of video games, which as its name suggests, often assumes narratives that mirror present-day armed conflicts. This novel entertainment medium also offers an increasingly unambiguous space in which we are unable to escape our role as victim or perpetrator; thereby assigning such FPS narratives an unprecedented level of power in communicating messages of deep political significance. As with violence mediated through more traditional channels like TV and movies, justified violence has been found to drive about 77% of video game narratives (Smith, Lachlan, & Tamborini , 2003); accounting for the frequency with which players adopt roles of moral
agency in defending universal values in their struggle against enemies (Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004).
There has consequently also been ample debate over how FPS narratives might be used as a tool of one-sided political communication; albeit almost entirely in a theoretical context and
supported only through anecdotal evidence (Der Derian, 2001; Halter, 2002; Leonard, 2004; Stahl, 2006; Gagnon, 2010; Hitchens, Patrickson, & Young, 2013). Central to this discussion however, is the untested assumption that this game genre offers a new medium in which players’ attitudes towards certain real-life outgroups might be affected by explicitly depicting active belligerents of ongoing conflicts in a certain way. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare; arguably the most successful and popular military-themed FPS game in recent times, features an atrocity-laden narrative that mirrors the ongoing war in Syria with Russian enemies and Arab allies. Having sold 4.75 million digital units during the month of its launch in 2019 (Valentine, 2019), and having passed $1 Billion in global sales by December of the same year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has become the most played edition of its generation (Bhat, 2019); reportedly receiving over 3 hours of gameplay from the average player per week (Gaston, 2011). The game also serves as a most recent example of how some media outlets (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare faces Russian backlash, 2019) have used the term ‘propaganda’ to describe yet another supposed soft power mechanism by which the USA and Russia contest each other culturally. This study therefore seeks to examine whether the game’s campaign can actually be used as a tool of atrocity propaganda in effectively influencing players to achieve desired emotional states and perceptions of the enemy, and poses the following research question:
RQ: How do atrocity stimuli attributed to outgroups in First Person Shooter (FPS) video games
affect players’ emotional states, and their perceived humanization or dehumanization of the in- and outgroups projected by these FPS narratives?
Theoretical Framework
Propaganda
As with propaganda more generally, atrocity propaganda’s presumed effects have been the subject of considerable speculation but scant empirical research. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that no robust and widely recognized definition or theoretical framework for atrocity propaganda has ever existed (Morrow, 2018), and that the function of ‘propaganda’ has also been reformulated
numerous times and by numerous scholars since its inception (Jowett & O′Donnell, 2012). Lasswell wrote that the overarching cultural approach of propaganda involved the “presentation of an object… in such a manner that certain cultural attitudes will be organized toward it” (1927, p. 629 - 630), whereas Ponsonby believed the more specific aim of atrocity propaganda was the “stimulation of indignation, horror, and hatred” against an enemy, in a manner “assiduously and continuously pumped into the public mind” (1929, p. 1). Military-themed FPS video games would therefore offer an unexplored but highly engaging avenue for the stimulation of such attitudes towards groups they depict as adversaries.
More lacking than a common formulation of propaganda however, is a concise definition of what constitutes atrocity stimuli; in light of the quite fractured theoretical approach it has received in social science research. Bromley, Shupe and Ventim concluded that false stories of moral
indignation or atrocity tales primarily functioned by evoking “outrage,” authenticating preconceived notions of “evil,” and thereby bolstered a form of “social control” over communities (1979, p. 1). This is a similar observation to Bar-Tal’s later claim, that by placing adversarial groups in “extreme negative social categories which are excluded from human groups… considered as acting within the limits of acceptable norms and/or values,” through a process involving “intense negative emotions that derive from… extremely negative contents,” nation states had found an effective soft power instrument to delegitimize their enemies (1989, p. 171-172). Effective atrocity propaganda would therefore seem to trigger some emotional heuristic through morally or normatively outrageous stimuli, reflective of the “‘inhuman’ character of a perceived enemy’s conduct” (Morrow, 2018, p. 51); consequently inducing a broader and negative attitudinal change towards said outgroup. To the best of our knowledge however, the heuristics and attitudinal effects ascribed to atrocity stimuli have remained empirically untested; underscoring a substantial gap in the academic literature this study hopes to fill.
FPS narratives as a mediated experience
The difference in how narratives are mediated via video games versus TV and movie mediums have important implications for how messages are received and integrated. As Thompson has pointed out, the ‘hypodermic needle’ conceptualization of media affects; highly popular in the traditional propaganda framework, doesn’t accurately capture the “processes of encoding and decoding” that occur between a game narrative’s message and the players who actively interact with it (2008, p.20). Tilo Hartmann argues that video game narratives operate through one of two
(Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 110). If we assume a rational processing system, the player is completely aware of the “mediated origin of the representations they encounter” while playing the game (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 110), and is therefore always aware that in terms of story-narrative and interaction, the game ‘is not real’ (p. 110; Klimmt,
Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann, & Vorderer, 2006). In this sense, the player would therefore feel neither any emotional connection to virtually-mediated humanoid representations, nor any attitudes about his or her interaction with them. Hartmann however argues that because narratives “feel apparently real to the players’ senses” via the interactive experience video game mediation offers, players may nonetheless be under “intense illusions of violence,” in which their actions seem “morally
significant,” and therefore perceive games via an experiential rather than rational processing system (Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 109).
Key to this experiential process is a sense of ‘presence,’ by which the player feels that his or her experience is actually one of non-mediation (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012; Tamborini & Skalski, 2006). Many scholars argue that a sense of ‘whole’ or at least ‘partial’ self-presence occurs (Lee, 2004), in which players identify with their virtual selves during gameplay; particularly when an experience is mediated in the “first person” view of FPS games (Tamborini & Bowman, 2010, p. 89). Schneider and colleagues (2004) found that this type of involvement with the game-self was also far greater in games driven by a story than those that weren’t. We should
therefore also note that encoding messages through story-narratives is yet another hallmark of experiential processing (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 111).
