The Effect of Ambivalent emotion toward Games on Game Cravings in Internet Game Addiction Tendency Group

This study attempted to investigate the effect of ambivalent emotion toward games on game cravings. To confirm this, 88 people of the Internet game addiction tendency group who plays Battlegrounds were random-assigned to the following four conditions: ambivalent emotion-inducing conditions that use aggressive game stimuli, positive emotion-inducing conditions that use non-aggressive game stimuli, negative emotion-inducing conditions that use aggressive neutral stimuli, and neutral emotion-inducing conditions that use mosaicked stimuli. In the ‘cue reactivity task’, 8 visual stimuli in each condition were repeated 6 times for 3 seconds. Before and after presenting those stimulus, the explicit craving was measured with a Korean Gaming Craving Scale, and the implicit craving with an Implicit Association Test. As a result, people in the ambivalent emotion-inducing condition showed higher explicit cravings for game than those in the other three conditions, but as for implicit association test, only those in the ambivalent emotion-inducing condition showed more negative attitudes toward games. These results indicate that people with ambivalence toward games explicitly show positive emotions about game, but implicitly have negative attitudes. 
Therefore, as ambivalent emotions toward games affect explicit and implicit cravings differently, it is important to take into consideration the negative emotions that are involved in ambivalence toward games when treating the Internet game addiction tendency group.