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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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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").
My friends have often commented that Warcraft is their second job and jokingly hate it for its 'grind.' Why do they play? Because it's still stress reduction, in my opinion.
So while you may find it obvious, there are caveats that make this interesting to some readers. I found it interesting and wonder now if people will compare it to cigarettes even though there's no chemical exchange (people love terrible analogies). You know, my parents and grandparents that live in the middle of nowhere used to waste hours playing cards with each other. Why? Because it reduced stress, I'm sure. I don't think Warcraft is any different.
My work here is dung.
Actually no.
In a game you can vent build up stress. This is especially valid for games played in a group.
I used to run a small company with two people - a husband and a wife. They were shouting at each other constantly, quarreling, slammed doors and so on. Stress to the roof. I sold my share to them and left.
A year later I came to see them. Nice, quiet, tranquil. I could not understand what was going on until I found out that they play Doom, deathmatch, no monsters every day for at least half an hour... Ahh... The joy of creeping on your best beloved with a double barrel shotgun and blowing his head off... Aaaa.... Wonderful...
By the way, cooperative play does not do it. We tried later on to play Tie-Fighter vs X-Wing and it did not work out.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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
Something is very wrong if you're *trying* to reach level 43 on those beaches - they're bad spots for you to grind at that level, and if you're questing, there isn't really much trying involved.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Yes I grew up on the cusp of Americans becoming pussified. In the 7th grade 15 yrs ago.. we had a brilliant gym teacher that made up a game called Q-Soccer (his last name was Quedenfeld). The game was a cross between football (American), soccer, rugby, and basketball. This was when gym class was still fun. The game involved little bit of contact, though not as much as football game with pads. Well incidentally some kid was running and twisted and broke his ankle. No contact was involved. His parents turned around and sued the school to have the game banned. Gym class was no longer fun after that.
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.
Totally agree.
Six years ago, my Mom and a brother were both diagnosed with terminal cancers. Going through that, I'll tell you, I was an angry person. I usually had the urge to strike just about anyone and everyone as hard I could. Even if my "head" wasn't mad, my body felt it. (Yeah, healthy, I know). Anyway, this lasted for a couple *years* after they passed. Very impulsive sensation (disconcerting as well).
So, to vent, I'd fire up GTA and take out my anger on the world. Was very cathartic. I know without that, some of that would have become real-world brawling. Without a doubt, helped me keep the hinges on during that period.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Sounds lame. British Bulldog is the best game ever. Full contact with total intent to cause pain. No goals, no score, just repeated violence till theres only 1 kid standing. Nothing like getting slammed down face first onto the tarmac as you and 50 other kids all charge across the playground. Except of course doing it to the next kid, lol.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
A lot of recreational drugs help with relaxation too. The only reason they are viewed so negatively is, just as with WoW, if you spend too much time relaxed/high you're an unproductive drag on the rest of society. There's never any individual responsibility. Hardcore drug/video game addicts ruin it for the rest of us.