There is also ample empirical evidence to back up the claim that players process FPS narratives in an experiential way. Hartmann, Toz and Brandon (Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players, 2010) found that players actually developed negative emotions for unjustifiably shooting people in FPS games, and a number of other studies have also indicated that players develop guilt for shooting innocent FPS projections (Klimmt et al., 2006; Lin, 2011). Additionally, interviews with gamers have shown that certain moral taboos also apply when navigating video game narratives (Goodings, Young, & Whitty, 2011). According to Hartmann, him
and his colleagues also found that some players felt irritated and guilty over the fact the Call of Duty
4: Modern Warfare narrative forced them to execute sleeping soldiers (Moral Disengagement During
Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012; Soto, Hartmann, & Prins, 2010). If we were to assume a rational processing system at work here, it is unlikely that players would intuit moral objections to actions that aren’t real. In this sense, video games actually offer a far greater impetus to present players with a morally justifiable narrative than viewers of TV or movie violence, as the latter can more easily disengage from visual narratives through their limited role as ‘onlookers,’ and the former actually perform as active agents that move the narrative forward (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 121; Lee, 2004; Tamborini & Skalski, 2006).
The heuristic nature of this experiential mode of processing however also means that it lends itself as the one best suited for the reception of propaganda. Assuming an expressive mode of perception also means assuming moral judgements based on intuition rather than logic or reflection (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012; Haidt, 2001), which would serve the purpose of attributing atrocities to an outgroup very well. While the long-term stability of such a change in attitude is also undermined by processing messages experientially rather than rationally (Chaiken, 1980), the allusion of game narratives to real-world happenings may also interact with such experiential processes in a manner that isn’t entirely clear cut, and might at minimum have a significant effect in the short-term.
Dehumanization
Bar-Tal was one of the first scholars to ascribe the term dehumanization to the delegitimizing process of “categorizing a group as inhuman” (1989, p. 173). Since then, dehumanization has been studied as it relates to instances of genocide (Chalk & Jonassohn, 1990; Kelman, 1973), moral
exclusion (Opotow, 1990), evil (Morera, Quiles, Correa, Delgado, & Leyens, 2018), and approval for various foreign policy practices (Viki, Fullerton, Raggett, Tait, & Wiltshire, 2012; Jackson &
Gaertner, 2010; Maoz & McCauley 2008). Dehumanization has also been shown to evoke a process in which guilt for aggressive behavior is alleviated (Bandura, 2002), and intergroup aggression is made more likely (Struch & Schwartz, 1989); underscoring its practicality as a means of propaganda.
More recently however, the framework for studying how outgroups are explicitly made to seem less human than ingroups has given way to the increasingly popular infrahumanization approach (Leyens, et al., 2000), which emphasizes the implicit and “more subtle forms of bias” inherent to how we see outgroups as less human than ingroups in everyday life (Vaes, Paladino, Luigi, Leyens, & Giovanazzi, 2003, p. 1016). For this reason, we turn to Haslam’s integrated dual model of dehumanization approach (Dehumanization: An Integrative Review, 2006), which conceives of infrahumanization as just one expression of the broader dehumanization framework (Haslam & Loughnan, Dehumanization and Infrahumanization, 2014). By this conceptualization, dehumanization may refer to how outgroups are made to seem less than human in one of two explicit manners; mechanistically or animalistically1. In short, to mechanize someone, is to see them more as
machine than human; denying them a ‘uniquely human nature’ in terms of for instance “depth,” “emotional responsiveness and agency,” or “individuality” (Haslam, Dehumanization: An Integrative Review, 2006, p. 257), whereas animalizing someone implies seeing them as more animal than human; thereby denying them a ‘human uniqueness’ in terms of “rationality,” “moral sensibility” and “restraint” (p. 257), to name just a few. Thus, animalization lends itself as the more convenient means by which to dehumanize an enemy, as this process is more easily associated with inducing contempt and disgust for an outgroup (Haslam, 2006, p. 254, 258, 262), and has also been shown to operate via a process of fear-based mediation (p. 261). It is therefore no coincidence that the
invocation of these emotions is associated with Bar-Tal’s (1989) delegitimization approach, which I employ for the current theoretical framework of propaganda. Since this study gauges participant’s combined levels of Anger and Disgust to estimate the broader sentiment of Contempt (Plutchik, 1962), I arrive at the following hypothesis:
H1: Participants in the two FPS game conditions will measure at higher levels of Fear, Disgust and
Anger than participants in the non-FPS game condition, however participants in the ‘FPS game with
an atrocity-driven narrative’ condition will measure at higher levels of Fear, Disgust and Anger than participants in any other condition.
Mechanization on the other hand lends itself as a more accurate description of what players view Non-Player Enemies (NPCs) as in narratives only weakly driven by a sense of moral agency. Machin and Suleiman (2006) observe how enemies in these games often become uniform to the player; a process that Young, Patrickson, and Hitchens (2013, p. 10) argue is best captured by Van
1 The more succinct terms ‘mechanize’ and ‘animalize’ will be used to refer to mechanistic dehumanization and
Leeuwen’s term “collectivization” (1996, p. 49). The framework I employ however, describes this process as a mechanization of the outgroup projected through enemies; robbing them of the qualities Haslam (2006) associates with ‘human nature,’ and consequently portraying them as virtual robots to the players who interact with them. With this in mind, I arrive at the following hypothesis:
H2: Participants in the two FPS game conditions will humanize the projected outgroup less so than
participants in the non-FPS game condition, however participants in the atrocity-driven narrative condition will measure highest in Animalization of the projected outgroup compared to those in all other conditions, and participants exposed to the non-atrocity-driven narrative will measure highest in Mechanization of the projected outgroup compared to those in all other conditions.
