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Computer Games Make Players Less Violent
Stony Stevenson writes "A new study of computer gamers has found that a session in front of World of Warcraft can make players less stressed and more calm. The study questioned 292 male and female online gamers aged between 12 and 83 about anger and stress. They then played the game for two hours and were retested. "There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger, but this very much depended on personality type," said team leader Jane Barnett from Middlesex University."
But you will be MORE stressed if the Horde kept killing you during your whole session, or you kept dying while you were trying to reach level 43 on the beach by Booty Bay!!
Paul
"The thinking in the field is that there is a scale along which people, even those considered to be 'normal', can be placed on," said Dr Charlton.
Well, Dr Charlton is a bright spark isn't he.
liqbase
This just in...leisure reduces stress!
For the those unaware of the British University system, you need to automatically take a popularist study from a poly-technical University with plenty of salt.
Providing a safe outlet for urges results in less spilling over of these urges and less damage caused by this spilling over. Oh yeah. Big surprise.
Cue the picture of the US murder rate plotted against video games, like Doom, etc...
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Just add spam and lag then watch the fireworks
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
I've been saying this for ages. With most people video games are a way to vent their anger instead of taking it out on others. If you're crazy enough to go kill 20+ people you really don't need a video game to encourage you.
Not that I 100% disagree with this, just remember that anyone is likely to be calmed by the effects of an outside influence on their brain. It's when they are away from that "fix" for a prolonged time that they may become agitated.
So, in other words: if you use the game as a tool to relax, it relaxes you; while if you use the game as an outlet for your violent urges, it makes you more violent.
Shocking that a tool could be used in multifarious ways.
"Stumble before you crawl"
I can see the way that a RPG can calm you down, but I don't think this is a general rule for games. I've seen people all fired up from FPS so that they actually had to stop playing for a while to cool down again.
If that actually were the case, Id be in a coma by now.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
I've always wanted to do that study since the mainstream press started rattling out 'studies' saying that videogamees make people violent, but lacking formal training in psychology, a degree in psychology or psychiatry and so forth has prevented me from performing or publishing such studies. The reason is that this is usually pretty much how I feel after playing almost any games -- online or not, even first-person shooters.
Maybe I'm the crazy one, who knows, but games seem to be a good way to relieve stress for me.
My blog
Very often it is the case that acquiring one's next 'fix' results in a dopaminergic neuron activation, resulting in a calming and pleasurable feeling. Did the study discriminate between its subjects who are or are not gamers? I assume using such an advanced game as WoW that they chose players familiar with the game. Perhaps a control group unfamiliar with it and forced to learn it for the same two hour sessions would not have been so at ease afterward... Or changing the gaming activity to bejeweled or card games.
I'm glad this headline specified "World of Warcraft", because I've seen some headlines that said "violent video games". And that just isn't true.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Told those "rating" bastards all the way! Think of the children my ass!
Arrgh, makes me wanna crush their silly skullz! Gotta play some GTA to cool my nerve, or something.
Every day now, and I really mean every single day, I read another news story about some psychological/biometric/neurological/... study from which some spurious result is obtained. These "studies" are often done on first year university student volunteers, under dubious conditions with little controls. The results are apparently "statistically significant", a quality which, nowadays, is not itself very statistically significant. Very often, a precisely conflicting "study" will be seen a few weeks later.
I'm concerned that these junk studies are doing real harm to science as a whole. It's becoming increasingly difficult to see quality studies amid all the noise, and even when you do, you may be too jaded to investigate further. This effect is I suspect, magnified enormously in the public at large, which may explain the modern public cynicism and even dismissal of scientists as a whole.
It's easy to blame the media, and in fact I do. But part of the blame lies with the scientific community. There are a lot of people running around calling themselves scientists, and their investigations experiments, when neither are anything of the kind. Scientists, and others, need to tackle theses people. Politeness be damned.
To conclude, I link once again to the Cargo Cult Science speech.
May the Maths Be with you!
The take home point is that all "violent" games are not equal. Some games fire us up and some cool us down.
ScienceSeeker.org
They obviously didn't test some one killing and skinning rabid wolves for days at a time trying to get enough experience to move to the next section of the land. After that you're ready to kill the real thing barehanded.
