Can a Video Game with a Fictional Minority Group Decrease Intergroup Biases towards Non-Fictional Minorities? A Social Neuroscience Study
Guillaume P. Pech, Émilie A. Caspar
Abstract
A critical scientific and societal challenge involves developing and evaluating interventions that reduce prejudice towards outgroups. Video games appear to be a promising method, but several holes in the current scientific literature prevent fully understanding the sizeable potential impact of video games on reducing prejudice. The present study investigated to what extent a video game designed to reduce prejudice towards minorities in a fictional society has the potential to reduce prejudice towards non-fictional minorities. Participants played either a recently developed game designed to reduce prejudice towards non-fictional minorities (hereafter referred to as the test game) or a control game. After playing at home, participants performed two tasks in a lab context. We observed overall a positive effect of playing the test game compared to the control game on attenuating prejudice towards an outgroup individual. We indeed observed that players of the control game had increased midfrontal theta activity, reflecting a higher degree of cognitive conflict when they acted prosociality towards the outgroup participant and a lower neural response to the outgroup participant’s pain than compared to the ingroup participants. These effects were attenuated for players of the test game. We also observed that players of the test game had a higher sense of agency when they decided to help the outgroup participant than when they did not help the outgroup participant, an effect not observable in control game players. These results are promising as they support evidence that using fictional characters in video games may induce positive changes toward non-fictional individuals.