Gendered violence and sexualized representations in video games: (Lack of) effect on gender-related attitudes

This research explored how gender portrayals in video games affect gender-related attitudes. Two hundred participants from the United Kingdom and Malaysia participated across three experiments, where appearance behaviour of game characters were manipulated with regard to target (enemy) (Study 1), sexually explicit attire 2) level character agency 3). We found minimal evidence that exposure gender-stereotyped content resulted differential attitudes (implicit associations, hostile benevolent sexism, or rape myth acceptance). However, Study 1 findings showed individuals who played a first-person shooter male enemies lower endorsement some (benevolent) sexist (cf. control) difference female enemies). Together, our results suggest short-term containing (sexualised, passive, otherwise) does not consistently lead negative