From crime scenes to game screens: video game aggression among criminals with psychopathic traits and those convicted of homicide

Abstract

Objective: Recent research involving real-world offenders suggests a link between aggressive behavior in video games, psychopathic traits, and the severity of committed offenses. However, it remains unclear whether these findings apply to a wider array of criminals, particularly those involved in heinous crimes like murder. Building on these initial findings, we aimed to evaluate whether criminals with psychopathic traits, in general, and more specifically murderers, display heightened aggression in video games.Methods: We studied 111 male criminals from Iran whose offenses ranged from theft and rape to kidnapping and homicide. Participants completed validated self-report measures assessing dark personality traits, including psychopathy, and engaged in a shooting decision task to evaluate unprovoked aggression.Results: Robust regression analyses revealed that both participants with pronounced psychopathic tendencies and the group of murderers exhibited heightened aggression in the video game setting. Conclusions: Our findings underscore the potential of video game paradigms to investigate aggressive behaviors across varied criminal profiles, offering novel perspectives for subsequent research and risk assessment.