I'm sure it's difficult, costly, time-consuming to do these surveys, but I imagine the type of game is key. They chose a relatively benign game for their study. If they had chosen a more stressful game, the results surely would be different. (F.E.A.R., Doom 3, etc.)
... they'll all have slightly different effects on average, and they'll all affect different personality types differently ...
First-person shooters vs. RPG vs. strategy
The point is that by choosing different types of games, it would show that not all games induce violent behavior even if they have some degree of violence.
And I can only agree with her findings. Since living in the same house as me, she's been playing WoW. In that time, she's not stabbed me once.
Proof positive there I think!
Seriously though, while there's plenty of comments already about this being obvious, it does contradict some of the findings of the much vaunted Byron Report in the UK. And as the UK Government seem to be planning an entire series of laws based on the Byron Report, we badly need research like this to avoid unnecessary regulations being placed on games.
YMMV. You'd be wrong, but it may vary.
On one hand I can agree that gaming IS can be a stress relief. However, if a person is easily agitated and prone to violence it may actually contribute to desensitizing a person to violence. In the past some studies show violent games and tv viewing lead to more aggressive behavior in kids. My daughter, husband, and I play Guild Wars. I can say that I've never witnessed my daughter showing an increase in aggressive behavior, but asking people how they feel is very qualitative and not a good study. It would be better to give some type of test AFTER playing an MMO that measures aggression and/or stress attributes. Otherwise the results are based on opinions of the test subjects. Hmmm...
--Cally
Results at both ends of the bell curve were tossed out.
Such as Ivana Beanoob who spent her online time attempting to pick earthroot near Grom Gol only to be ganked 14 times in 2 hours. Her final quote was, "f-this. I'm gonna get my Chinese friends to power level me and then you'll all be ownt."
The study ended early the next day as Blizzard banned the test account for suspicious activity.
My guess is that just letting someone sit down and do something shutting off the "outer world" for two hours will reduce stress. I would have found this study much more interesting if they had split the participants and compared with for instance reading a book for two hours.
(Aargh, why are headings limited to 50 chars?)
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Full Tilt
Especially when you sit in front of high end dungeon X waiting for 2 hours for everyone to assemble, spending hundreds of gold on all sorts of misc things to prepare.. step into the zone.. and wipe out...
:)
Then you want to go outside and randomly shoot people...
ps to the person above complaining about the horde... we liked killing you
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I bet a heroin user is less stressed right after shooting up too.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There's nothing like a good healthy session of rampant whore bashing and unadulterated cop mashing in GTA to dampen my desires to do it for real.
Thank god we have games; they're the only thing keeping me out of jail.
*twitches*
throw new NoSignatureException();
I once heard a "scientist" on a local NPR show claim to have definitively linked violent games to violent behavior. There were two problems with his claim:
1. His research only investigated the immediate effect of viewing violent or non-violent images and a single measure of aggression immediately following the treatment. His "link" was grossly exaggerated.
The research in the TFA seems to have measured only immediately following the session. Hey, heavy drinkers are often less stressed after their first shot too.
2. More apropos, the debate as to whether vicariously living an experience increases the participants' desire to engage in that experience (contagion), or it purges them of the desire to engage in that experience (catharsis) has been raging for more than two millennia.
While the research in TFA informs the debate, it still assumes that contagion is the case.
"This will help us develop an emotion and gaming questionnaire to distinguish the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life."
We should be just as skeptical of research that appears to support gaming as we are of research with contrary findings.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Sure, the game is fine, doesn't affect me at all. It's those dipsticks from my last Magister's Terrace PUG that I want to kill!
The game has over 10 million players and they could only find 292 for this study? Pick a bigger sampling before you write these "f'ing duh" reports.
~Vexed and loving it!
Last night we wiped to Archimonde about 15 times to the tune of 60g in repairs... not sure how this lowered my blood pressure!?
This guy makes me more violent
The headline should state that one specific computer game relieves stress. I'm not arguing that WOW turns people into serial killers, but this study is only looking at immediate effects, only looking at one specific game, and using a pretty subjective means of determining stress level.
I can't help but wonder how the study would be different if they were instead looking at first person shooters, and using a more reliable method of measuring stress...
The connection between any activity and violence is far from simple.
;-)
Soccer is a civilized game. Its fans are goons. Soccer riots are commonplace.