We should nonetheless note that this dual model of dehumanization also isn’t entirely clear cut as it relates to propaganda. Haslam argues that his model parts with that of Bar-Tal’s (1989) in making no distinction between dehumanization by way of sub- or superhuman projections
(Dehumanization: An Integrative Review , 2006, p. 259). À la Bar-Tal’s (1989) delegitimization through dehumanization approach, it is advantageous not just to animalize but also demonize the enemy. This means attributing the superhuman powers of “monsters and satans” to outgroups (1989, p. 173); thereby better serving the purpose of evoking not just contempt, but also fear for the enemy. Again, given that no coherent framework for understanding atrocity propaganda exists, we may in this case need to conceive of Haslam’s dual model of dehumanization as the more updated and methodologically-oriented framework for outgroup dehumanization, and Bar-Tal’s more explicit delegitimization approach as the mechanism that motivates and instructs the process itself. This is because the delegitimization approach best captures the more traditional and politically-oriented framework of propaganda. It is also because Bar-Tal’s ‘demonization’ view (Haslam,
Dehumanization: An Integrative Review, 2006) is precisely the one most commonly associated with the type of interethnic struggle depicted in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s campaign narrative, and the one that has manifested itself in how enemies were often depicted in atrocity propaganda
historically.
While we might therefore conclude that the primary aim of atrocity propaganda is to
animalize the projected outgroup, a secondary purpose not addressed by Bar-Tal might also be to humanize the projected ingroup; since atrocities by definition necessitate both a perpetrator and
victim. This is well depicted in works like “Destroy this Mad Brute: Enlist” (Hopps, 1917), where the evocation of fear and contempt for the animalized German is augmented by humanizing and
evoking sympathy for the presumably Belgian victim (see Appendix 1.a.). The particular power outlined in previous research by which players self-identify with the protagonists of their video game narratives suggests that putting someone in the victim role of such an atrocity-driven FPS narrative would therefore also force the player to self-identify with the protagonists’ ingroup; possibly leading to a greater humanization of said ingroup post-exposure. This leads me to the following hypothesis:
H3: Participants in the FPS game conditions will humanize the projected ingroup more so than
participants in the non-FPS game condition, however participants in the ‘FPS game with an atrocity-driven narrative’ condition will measure highest in Humanization of the projected ingroup and lowest in Animalization as well as Mechanization of the projected ingroup compared to participants in the other two conditions.
Method
Participants
The Qualtrics survey-experiment was disseminated via Amazon Mechanical Turk between May 14th and June 1st of 2020. The age parameters of 18 to 30 were set as a rough estimation of the
younger demographic associated with violent video games2 (Blocker, Wright, & Boot, 2014), with
participants receiving $1.50 each for completing the survey. The recruitment text led participants to believe they were participating in a study relating to attention-span rather than atrocity propaganda, as not to prime them to the sensitive nature of what was being measured. Responses that failed manipulation checks were removed during data collection and were not counted as paid and successful completions. Of an initial sample of 126 respondents, two were removed for falling outside the targeted age and gender demographic, with a further nine being removed for giving incongruent or random responses on the emotional measures3. This left a final sample of 115
responses adequate for testing means across all three conditions with ANOVAs. Nationality was limited to U.S. participants in order for the ingroup to remain constant, and for the implicit
dehumanization task to function. All participants fell between the ages of 18 and 28 (M = 23.89, SD = 1.56), with 51 being male (44%) and 64 being female (56%).
2 While the age criteria entered into Amazon Mechanical Turk specified 18-25 as the requisite age range, individuals
over 25 but under 30 did take part as well, and their responses were retained.
3 Cases 126 and 103 were removed for falling outside of the target age and gender demographic respectively. Cases 60
and 52 were removed for entering the same digit across all emotion responses. Cases 41, 62, 69, 86, 98, 110 and 111 were also removed for displaying patterns of obvious incongruence across their emotional responses (see supporting sytanx script for details).
Measures
Emotional Experience
Participants’ self-reported levels of Fear, Disgust, and Anger were measured as dependent variables, in addition to Sadness, Happiness, Relaxation, Anxiety, and Desire as control variables (see Appendix 2.s. for items and scale-coding). To measure these, the framework of the Discrete Emotions Questionnaire was employed (Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, Aleman, & Bastian, 2016), as this was both an up-to-date and reliable emotional measurement scale (Jones, Harmon-Jones, Aleman, & Bastian, 2016). This questionnaire used four synonyms per emotion to establish consistency in one’s self-reported emotions on a scale of how much it applied to the respondents’ experience from 0; ‘not at all,’ to 6; ‘an extreme amount.’ For instance, “fear,” “terror,” “panic” and “scared” were all found to be reliable measures of the emotion Fear (Harmon-Jones, Harmon-Jones, Aleman, & Bastian, 2016). All items were also presented in a randomized order. Since the DEQ didn’t measure Contempt, the combination of Anger and Disgust were used as a broader estimate for the emotion of Contempt (Plutchik, 1962). All DEQ measures for Fear (α = 0.96), Disgust (α = 0.93), Anger (α = 0.95), Sadness (α = 0.81), Happiness (α = 0.92), Relaxation (α = 0.93), Anxiety (α = 0.92), and Desire (α = 0.87) proved reliable scales.
Humanization, Mechanization and Animalization
Although several measures have already been developed to measure dehumanization (Haslam & Loughnan, Animals and Androids: Implicit Associations Between Social Categories and
Nonhumans, 2007; Čehajić, Brown, and González, 2009; Haslam & Bastian, Excluded from humanity: The dehumanizing effects of social ostracism, 2010; Greitemeyer & McLatchie, 2011; Rudman & Mescher, 2012; Morera, Quiles, Correa, Delgado, & Leyens, 2018), there were several reasons I decided to retool Martínez and colleagues’ (2012) measure for this study4. Firstly, none of
the implicit association measures used previously have been employed outside a lab setting, and were therefore no more suitable for an online Qualtrics survey than Martínez and colleagues’ (2012).
