Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Warcraft is addictive, but that's different from objections some people have to other games, such as Grand Theft Auto. The headline of this article is (intentionally?) over-broad, wanting it to be a counterpoint to arguments against graphic violence in games, which it isn't.