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Computer Games Make Players Less Violent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the obviously-never-been-ganked-in-the-arathi-highlands dept.

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."

20 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. From the no shit sherlock school of thought by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 4, Funny


    "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 :: faster than paper
  2. This just in... by genesus · · Score: 5, Funny

    This just in...leisure reduces stress!

    1. Re:This just in... by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This just in...leisure reduces stress! While this is true, there have been many criticisms of World of Warcraft. Even on Slashdot, we have seen people writing purple prose about the game destroying their lives worse than a heroin addiction. This study may present evidence that stories like the above are inherent problems with that person's ability to prioritize what is most important to them in their lives. They're free to pick Warcraft as #1 but I question why they wrote that piece if they did.

      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.
    2. Re:This just in... by arivanov · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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/
    3. Re:This just in... by digitig · · Score: 4, Funny

      This just in...leisure reduces stress! Never been on a family vacation, evidently...
      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
    4. Re:This just in... by Jurily · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ahh... The joy of creeping on your best beloved with a double barrel shotgun and blowing his head off... Aaaa.... Wonderful... Agreed. So much more cheaper than a divorce lawyer.
    5. Re:This just in... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

  3. Middlesex University by QX-Mat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Middlesex University by gfxguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While that may be the case, it's been my anecdotal experience that kids who are allowed to play violent video games, and play with toy guns and other toy weapons, are much more relaxed and better behaved than kids who parents won't let them.

      I've even been scolded by people for play-fighting with my son.

      But then, I've had people come up to my wife and I out of the blue and tell us what nice, well behaved kids we have - at restaurants, on delayed flights that turned into multiple day ordeals...

      Sure, it's not just the games and playing, but if you let the kids let "it" out, it seems obvious to me that they can relieve their own built up tension. Stress isn't limited to adults, kids have a lot of pressures to deal with, too. Maybe not as much as adults, maybe their problems even seem trivial to us, but to a 10 year old they're not.

      I'd say it's a great life lesson in constructively dealing with stress.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
  4. Finally. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Finally. by Xelios · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I liken it to visiting a shooting range or taking martial arts lessons. Neither make a person more violent, and both can be great outlets for stress or aggression. I don't see what makes video games any different, aside from the fact that you don't use up much physical energy playing them.

      The parents who are campaigning against video game violence are likely the same parents who threaten to sue their school when their kid comes home with a few bruises after a fun game of football in gym class. Not that I was ever any good at sports (this is /. after all), but no-contact football is their handywork.

      --
      Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
    2. Re:Finally. by boris111 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  5. Cigarettes can too... by garcia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Cigarettes can too... by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Sure, this would be like arguing that murderers should be encouraged to commit small, regular slayings of unimportant people in order to avoid building up the urge to go on a real rampage.

      (Not really, I just wanted to give Jack Thompson some easy quotes).

      --
      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  6. Junk Science by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!
  7. Interesting study by word+munger · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It's an interesting study. I emailed Barnett for a copy of her poster and it's the real deal (though it hasn't yet been peer-reviewed). There has actually been similar work (which Barnett cites in her poster) previously. RPGs are definitely different from shooters or games like Carmageddon where the whole point is to take out innocent people.

    The take home point is that all "violent" games are not equal. Some games fire us up and some cool us down.

    --
    ScienceSeeker.org
  8. Yeah right by eebra82 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Computer Games Make Players Less Violent My keyboard strongly disagrees with this statement.
    --
    Full Tilt
  9. Re:Shocking results by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Funny

    Shocking that a tool could be used in multifarious ways.
    You know what they say - "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull".
    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  10. debate rages on by cvd6262 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  11. Two things from the article by borkus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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. ... "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."
    I'm pretty skeptical of whether a questionnaire can accurately measure stress and relaxation better than physical measures (heart rate, blood pressure, etc). It'd also be good to know if playing in the game was actually relaxing. In the end, it seems like the study was more about developing a measurement tool than the actual results.

    The conference also heard that people who play computer games obsessively display similar characteristics to those suffering from Asperger syndrome. ... This is typically characterised by neuroticism, and lack of extraversion and agreeableness.
    Which makes me wonder what the first study tested in the game. Did they have players simply go out and grind daily quests (which are a simple, repetitive tasks done individually) or was it something truly multi-player such as running an instance or engaging in PvP? I'd assume that stress and relaxation responses are different when playing solo versus playing cooperatively versus playing competitively. A few instance groups that I've been in come to mind when I think about the second study.