Hockey is a game of goons. Its fans have rioted once, a very long time ago.
All the people I know who do martial arts are pretty civilized. Mostly they never get into fights. My teacher got into a fight once when some idiot tried to steal his pet Porsche. There is only so much provocation anyone can take after all.
People, psychologists included, who try to show causality between violence and recreational activities are really just showing shallow thinking processes. AFAICT, there has never been a totally convincing study to prove the case one way or the other.
Two hours of running a marathon will also make a person calm and less stressful. The question is, how are the stress levels the next day at approximately the same time?
Are people made less stressful, or like preparing for a sport, are the stress levels simply being trained to be more intense?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
hmmm... Let's think for a second: If you are a violent person with lots of bad stuff in your life that you are pissed at then WOW will allow a cathartic release of those emotions. So the test results are valid. BUT... If there's lots of stuff in your life that you are angry at, playing video games gives you the sense of accomplishment without actually solving any of your real problems. So you have experienced release, but not actually changed anything. So... the study is deeply flawed in that the timeline for the research was too short. Of course people feel better after having a cathartic release of violence. But, what about the long term effects of this cathartic release without actually helping life get better. That's where real violence comes from: a fake world that feels good and a real life that keeps getting worse because you don't deal with it. Not a helpful study.
How many people go out and kill orcs and night elves after playing WOW? None (unless they're on acid.)
Conversely, people are always saying that playing FPS=more violent people in real life. I understand that this is talking about people being less stressful, but still. Maybe its just too early for me to think.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
...as shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04
I've been playing violent games for 23 years now and I've never been in a single fight and... oh wait it's a pro violent games article!
No one tell Hillary about this whatever you do else she'll have to backtrack on her anti-games policies and tell us she must have accidentally mis-spoken due to the stress of all the snipers shooting at her.
Well, to play video games, you generally sit down in front of a screen for hours on end. You are basically zoned out.
You are not exercising, therefore you are not working and building new muscle, and not producing as massive quantities of testosterone as you are capable of. Therefore, you are less aggressive and less physically capable.
Anyone think this is plausible?
what is more interesting than the relaxation-game relationship is their remark at the end that people who play games heavily approach the autistic/asperger spectrum of disorders.
Like geeks need yet another claim on being high-function aspergers?
Getting a dose of drugs reduces the craving...for a while. Addicts are more relaxed than I am after their dose of heroin
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Withdrawal symptoms include aggressiveness so if you don't withdraw the object of addiction the addicted person is not as violent. Pure genius.
If you were ever in a vent server playing wow you know this isn't always true *SCREAMING "what the f#%&*# why aren't you %)#*%# DPSING you're the most WORTHLESS BATTLE GROUP that i've ever seen"
Sure, they're calm after they got their fix.
Any consideration that their heightened state of agitation before playing might have been caused by having to take the stupid test instead of logging in?
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
This study ought to be used as concrete proof that games do not make people violent. Games like Worlds of Warcraft and such does have a calming effect since people get drawn in and have the aimed for "suspension of disbelief" done - the ultimate goal for a game designer.
It's just the same with tobacco.
That's OffTopic. That was not what this research was about. It was about stresslevels before and after playing WoW.
No, that isn't even research into agression, that is still another thing.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
It's usually a very focused feeling, not something that will make you lash out at innocent people. For instance, to use their World of Warcraft example, even if you and your friends spend two hours trying to complete a level 40 quest despite being repeatedly ganked by a group of level 60 Horde, does that mean your feelings of rage are going to cause you to hurt your friends? Of course not! That white-hot fury is going to be channeled into productive activities, like Googling the pseudonyms of the bastards who kept killing you, finding out how close to you they live, and visiting them to explain that the time they spent on those extra 20 levels might have been more productively used to practice martial arts, target shooting, or just plain distance running. Yeah, you better run, bitches.
http://media.gtanet.com/illspirit/randompics/videogameviolence.jpg
I would have to see how the study is done, but if all the participants did way queue up in the battleground and pvp I can see this happening. Why? You play a friendly short game where you get to blast the hell out of everything (and get blasted yourself), when the game ends everyone gains in game 'honor' (although the winners gain more). Do a little of that and you can walk away knowing you accomplished something in the game no matter how well you did.