4Initially, a paper and pencil procedure developed and tested by Martínez and his colleagues (2012) was the intended
procedure for measuring dehumanization of the projected outgroup and projected ingroup, however when a lab study was no longer possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was also no longer possible to fully translate this paper and pencil task into an online Qualtrics survey format.
Secondly, given the new online setting for the experiment, there was a greater incentive for retaining respondents’ attention and keeping the measure simple. Thirdly, in order to make the measurement more suitable for later ANOVAs, the inability to translate the initial methodology of Martínez and his colleagues’ (2012) paper and pencil task to Qualtrics also served as an opportunity to revise their essentially nominal measure into a continuous one.
The initial measure (Martínez, Rodríguez-Bailón, & Moya, 2012) posits ten names associated with a certain in- or outgroup, in addition to 21 words to the participant; seven that are essentially characteristic of animals, seven of humans, and seven of machines. Based off the aggregation of word-types chosen by participants for each group, differences in how much participants animalize,
mechanize and humanize certain surnames and their associated in- or outgroups can therefore be
established. To retool the measure, five of Martinez and colleagues’ (2012) seven words were
retained for the animal- (“wild,” “irrational,” “breed,” “pet,” and “animal”), machine- (“mechanical,” “calculating,” “technological,” “device,” and “tool”) and human- (“single,” “rational,” “individual,” “people,” and “passive”) related measurement scales. Accordingly, five Russian (“Petrov,”
“Sokolov,” “Vasiliev,” “Ivanov,” and “Mikhailov”), five Arab (“Ahmad,” “Basara,” “Nassar,” “Rahal,” and “Mohamed”) and five American (“Johnson,” “Williams,” “Smith,” “Thompson,” and “Miller”) surnames were posed to participants5. These were attained via a google search of the most
common surnames for each group, and participants were presented with a randomly selected animal-related word, human-animal-related word and machine-animal-related word for each (see Appendix 2.r.).
Participants had to select how much each of the three words spoke to them when reading each surname, on a scale of 0; ‘not at all,’ to 7; ‘a lot.’ In this manner the humanizing, animalizing and
mechanizing measures could run concurrently for each surname. All words and surname items were
also displayed randomly for participants. For the purposes of this study, the measures relating to the projected Russian outgroup and Arab ingroup were computed by averaging humanizing,
mechanizing or animalizing responses to the five Russian or Arab name items6 (see Appendix 2.r. for
coding).While the variables Animalization of the projected outgroup (α = 0.72), Mechanization of
the projected outgroup (α = 0.67), Mechanization of the projected ingroup (α = 0.61), and
Animalization of the projected ingroup (α = 0.77) proved reliable measurement scales, the variables Humanization of the projected outgroup (α = 0.52), and Humanization of the projected ingroup (α =
5 Words were eliminated on the basis of alliteration or similarity; (e.g. “machine” and “mechanical”) or because they too
closely hinted at the characters depicted in the video game (e.g. “inhabitant”). Surnames were selected on the basis of internal phonetic diversity, (e.g. “Ahmad and Basara” rather than “Ahmad and Ali”).
6 While the American surname items can also be computed into scales to measure mechanization, animalization and
0.54) did not.The unreliability of these latter two scales should therefore be taken into account when considering findings.
Control variables and manipulation checks
Gender was reported with either ‘male,’ ‘female,’ or ‘other’ (see Appendix 2.b. for items and Appendix 3.a. for randomization check), while Age was measured with an open-answer question
during the closing questionnaire (see Appendix 2.x. for items and Appendix 3.b. for randomization check). Proficiency in the Arabic or Russian language, and Arabic or Russian familial origin was measured with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ (see Appendix 2.w. for items and Appendix 3.c. to 3.d. for
randomization checks). Prior exposure to the game narrative was measured on a scale of 0; ‘never’ to 7; ‘many times’ (see Appendix 2.t. for items and Appendix 3.e. for randomization check). The survey controlled for the Type of device it was completed on, with the options ‘computer,’ ‘smart phone,’ ‘tablet,’ and ‘other’ (see Appendix 2.x. for items and Appendix 3.f. for randomization
checks). Participants were also asked what ethnicity they believed the enemies and allies in the game to be with an open question, in order to gauge whether they had registered the narratives’ projected in- (allies) and outgroups (enemies). Open answers for this question were recoded accordingly into the nominal level variable Recognition of the projected in- and outgroups (see Appendix 2.v. for items or coding, and Appendix 3.g. for randomization checks). Recognition of an atrocity having
occurred was measured by asking participants whether they had perceived the actions of their
enemies and allies as “justified” under the Geneva Convention, and as “extremely brutal and cruel,” on a seven-point Likert scale from 0; ‘completely disagree’, to 6 ‘completely agree’. While it should be noted the scale computed from averaging these items (see Appendix 2.u. for reverse coding), did not meet the standards of reliability (α = 0.49), a one-way ANOVA did show that overall
Recognition of an atrocity having occurred was significantly higher in the atrocity-driven FPS
narrative (M = 4.55, SD = 1.07) than the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative condition (M = 3.09, SD = 0.59), by almost one and a half points, F(1, 80) = 56.05, p < .001, and that the manipulation of narratives for participants could therefore be considered successful.
