A few days ago a German longitudinal study was published that explored the connection between gaming and sexist attitudes. The results broadly show that playing videogames doesn’t make people sexist.

The study was based around cultivation theory, which posits that long-term exposure to media content can affect our perception of the world around us.

So playing lots of videogames should affect people in some way. This study explored whether videogames modified sexist attitudes amongst its participants.

In order to ensure a degree of reliability in these findings, there are also two elements that should be highlighted. The first is the fact this was a longitudinal study and the second is who funded the research.

Longitudinal studies are undertaken over a period of time, with snapshots of data taken within that. In this instance large samples of participants from the age of 14 and up were included in three waves of testing over a few years, starting back in 2011. That’s a lot of data and, more importantly, it also predates any current controversy regarding the belief that playing games somehow makes people sexist.

As for who funded the research if it were a games publisher then that would call the study into question, as they would clearly have a vested interest in the results. In fact it was independently funded by the European Research Council.

Those two important points aside, as the study was conducted in Germany it’s unclear how applicable these findings would be to other countries. The study also took a very broad view of videogames and didn’t specifically target games with sexualized content.

That said the fact the study took such a general view helps to appraise the medium of gaming as a whole. Especially as there are those that have been saying that gaming itself is somehow ethically and morally bankrupt as a medium, the results from this study (in Germany at least) don’t back that up.

Considering the history of gaming, these results aren’t overly surprising. With classic games like Metroid featuring strong female protagonists such as Samus Aran (shown above), the argument that gaming as a whole is inherently sexist clearly doesn’t acknowledge the full scope of what gaming offers.

While it would be good to see how a similar study would fare in the US and maybe even with increased genre specificity, the fact that German gamers weren’t adversely affected in terms of their attitudes from a wide variety of games is noteworthy and interesting.

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Read my Forbes blog here.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2015/04/10/new-study-finds-no-link-between-gaming-and-sexist-attitudes/

That's what he said

Nice to hear, bitch!

is that a female polar bear covering/shrinking away in fear ? stealthily reinforcing negative gender stigma, so sexist  /jk

People who can fairly be said to be "gamers" as opposed to a casual madden/cod type are, in my experience, far more respectful towards women than your average man. Obviously that's just what I've personally seen, but I never bought that gamers were a sexist bunch.

That we like sexy characters doesn't mean we are a sexist bunch of assholes. But perhaps some people want to see gamers hurt, if we aren't causing violence, sexist researches will be conducted, perhaps faul language (by kids) is next.

Have they been to twitter and Twitch?

I think only idiots believe in it imo

Tetris always gives me a boner if I play more than five minutes.

But I don't distrust the study though :/