Now, for those that do raiding, where you spend 1/2 ahead of time discussing strategy and the other trying the boss over and over again. There is a strong potential you could walk out with nothing but a big repair bill, and your stress level might not be so good. Raiding however requires planning, its not something you would do if a researcher asked you to sit down and play your favorite game for 1 hour.
Why do I play World of Warcraft?
1. I love games, and if not for WoW I would spend 40$ every other week getting another game.
2. My fellow raiding members would have a setback if I couldn't play.
3. I want better in game stuff.
If you're crazy enough, Alpha Bits can be challenging, also.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I agree with you, and I'll take it one step further. In my humble opinion, there are a LOT of grad students out there desperate to produce a decent graduate thesis that will impress their peers. Perhaps a lot of the junk science in terms of 'studies' as described are due to either desperation to produce 'something' of note in order to pass the degree program, or to get one's name noticed. Not only do you, as an academic, have to 'publish or perish', but you also have to make sure that what you publish gets noticed. So there's a positive incentive at play to produce something that gets attention, and a big negative incentive against putting in the time and resources necessary to produce a thoughtful, insightful and balanced research project that isn't very exciting. I'd also believe that this plays a factor in the post-graduate research world as well.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I'd be interested to see the age spread numbers on this study...
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!
WoW is stress reducing? Tell that to this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN08jEthoB0
Most people's "drug problem" is when they can't get drugs, not when they have or are on them.
This study would mean that "gamers are less violent" overall if it tested their stress levels all the time, including when (if) they're not gaming, but agains their will/preference. And then it would still need to establish a direct correlation between stress levels and violence. What if being physically (not virtually) violent lowers their stress levels? Good for the gamer, bad for their victims.
What this study has probably shown is that gamers have incorporated their gaming "fix" into managing their stress. But it doesn't show whether gamers have become dependent on the games, whether their stress levels would go up without the games, whether they'd go up more than if they'd never played them, whether they've increased their "stressability" by gaming.
Instead, these results are the videogame version of scientific conclusions. Play again? Another score!
--
make install -not war
If WoW chills him out, I'd hate to see what he looks like when he's wound up.
This is an interview with the same guy, by the way, relaxing with a stogie and alcohol, the old fashioned way.
heroin addicts are less stressed immediately after doing heroin. However they're a lot more stressed when they start craving their next fix. So it's really an time averaged integral of the person across their daily cycle which you want, which isn't really characterizable, since there are too many uncontrolled variables in a day and no accurate means of quantifying the data. What they should do is deprive a person who plays violent games of the games and see if they experience separation anxiety and if that stress is transferable, in other words will they replace virtual violent behavior with real violent behavior if they no longer have a virtual form to work with. And test to see the effect over time, weather the addiction and the transfer grow stronger or weaker as one plays the game. For the average person I wouldn't expect a correlation. But it pisses me off when studies suggest causal relationships from correlation.
Oh honey look... How cute... an angry slashdotter!
To help prevent people from breaking up the posts by putting half of their reply in the subject...
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
And then, parents all over the world go "damn, what're we gonna blame now?"
You can't really do anything in this game if you only play for two hours. I used to be interested in raiding. You can't do anything in a raid in 2 hours. The stress level up this game can become quite extensive when you have to keep competitive. Most progressive guilds raid at least 4 nights a week for 5 hours per raid. That is just the time required to be in the dungeon. Outside of that you need to farm materials for enchants/gems/gear and farm gold for repair costs. 2 hours? yeah, right. I've recently retired my raiding characters and play another character for casual pvp - no raiding - and I find it quite enjoyable. I can spend as much, or as little, time as I want.
Two hours in front of WOW = Three weeks in real time.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
These players were obviously not doing endgame raids.
...and not PvP. No other game has made me truly hate an entire race of players more than World of Warcraft after playing on a PvP server, and all my WoW friends completely agree. For all you Alliance reading: burn in hell.
I live in a duplex. My neighbor has his computer system, complete with 5.1 sound, in his basement on the other side of the wall from my basement workshop.
As I'm doing stuff in my workshop, an electronics hobby workshop (I don't have noisy tools), he's always playing Call of Duty online with an apparent bunch of reject players. Evidence I have for the players is his constant "navy style" swearing at his game. He's relentless. Either that or he is so lousy and getting fragged endlessly that he want's to curse his own shortcomings.