Research Design
The independent variable Game Narrative (see Table 1 for visualization of Game Narrative research design and Appendix 2.z. for summarization of broader questionnaire design) was
manipulated by allocating participants to one of three possible conditions; the ‘non-FPS narrative’ (control) condition (see Appendix 2.m. & 2.o.), which entailed watching the car racing game Forza
Horizon, the ‘FPS narrative with a non-atrocity-driven narrative’ condition (see Appendix 2.i. & 2.k.), which entailed watching a walkthrough of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare mission “Proxy
War,” and the ‘FPS narrative with an atrocity-driven narrative’ condition (see Appendix 2.e. & 2.g.), which entailed watching a walkthrough of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare mission “Hometown.” In “Proxy War,” the player must attack a Russian airbase with Arab-speaking allies in the fictional country of ‘Urzikstan.’ Within this struggle between the ‘Urzikstani’ militia fighters and Russian soldiers no apparent atrocities occur, and a strong sense of moral agency is therefore lacking for the player. In the “Hometown” mission, the player is a young ‘Urzikstani’ girl who must escape Russian soldiers that attempt to exterminate her village with chemical gas. The video ends when the girl finally overpowers a Russian soldier whose face is obscured by a gas mask, and who is also depicted as a muscular and monstrously unrestrained enemy, after more than 4 different stabbing attacks from her and her family. The execution of civilians by indiscriminate gunfire and aerial bombing also features heavily throughout this narrative, and the power disparity depicted between the Russian soldier and girl deeply echoes the superhuman animalization associated with Bar-Tal’s
‘demonization’ view of the dehumanization approach (1989).
Table 1 Game narrative
Non-FPS narrative
(N = 34) non-atrocity related FPS game with a narrative (N = 38) FPS game with an atrocity-related narrative (N = 43) Findings
When considering these findings, one should note that the groups for the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (N = 43), non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (N = 38), and non-FPS narrative (N = 34) conditions were not more or less equal in size, and that Levene's tests for Desire, F(2, 112) = 4.14, p = .018, Relaxation, F(2, 112) = 4.59, p = .012, Anxiety, F(2, 112) = 3.17, p = .046, and Anger, F(2, 112) = 3.38, p = .038, showed that equal variances in the population could not be assumed in their respective one-way ANOVAs. One should also note that Russian familial origin, Proficiency in the
Russian language, and Recognition of the projected in- and outgroups were initially entered into
ANCOVAs for all relevant dependent variables as covariates7 (see Appendix 3.h., 3.i., 3.j., 3.k., 3.l.,
and 3.m.).
Emotional Experience Table 2
Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance for Self-Reported Emotions
Measure Atrocity-driven FPS narrative Non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative Non-FPS narrative F(2,114) η2 M SD M SD M SD Anger 3.49 1.48 1.10 1.63 0.66 0.99 46.73*** .45 Disgust 3.12 1.57 1.26 1.68 0.81 1.42 24.26*** .30 Fear 4.13 1.59 1.36 1.58 0.99 1.39 50.32*** .47 Sadness 2.87 1.17 1.18 1.36 0.86 1.25 29.29*** .34 Anxiety 4.08 1.64 1.89 1.74 1.54 1.26 30.58*** .35 Relaxation 0.87 1.26 2.80 1.85 3.18 1.49 25.52*** .31 Happiness 1.38 1.43 2.65 1.81 3.53 1.56 17.64*** .24 Desire 1.08 1.26 1.71 1.71 2.16 1.51 5.10** .08 Note: N = 115, *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05
7Recognition of the projected in- and outgroups were found to improve the model for Humanization of the projected
outgroup and Mechanization of the projected ingroup, and the results for the subsequent ANCOVAs are reported accordingly in the following section.
Graph 1 Note: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on self-reported levels of Disgust was statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 24.26, p < .001. Game Narrative had a large effect on Disgust, with the factor explaining 30% of the variance in participants’ experience of this emotion, η2 = .30.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative, the average level of Disgust was higher than among those exposed to the non-atrocity driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative (as shown in Table 2 and visualized in Graph 1). A post-hoc test showed that the difference in self-reported levels of Disgust between those in the atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 1.86, p < .001, 95% CI [1.01, 2.71]), as well the levels of Disgust reported between those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative
(Mdifference = 2.31, p < .001, 95% CI [1.43, 3.18]), were both statistically significant. This would
therefore partially support Hypothesis 1. There was however no significant difference in the levels of
Disgust reported by those in the non-FPS and non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference
= 0.45, p = .686, 95% CI [-0.45, 1.35]); showing that only exposure to the atrocity-driven narrative had a significant effect on increasing Disgust.
Graph 2 Note: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on self-reported levels of Anger was statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 46.73, p < .001. Game Narrative had an extremely large effect on Anger, with the factor explaining 45% of the variance in participants’ reported experience of the emotion, η2 = .45.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative, the average level of Anger was higher than among those exposed to the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative (as shown in Table 2 and visualized in Graph 2). Once again, a post-hoc test showed that the difference in reported levels of Anger between those shown the atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-atrocity-driven narrative (Mdifference = 2.40, p < .001, 95% CI [1.63, 3.16]), as well the levels of Anger
reported between those shown the atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative (Mdifference =
2.83, p < .001, 95% CI [2.05, 3.62]), were both statistically significant; thereby partially supporting Hypothesis 1. There was however no significant difference in the levels of Anger reported by those in the non-FPS and non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 0.44, p = .575, 95% CI
[-0.37, 1.25]); showing that exposure to the atrocity-driven narrative had the greatest effect on increasing the levels of Anger experienced by participants, but that exposure to the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative had no significant effect on manipulating Anger from the levels reported by those exposed to the non-FPS condition. Additionally, given how closely the levels of Anger and
Disgust experienced by participants resemble each other in Graphs 1 and 2; both peaking in the
of the broader sentiment Contempt while viewing the atrocity-driven FPS narrative; as predicted in Hypothesis 1.
