The Relationships Among Girls’ Prosocial Video Gaming, Perspective-Taking, Sympathy, and Thoughts Ab...

<jats:p> This study, which was based on the General Learning Model, examined the effects of prosocial gaming on girls’ thoughts about perceived justified and unjustified aggressive attitudes as operationalized by 4 scenarios. The process was mediated by participants’ general perspective-taking and sympathy abilities, which relate to the cognitive and affective routes to learning. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the process. One hundred and forty-five girls between the ages of 7 and 15 completed the self-report online survey. Findings suggest that prosocial gaming is associated with greater perspective-taking and sympathizing abilities. These abilities positively correlated with thoughts about all types of violence as wrong whether or not “justified” and independent of severity. Error correlations suggest that younger girls’ processing comprises an affective component that bypasses the cognitive or perspective-taking route. Findings also intimate that in the case of justified violence assessments, girls not only evaluated the aggressor’s violent act but also assessed what precipitated the act thus suggesting more complex thought. </jats:p>