One explanation of this trivialization of sexual violence is based on several stereotypes surrounding it and often subsumed under what is called rape myth ( Buddie and Miller, 2001).

According to a survey from the European Commission (2016), more than 1 out of 10 people in the European Union believe that sexual intercourse without consent may be justified in certain circumstances, for example, if the victim (generally a woman) is voluntarily going home with someone, if she was drunk or under the influence of drugs, if she was wearing revealing clothes, or if she did not say “no” clearly ( European Commission, 2016). It is regrettable that such violence is often trivialized. This study concludes that video games impact on attitudes toward women and this, in part, due to its interactive nature.ĭespite the increase attention to violence against women through movements such as “#MeeToo” or Amnesty’s “No is no” campaign, sexual violence remains a serious problem ( Amnesty International, 2019).

Concerning the perpetrator, video game sexualization did not influence responsibility, but partly influenced humanness. The results were partially consistent with these predictions: Playing a video game containing sexualized female characters increased rape victim blame when cognitive load was high, but did not predict degree of humanness accorded to the victim. Further, degree of humanness of the victim and the perpetrator was expected to mediate this relation. Based on the General Aggression Model (GAM), it was hypothesized that playing the video game with a sexualized content would increase the responsibility assigned to the victim and diminish the responsibility assigned to the perpetrator. After gameplay, participants read a rape date story, and were then asked to judge the victim’s and the perpetrator’s degree of responsibility and humanness. Cognitive load was manipulated by setting the difficulty level of the game to low or high. Participants ( N = 142) played a video game using sexualized or non-sexualized female characters. This study examined the consequences of sexualized video game content and cognitive load (moderator) on rape victim blame and rape perpetrator blame (used as a proxy of rape myth acceptance), and whether the degree of humanness of the victim and of the perpetrator mediated these effects. Therefore, it largely remains unclear whether sexualized video games can have an impact on attitudes toward women. Studies that have examined this issue are rare and contain a number of limitations. The potential negative impact of sexualized video games on attitudes toward women is an important issue.

3NORMENT – Norwegian Center of Excellence for Mental Disorders Research, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

2Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.

1Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology, Speech and Language Therapy, and Education, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.

Tania Noël 1 Frank Larøi 1,2,3* Jonathan Burnay 1

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