Graph 3 Note: A one-way ANOVA also showed that the effect of Game Narrative on self-reported levels of Fear was statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 50.32, p < .001. Game Narrative had an extremely large effect on Fear, with the factor explaining 47% of the variance in participants’ reported experience of the emotion, η2 = .47.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative, the average level of Fear was higher than among those exposed to a non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative (as reported in Table 2 and visualized in Graph 3). As with the previous two ANOVAs, a post-hoc test showed that the difference in self-reported levels of Fear between those in the atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-atrocity driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 2.77, p < .001, 95% CI [1.94,
3.59]), as well between those in the atrocity-driven FPS narrative condition and non-FPS narrative condition (Mdifference = 3.14, p < .001, 95% CI [2.29, 4.00]), were both statistically significant. While
these observations would partially support Hypothesis 1, there was nonetheless no significant difference in the levels of Fear reported by those in the non-FPS and non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 0.38, p = .899, 95% CI [-0.50, 1.25]); showing once again that
exposure to the simple non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative had no effect on increasing the relevant emotion participants experienced when compared with those experienced by participants in the non-FPS condition.
Animalization, Mechanization and Humanization of the Projected Outgroup
Graph 4 Notes: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Animalization of the projected outgroup was not statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 0.00, p = .999.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 2.29, SD = 1.49), non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 2.28, SD = 1.51), and non-FPS narrative (M = 2.29, SD = 1.22) the average level that participants animalized Russian surnames was more or less equal; as shown in Graph 4. Hypothesis 2 was therefore not supported.
Graph 5 Note: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Mechanization of the projected outgroup was not statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 0.70, p = .501.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 2.84, SD = 1.32), non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 3.11, SD = 1.15), and non-FPS narrative (M = 3.16, SD = 1.49), the average level that participants mechanized Russian surnames did not differ in any significant fashion (see Graph 5 for visualization), and Hypothesis 2 was therefore not supported.
Graph 6 Note: A single-factor ANCOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Humanization of the projected outgroup was not statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 0.29, p = .751.
While those exposed to the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 3.37, SD = 1.05)
humanized Russian surnames more so than those in the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 3.16, SD
= 1.33), and non-FPS narrative (M = 2.82, SD = 1.07), this effect was not found to be statistically significant; as seen in Graph 6. While Hypothesis 2 was therefore once again not supported by these findings, the ANCOVA did show that Recognition of the projected in- and outgroups had a
significant and moderate effect on how much participants humanized the projected outgroup, F(1, 114) = 6.20, p = .014, η2 = 0.05, and explained approximately 5% of the variance in participants’ humanization of Russian surnames.
Animalization, Mechanization and Humanization of the Projected Ingroup
Graph 7 Note: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Animalization of the projected ingroup was not statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 0.34, p = .711.
Among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 2.06, SD = 1.62), non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 1.91, SD = 1.51), and non-FPS narrative (M = 2.19, SD = 1.27)
the average level that participants animalized Arab surnames was more or less equal (as shown in
Graph 7), and Hypothesis 3 was therefore not supported.
Graph 8 Note: A single-factor ANCOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Mechanization of the projected ingroup was not statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 0.31, p = .732.
While those exposed to the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 3.00, SD = 1.23)
mechanized Arab surnames more so than those in the atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 2.56, SD =
1.30), and non-FPS narrative (M = 2.59, SD = 1.24), this effect was not found to be statistically significant; as seen in Graph 8. The lack of any significant variation in our dependent variable therefore rendered Hypothesis 3 unsupported yet again. The ANCOVA however did show that
Recognition of the projected in- and outgroups had a significant and moderate effect on how much
participants mechanized the projected ingroup, F(1, 114) = 8.42, p = .004, η2 = 0.07, and explained
Graph 9 Note: A one-way ANOVA showed that the effect of Game Narrative on Humanization of the projected ingroup was statistically significant, F(2, 114) = 3.26, p = .042. Game Narrative had a moderate effect on humanizing the projected ingroup, with the factor explaining 5% of the variance in how much participants humanized Arab names, η2 = .05.
Lastly, among those exposed to the atrocity-driven FPS narrative, the average level of ingroup humanization was lower (M = 3.40, SD = 1.36), than among those exposed to the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative (M = 3.56, SD = 1.07), but higher than those exposed to the non-FPS narrative (M = 2.86, SD = 1.14). As seen in Graph 9, these means did in fact vary by a statistically significant margin. A post-hoc test showed that the difference in Humanization of the projected
ingroup between those watching the non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative and non-FPS narrative
(Mdifference = 0.70, p = .047, 95% CI [0.01, 1.39]), was statistically significant. There was however no
significant difference between how much those in the non-FPS and atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 0.54, p = .168, 95% CI [-0.14, 1.21]), as well as those in the
non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative and atrocity-non-atrocity-driven FPS narrative conditions (Mdifference = 0.16, p = 1.000, 95%
CI [-0.49, 0.82]), humanized the projected ingroup; showing that exposure to the non-atrocity-driven narrative actually had the greatest effect on humanizing the projected Arab ingroup, compared with exposure to any of the other narratives. The findings therefore once again do not support Hypothesis 3.