This online game isn't making him any calmer. He really seems to be borderline Tourette's. What's more, he won't step away from the game. When he's not at work, he's on this game, swearing up a storm amidst cigarette draws, which is another offensive essence coming across the wall.
The question really should be when much later they are faced with a situtation that would require Fight or Flight, has this changed how they would react? Would they be more likely to "talk things out" or more likely to run or more likely to fight?
http://www.hawknest.com/
Pr0n makes people less horny and Al Queda opens a puppy store...details at 11.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Losing at games makes me throw around and smash up cups and glasses, not to mention controllers.
Nothing relieves stress better then 30 minutes of Counterstrick in my experience.
I'm in no way saying Gaming creates stress; but what happens when you take WoW AWAY from these people? Also; isn't this kind of like a smoker who says a cigarette relieves stress; which is in fact created by the craving? Leisure time relieves stress... ORLY?
Apparently so do you, moreso than the nerds. I suggest therapy.
I'm not a rogue, I'm an arcane/frost mage. I get killed by rogues all the time though! :(
sweet, now i can lvl that PVP Mortal strike Orc warrior - sorry honey trying to relax... points to Slashdot for proof. i actually got back into warcrack after a 6 month layoff - not quite as addicting this time around. with my old account i could never get into another character as we were into raiding / arenas and all that jazz. sold that account - tried some other games out and went back to WOW. i can honestly see why it is so successful. low hardware requirements, fairly bug free, and the game allows for personal time travel. before you know it, the afternoon is gone. be interesting to see if the Age of Conan puts a dent into its dominance of MMOs.
It's difficult to be violent when you're out of breathe after getting up from your chair and waddling over to the kitchen to open another jumbo bag of Doritos.
ALL MMORPGS are pathetically boring, a redundant repetition of the same actions over and over again in area after area after area!
I personally have broken 7 keyboards and 2 game CDs and i almost broke my whole desktop when i kicked it once, playing You guessed it A BLIZZARD GAME.
Specifically Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Ladder is enough to drive anyone batty after you pass level 30. I specifically know of countless people who intentionally prevent their systems from getting past level 20, by account cycling/ backstabbing etc. accoutn cycling is less likely to get you banned, but it takes a long time to drop 10 levels through decay... but if you have 5 accounts 1 random, 1 human, 1 orc, 1 undead, and one night elf, you probably can reduce the amount of real BSing you have to do to avoid surpassing level 20.. i mean there are a lot of tricks you can do to BS while not seeming to as well, there is a way to click follow your units so they never attack, you can say 'brb toilet' at the worst time possible... and of course you can play on another computer while you do nothing on the first one...
it's really hard to say 'doing nothing' is backstabbing especially if you queue up building guys etc. or if you waste money, or you insist on teching when the team said rush... or if you rush, when your team was like 'no we'll loose rush' by your self with inferior units of course.
i mean massing ghouls for 20 minutes and getting them killed all the time is pretty stupid, but even if they send in replays, was that really intentional back stabbing? does blizzard even care? it used to be stressful past level 10 but they 'fixed' the ladder so not if you're good up to level 28 or so is not terribly stressful, but no-matter what they do the top 20 levels are full of professional gamers and their imitators.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Yeah, until their life starts going down the drain because of their obession with WoW.
If the article accurately reflects the study, the study does not support the headline. "Relaxed" is not the opposite of "violent".
The argument for video games making people more violent is that people have an innate resistance to killing others and that playing video games reduces that innate resistance. Whether this theory is valid or not, this study doesn't address the issue at all.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Down my way, authorities are up in arms about WoW, labelling it "a training ground for goblin killing" and bemoaning the way it teaches gamers that repetitive work earns currency.
Only Jack Thompson can save us now.
Between the falling angel and the rising ape
makes you do less of everything but Drink Mountain dew and eat junk food. Like pot that doesn't get you high.
This is not funny. Do not mod me funny.
When I played World of Warcraft I found it relaxing most of the time. Part of what took the edge of what could have been a more gritty gaming experience was the welcoming art. It was a pleasant view, even in the desolate areas. It is my unprofessional opinion that this is a contributing factor.
"Taboo, like anything else, goes in and out of style."