The current state of the data could not support beliefs that sexualized game content influences either players' mental well-being or sexist attitudes and behaviors

Does sexualization in video games cause harm in players? A meta-analytic examination. Christopher J. Ferguson et al. Computers in Human Behavior, June 2 2022, 107341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107341

Highlights

• Whether sexualization in video games causes negative outcomes is a matter of concern.

• Meta-analysis examined sexualization effects on misogynistic and mental health outcomes.

• Exposure to sexualization in games was not found to be associated with negative outcomes.

• Better quality studies were less able to find evidence for effects.

Abstract: Whether video games with sexualized content do or do not relate to mental health and body image problems in players, and/or sexualization and hostility toward women, is an issue of broad public interest. However, evidence from empirical studies has generally been mixed. To examine this issue, we explored the degree to which sexualization in games was related to both well-being/body dissatisfaction and sexism/misogyny among players in two separate meta-analyses. Results revealed that sexualization in games was neither related to well-being/body dissatisfaction (r = 0.082, k = 10, n = 2,010, p = .066) nor sexism/misogyny (r = 0.040, k = 15, n = 15,938, p = .070). Better designed studies, and those that showed less evidence for researcher expectancy effects (for sexism/misogyny outcomes), tended to find less evidence for effects. As appears commonly in other realms of media effects, the evidence is weak that sexualized games influence player attitudes and behavior.

Keywords: Video gamesSexualizationMental healthSexism

Under some conditions fact checking can increase fake news

Bayesian Persuasion with Lie Detection. Florian Ederer, Weicheng Min. May 2022. https://florianederer.github.io/lies.pdf

Abstract: How does lie detection constrain the potential for one person to persuade another to change her action? We consider a model of Bayesian persuasion in which the Receiver can detect lies with positive probability. We show that the Sender lies more when the lie detection probability increases. As long as this probability is sufficiently small, the Sender’s and the Receiver’s equilibrium payoffs are unaffected by the presence of lie detection because the Sender simply compensates by lying more. However, when the lie detection probability is sufficiently high, the Sender’s equilibrium payoff decreases and the Receiver’s equilibrium payoff increases with the lie detection probability.