Discussion
Emotional Experience
Although the non-atrocity-driven narrative seemingly had no significant effect on manipulating relevant emotions among participants, the fact that exposure to the atrocity-driven narrative did have a significant and substantial effect on increasing participants’ levels of Disgust,
Anger, Fear and Contempt means that the main thrust of Hypothesis 1’s prediction relating to the
preeminence of atrocious narratives in fostering these emotions seems to have been supported. Only atrocious content therefore has a serious effect on evoking Fear, Disgust, Anger, and Contempt in viewers, and not FPS gameplay itself; as is evidenced in Graphs 1, 2, and 3. The occurrence of an identical trend for other negative emotions like Sadness and Anxiety (see Table 2 for reporting and
Appendix 3.n. to 3.o. for visualizations) echoes the findings of previous studies. One can for instance
infer that the experiential system of information processing; i.e. the one “closely tied to intuitions and gut feelings” (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 112), was at work during exposure to the atrocity-driven narrative, given that this was also the operative narrative in
manipulating all key negative emotions. By extension, the findings therefore also seem to build on the understanding that players, and in our case viewers, do intuit moral judgements from game narratives that are emblematic of character-centric portrayals of justified violence and empathetic story-telling (Hartmann, Toz, & Brandon, Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players, 2010, p. 355; Haidt, 2001). The particularly high levels of Contempt
experienced throughout the morally outrageous narrative are particularly evident of this process having taken place for instance. Previous studies found that “users automatically feel empathy with virtual characters” (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p.114; Morrison & Ziemke, 2005) or for any “social entities once they have detected biological motion” (Hartmann, Toz, & Brandon, Just a Game? Unjustified Virtual Violence Produces Guilt in Empathetic Players, 2010, p. 342; Ahlström, Blake, & Ahlström, 1997; Morewedge, Preston, & Wegner, 2007). The present study however suggests that if such a base level of empathy for anthropomorphized FPS projections does occur, it is extremely limited. If participants were to have empathized with the projected Russian enemies or Arab allies in the non-atrocity-driven and ‘morally-neutral’ FPS narrative for instance, one would also have expected their deaths to have driven significantly higher levels of self-reported
Sadness or even Anxiety (see Appendix 3.n. and 3.o. for visualization) compared to those reported by
Whether the atrocity-driven narrative in question should be viewed more as an item of atrocity propaganda than entertainment is a harder question to answer however. For example, inducing Fear and Anxiety has been shown to heighten audience’s enjoyment of horror movie narratives (Hoffner & Levine, 2005), and it has also been argued that Sadness is often “perceived as gratifying” by audiences in some way (Hoffner & Levine, 2005, p. 231; Oliver, 1993, p. 319). Other negative emotions like Disgust can also be enjoyed when they are “framed as unreal,” and in “a protective frame or distance from the aversive material” in question (Clifford & Jerit, 2018, p. 219; Woody & Teachman 2006, p. 293). The latter point is key, and begs the question of whether the violence depicted throughout the atrocity-driven FPS narrative was really perceived as “unreal” by participants, given its parallel of a real and active conflict in Syria.
Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann and Vorderer (2006) apply Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement (2002) in order to explain the recreational appeal of violent video games; “in order to maintain their enjoyment of game violence, players find effective strategies to avoid or cope with the moral conflict related to their violent behaviors in the game world.” Vividly depicting atrocities in violent video games that mirror atrocities occurring in real life, and which players are also likely cognizant of, is something these authors did not consider in their application of Bandura’s framework however, and could therefore also inhibit strategies that are geared towards moral disengagement with such pseudo-fictional narratives. If we consider for instance that 72% of those exposed to the atrocity-driven narrative were able to accurately describe who the projected in- and outgroups were, and that this number fell to only 26% for those in the non-atrocity-driven narrative condition, we might conclude that those exposed to the former were likely far more cognizant of how the narrative’s depiction reflected an ongoing conflict than those in the latter. This could also explain why the error bars for Desire, Happiness and Relaxation were always lowest and comparatively narrower in the atrocity-driven narrative (see Appendix 3.p., 3.q. and 3.r. for graphic visualizations); suggesting a higher certainty of these emotions among participants in this condition. Although decreasing the levels of Relaxation experienced by gamers can certainly be beneficial for certain gaming experiences, the fact that atrocity-driven participants showed such a narrow range of
Happiness and Desire, and at such a low level, suggests that atrocity-driven narratives may not be
particularly enjoyable (at least to the general population); given that Happiness was measured with items closely associated with ‘enjoyment’ (see Appendix for 2.s. for measurement items), and that the levels of Desire reported by participants were presumably indicative of participants’ desire to participate in the game narrative. Future studies that take into account how players react to an
atrocity-driven narrative with no real-world parallel would clarify how much moral disengagement with the violence of a game narrative is also incumbent on its reflection of real-world happenings. A study geared towards a more narrow measurement of enjoyment would also help in elucidating whether such atrocity-driven narratives do in fact offer any entertainment value to viewers or players.
Animalization, Mechanization and humanization of the projected in- and outgroups
The absence of any significant variation in how much participants animalized and
mechanized the game narratives’ projected in- and outgroups could be indicative of Game Narrative
having had no impact on dehumanizing these various groups, or it could just as easily be characteristic of a type II error resulting from the visual mediation of the stimulus and
operationalization of relevant measures. The fact that COVID-19 forced the research design to move from 18 minutes of active gameplay to 12 minutes of gameplay-viewing meant one’s ability to generalize findings to actual gaming would always be significantly limited. The key difference affecting one’s ability to generalize these results to gaming was the fact that participants no longer actively took part in the game narrative, which likely affected participant’s experience and reactions in a number of ways. When considering dehumanization for instance, the absence of gameplay likely had a substantial impact on participants’ impetus to morally disengage. Involvement in virtual killing motivates morally disengaging with one’s virtual enemies (Klimmt, Schmid, Nosper, Hartmann, & Vorderer, 2006), which by my initial prediction meant seeing such an enemy as either more machine or animal depending on the narrative one followed. Since participants did not participate in any virtual killing, this lack of involvement also meant participants had far less of a cognitive stake in dehumanizing the projected enemy. When considering humanization on the other hand, the issue of ‘presence’ (Lee, 2004) and identification with the player is most at issue. In order for an “illusion of non-mediation” to occur (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 110; Tamborini & Skalski, 2006), a viewer of the narrative would need to attain a sense of ‘spatial’ presence via virtual mobility, ‘social’ presence via virtual interaction with projections, and ‘self-presence’ via virtual self-action (Tamborini & Skalski, 2006, p. 88-90). The extent to which a sense of perhaps partial self-presence (Lee, 2004) and identification with the game-self (Schneider, Lang, Shin, & Bradley, 2004) might have occurred just through the first-person framing of the narrative’s visual mediation is once again impossible to establish, and can only be elucidated by a future lab-based study.
