Ridge, R. D., Dresden, B. E., Farley, F., & Hawk, C. E. (2017). Mixed messages, mixed outcomes: The effects of reconciliation and retaliation story endings on aggression. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, 9(3), 220-229.

Hawk, C. E., & Ridge, R. D. (2019, February). It’s not that dangerous: Perception of violent media risk in an MTurk sample. Poster session presented at the meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Conference, Portland, OR.

Hawk, C. E., & Ridge, R. D. (2017, May). Effects of violent media consumption on intimate partner injury: A mediation analysis. Poster session presented at the meeting of the Association of Psychological Science Annual Conference, Boston, MA.

Society for Personality and Social Psychology, 2017 – Present

Association for Psychological Science, 2015 – Present

Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 2015 – Present

American Psychological Association, 2012 – Present

The majority of my research focuses on the effects of violent media on aggressive and prosocial behavior. My projects tend to investigate the effects of violent video games specifically; however, the research in the lab in which I work has also focused on the effect of reading violent stories, in both adolescents and adults, as well as how story ending (reconciliatory versus retaliatory endings) affect subsequent aggression. Additionally, the lab has investigated the weapons effect with gun owners and carriers, the perception of the risk of consuming violent media, and the effects of the cessation of violent media. Finally, although I have yet to investigate anything empirically, I am interested in researching pedagogy at the college level.

Effects of Violent Video Games
Most of the research I have conducted has involved investigating the effects of playing violent video games on subsequent aggression. Previous research shows that playing violent video games leads to increases in aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. However, recent research has questioned the reliability of these findings. Two important variables associated with aggressive outcomes that have yet to be fully explored in the violent video game literature are the competitive aspects of the games and the outcomes of that competition (e.g., winning or losing).
In my dissertation, participants are randomly assigned to one of 12 conditions and have their levels of aggressive/prosocial behavior measured after playing either a violent or nonviolent video game, while playing in either a competitive or noncompetitive situation, and after being randomly assigned to win or lose. This is one of the first studies to investigate violence, competition, and outcome independently and interactively.
Regardless of the outcome of the study, I see several fruitful paths to pursue. First, there is the avenue of the effect of competition in video games, which still has few published studies. In the same vein, there are the effects of outcome of violent video games, which have no published studies, as of this writing. Finally, there is the replication of key findings from recent publications, as the field in general is in major need of replication.

Perceptions of Video Games
Another project I have been investigating is the perception of video games by gamers and nongamers. Unlike watching television and listening to music, which are engaged in by most Americans, video game play is still a relatively niche hobby. The most recent estimates by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA, 2017) are that about 67% of US homes contain a device used to play video games; however, only about 56% of gamers play shooter or action multiplayer games, which are the most likely to contain violent content. I argue that conducting research with participants who have never and/or will never play video games is misguided; specifically, drawing conclusions from this sample to generalize to people who have and do play video games. Therefore, I am currently analyzing data, which I recently finished collecting, for a multidimensional scaling of the most popular (bestselling) video games of 2016. I hope to better understand how self-identified gamers and nongamers view video games, specifically whether they view them differently.
The future of this line of research is quite bright. I have been able to find no published articles looking into issues with the samples being used in the field, and there are several more studies that would need to be conducted in order to fully test this theory: refinement of what a gamer or nongamer is, whether there are actually differences between how gamers and nongamers react to violent video games (i.e., on subsequent aggression measures), and how this might affect other published findings by replicating them with samples of gamers and nongamers.

Reading Violent Content
The main project we are working on in the lab is the investigation of the effects of reading violent literature. We have two projects examining different aspects of this question. First, we were interested in how the ending to a violent story affects subsequent aggression. In a recent study, participants read a violent passage from the Old Testament and were randomly assigned to read a reconciliatory ending (i.e., no one was killed) or retaliatory ending (i.e., everyone is slaughtered). Then, we measured their level of aggression, and asked which ending they would have preferred.
The findings, as published in Ridge, Dresden, Farley, and Hawk (2017), were surprising. Males were evenly split on which ending they would have preferred; however, females overwhelmingly would have preferred the reconciliatory ending to the retaliatory ending. Additionally, females displayed higher levels of aggression after reading the retaliatory ending than the reconciliatory ending; conversely, males displayed higher levels of aggression after reading the reconciliatory ending than after reading the retaliatory ending. These results were not what we had expected, and we are currently working on a replication with a more representative sample. I am currently in charge of designing the study, finding and implementing the measures, and collecting the data.
Second, we are interested in the effects on adolescents of reading violent literature geared toward their age group. We are currently working on an exploratory fMRI and eye tracking study with adolescents, ages 14 to 16 years old. We will be presenting them with violent and nonviolent passages from literature intended for that age range. As there have been no previously published fMRI studies looking at the effect of reading violent literature, we are not quite sure what we will find; however, we hypothesize that the results will be similar to those of other fMRI studies examining the effects of violent media. I will be overseeing the collection of the data, which involves working directly with the various undergraduate research assistants, and I have previously supervised and mentored the undergraduate research assistants who were both conducting the literature review and writing the introduction.

Violent Media Cessation
Another project we are working on in the lab involves the investigation of the cessation of violent media. Oftentimes in the literature, violent media consumption is likened to smoking. However, as of yet, there have been no studies that have looked at cutting out violent media consumption “cold turkey.” Several studies, most involving children, have looked at the efficacy of media literacy programs, which can result in lower levels of violent media consumption; however, we were specifically interested in understanding what happens when one simply stops consuming violent media. I am currently overseeing the data collection and will be conducting the analysis, as well as mentoring a few of our undergraduate research assistants as we write the manuscript.

Pedagogy Research
Although I have yet to begin any empirical investigations into this topic, I am interested in pursuing this more as my career progresses. I am particularly interested in what kinds of teaching methods (jig-saw classroom, Team-Based Learning, hybrid-class, etc.) lead to the best results in terms of the type and scope of material being taught.