ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1526493
Aggressive Motivation Mediates the Influence of Prosocial Video Game Play on Young Children's Aggressive Behavior
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychology, School of Science, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
- 2Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin Province, China
- 3Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Lower Saxony, Germany
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This study investigated the effects of prosocial video game play on aggressive behavior in Chinese preschool children who are relatively more aggressive, taking into account the mediating role of aggressive motivation and possible moderating effects of age and gender.Involving 132 children aged 4 to 6 years (50% girls, 50% boys; Mage = 5.0, SD = 0.82), a between-subjects design revealed that prosocial video game play was associated with reduced aggressive behavior compared with neutral game play. Revenge motivation notably mediated this relationship, suggesting interventions targeting aggressive motivation could mitigate aggressive behavior in children. The mediating effect was more pronounced in boys than girls, emphasizing the potential for tailored interventions in educational programmes.
Keywords: prosocial video games, aggressive behavior, Motivation, Pre-schoolers, Mediation analysis
Received: 11 Nov 2024; Accepted: 16 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Deng, Ngombe and Kanske. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Li, Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Psychology, School of Science, Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany
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