From Virtual Aggression to School Aggression: A Conceptual Model of Online Gaming, Moral Disengagement, Emotional Dysregulation, and Adolescent Violence

Abstract

The relationship between violent online gaming and adolescent school-based aggression has generated decades of inconsistent empirical findings, largely because existing research has treated virtual aggression exposure as a direct predictor of behavior rather than specifying the psychological mechanisms through which such a transfer might plausibly occur. This conceptual paper addresses that gap by proposing an integrative dual-mediator model in which moral disengagement and emotional dysregulation function as distinct but interacting pathways linking gaming exposure to school-based aggression. Drawing on synthesis of literature spanning media psychology, moral-cognitive development, and emotion regulation research, the model positions moral disengagement as more strongly associated with planned, proactive aggression, and emotional dysregulation as more strongly associated with reactive, provoked aggression. These two mechanisms are proposed to reinforce one another bidirectionally over time and to be jointly amplified by dispositional vulnerabilities, particularly callous-unemotional traits, while being buffered by trait empathy and self-control. The model further situates the translation of these mechanisms into school-specific outcomes within proximal peer and social-network processes, consistent with established school-violence risk architecture that treats media exposure as a distal rather than proximal contributor. Rather than asserting that online gaming causes school aggression, the paper reframes the inquiry around a more precise question: for which adolescents, through which mechanisms, and under which conditions virtual aggression exposure becomes behaviorally consequential. The model is offered as a theoretically grounded, empirically anchored framework intended to guide future longitudinal and moderation-focused research, and to inform more targeted risk identification in educational and clinical practice, without pathologizing gaming as a nearly universal adolescent activity.