With this in mind, the findings do show a trend by which simple exposure to either FPS narrative moderately raised participants’ humanization of the projected ingroup more so than that of those in the non-FPS condition; which presented no ingroup whatsoever (as seen in Graph 9). This might push us to conclude that a sort of self-identification with the player in either FPS walkthrough mission did occur, and in turn heightened viewer’s humanization of the projected ingroup. A number of caveats also present themselves when considering these findings however. We should firstly note that statistical significance was only barely achieved; with the lower bound of the confidence interval relating to the difference in humanization featured between the non-FPS narrative and non-atrocity-driven narrative barely scraping past zero; (Mdifference = 0.70, p = .047, 95% CI [0.01, 1.39]). In
addition to this, the fact that both our variables for Humanization of the projected in- and outgroup proved unreliable measurement scales could present a further type II error resultant of the novel and abstract nature of this study’s dehumanization measure. While this could of course be mitigated by using Martínez, Rodríguez-Bailón, and Moya’s (2012) original implicit association task in a future lab setting, the inconsistency of the present measure certainly doesn’t indicate its suitability for future replication. We should finally also note that a very similar trend to the one shown in Graph 9 also occurs with the projected outgroup in Graph 6; Participants in the two FPS conditions also
humanized the projected Russian outgroup more so than participants who weren’t even presented
with any outgroup in the non-FPS condition, albeit not quite by a statistically significant margin. This final consideration begs the question of whether either in- or outgroup may have been
humanized simply by their mere presence throughout the narrative? According to Young, Patrickson,
and Hitchens, enemies are perceived in a ‘collectivized’ manner by players (2013, p. 10; Van Leeuwen, 1996, p. 49), especially when their depictions are characterized by behavioral and appearance-related uniformity (2013, p. 10; Machin & Suleiman, 2006). In the non-atrocity-driven narrative both allies and enemies appear interchangeable within their groups by way of their uniforms and behavior, yet we see a far more personal and non-identical dynamic appear between the girl, her family, and the demonized Russian soldier throughout the atrocity-driven narrative. The fact that none of these factors seemed to have had any significant impact on differentially
humanizing either the in- or outgroup suggests that individuals are quite resistant to integrating
visually-mediated FPS portrayals of ethnic groups, whether these are “collectivized” in their depiction or not.
Overall ‘resistance’ to the game narrative’s political messaging therefore seems to best characterize the results attained. Given that Hypothesis 1 was supported, and that participants did in
fact experience the atrocity-related material in quite an emotionally shocking manner, we would reasonably also expect some difference in the mode by which participants processed either narrative. Since participants found the atrocity-driven narrative far more emotionally impactful than the non-atrocity-driven narrative; often by a margin of more than two to three points (See Graph 1, 2 and 3), we can conclude that participants in the former condition must have therefore been processing at least parts of the narrative in an experiential manner. If the atrocity-driven narrative was therefore emotionally impactful but uncompelling in its messaging, then it would be reasonable to conclude that the experiential process initially laid out for triggering an emotional heuristic through morally outrageous “images, metaphors and narratives” does not necessarily make for effective visual propaganda (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 110). We should nonetheless also note that with a change in mediation via gameplay, the level of “psychological attachment” users would have felt with the narrative’s “depicted action” would presumably have been far greater (Hartmann, Moral Disengagement During Exposure to Media Violence: Would It Feel Right to Shoot an Innocent Civilian in a Video Game?, 2012, p. 110; Cupchick, 2002), and the integration of the narrative’s messaging likely different.
Conclusion
The analysis has shown that visual exposure to atrocity stimuli in FPS games has a large and significant effect on heightening individuals’ experience of the negative emotions most associated with atrocity propaganda; namely Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Contempt more broadly. The fact that the atrocity-driven narrative was shown to lower positive emotions corroborates previous evidence that gamers often disapprove of morally outrageous depictions of violence (Soto, Hartmann, & Prins, 2010; Whitty, Goodings, & Young, 2011), and begs the question of why many game developers might continue to go out of their way to include them in game narratives nonetheless. Previous studies have suggested that habitual FPS gameplay may be associated with a lower activation of the lateral prefrontal cortex and a higher Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) in response to troublesome content (Montag, et al., 2012), which consequently disinhibits the typical kind of behavior one would expect towards such stimuli, and decreases the levels of empathy elicited for violence against third parties (Montag, et al., 2012). Whether increasing the shock value of FPS narratives with material that mimics real and contemporary atrocities should therefore be attributed to game developers trying to emotionally stimulate emotionally disinhibited players, or to the simple purpose of generating media hype for their new product is more difficult to discern.
We can however conclude that there is no evidence to indicate that visual exposure to atrocities in FPS narratives has any significant effect on humanizing, animalizing or mechanizing projected in- or outgroups; at least in the short-term. Instead, exposure to FPS gameplay more generally seems to serve a function in moderately humanizing the ingroup projected by the game’s narrative. This has deep practical implications for society at large. Call of Duty and other military themed-FPS games have received ample attention in the past two decades for projecting uniformly Arab enemies (Machin & Suleiman, 2006; Šisler, 2008) and “neo-orientalist themes” via their
depiction of Middle Eastern battleground settings (Mantello, 2013, p. 638), yet the present study also shows that simple visual exposure to gameplay featuring would-be outgroups as projected ingroups can also have a significant effect on individual’s humanization of these ethnicities. This suggests that FPS video games could also serve a positive role in lowering negative perceptions of every-day outgroups if the protagonists offered by game narratives are sufficiently diversified in the future.
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