J. J. TIAN, Z. QIAN
than girls. In the present study, game types, goal words and
gender were independent variables, which all significantly af-
fected children’s aggression, partly supporting Cognitive-new
Association Model (CAM) and General Aggression Model
(GAM) (Anderson, 2002; Berkowitz, 1990; Anderson, Ander-
son, & Deuser, 1996). Additionally, boys were more likely to
be activated by violent stimuli than girls, which replicated pre-
vious researches (Salmivalli & Kaukiainen, 2004; Boutwell,
Franklin, Barnes, & Beaver, 2011; Lansford et al., 2012).
Therefore, it could be assumed that repeated exposure to violent
media may form aggressively cognitive structure for boys, and
thus boys showed explicit aggressions. In conclusion, there
were significant gender differences in aggression among chil-
dren after playing violent computer games, and the boys
showed more willingness to be aggressive and susceptible to
violence than girls after viewing violent movies. Furthermore,
the mechanism (e.g., culture, neuroscience) underlying the
significant effects of violent computer games on aggression
among Chinese children required psychologists to explore fur-
ther.
Acknowledgemen ts
The research was supported by the National Youth Grant of
National Educational Science Planning Project in 2013 (CBA-
130128), and funded by a Youth Grant of Social Sciences and
Humanities from the Ministry of Education in China (13YJC-
190030) as well as the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities (SWU1409135). Writing of the paper was
also supported by a scholarship from the China Scholarship
Council (CSC) to Dr. Qian Zhang during his visit at University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (201308505040). Sincere
gratitude should be given to the anonymous reviewers for their
thoughtful feedback on this draft.
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