Male Brains 'Wired for Videogame Obsession'

thinkzinc notes a story indicating that, according to a new study, men have a harder time putting down a controller than women do. Researchers at Stanford did brain imaging work on a group of young test subjects while they played a simple PC game. Besides the 'obvious' conclusion that men were more 'aggressive at gaining territory on the screen', the tests also indicated that male brains showed more activity in the reward and addiction components of the brain. "The lead author, Dr. Allan Reiss, noted that most of the video games that are popular with men are territory and aggression-type games. 'These gender differences in the brain may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become hooked on video games than females,' he said. Other recent surveys indicate that about 40 percent of Americans regularly play games on a computer or console, but young males are two or three times more likely than females to feel addicted to video games, Reiss said. "

Isn't it the other way around?

Video games are generally written to suit the obsessions of male brains, are they not?

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Precisely. Most modern games are written for men, because men were the big audience when they came out, because men were the ones writing them when they came out.

Can't really study something so heavily biased and expect the bias to go away.

Try them on a game like Animal Crossing or Nintendogs or something and if guys are still more likely to get addicted than I'll buy the verdict.

For some anecdotal evidence one of my relatives is a total anti-gamer except for 3 games, Diner Dash, Animal Crossing, and Guitar

Re:Isn't it the other way around?

I've always thought it was interesting that many women seem to be fans of Atari's Centipede arcade game, and it was supposedly the first arcade game written by a woman.

I have a theory on why some women would enjoy a game that involves cutting a long snaky thing into pieces before it can get to them, but I'm not going to get into that here

and in other news.

...and in other news, scientists studying grizzly bears in Canada have finally shown that they do, in fact, defecate in the woods.

Re:and in other news.

..and the fact that this study presents something that people think of is obvious is the only reason it's getting news.

They only ran the test on 22 people, and all they did was play a single video game. How can they possibly draw any meaningful conclusions from that?

And how is the an issue with "the male brain" rather than, for example, "men living in America who have had previous exposure to video games." How can they be even a little sure that the entire history of guys liking games more than girls isn't cultural (I'm not saying that it is, btw. Just that this study does nothing to account for anything like that).

He might as well be basing his study on Phrenology, for all the science that he's putting into this.

In other news...

Female Brain 'Wired for Shopping Obsession'... news at 11.

What is wrong with males' strengths

Every time I read a report of this form it always has the underling tone that what men are better at is a debilitating weakness. Why?

Re:What is wrong with males' strengths

Woman good, men bad

It just goes along with how men are portrayed in most commercials and sitcoms as bumbling, sex starved idiots who have to be set straight but the level headed woman.

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I'm lucky enough to have a circle of friends, both male and female, who are highly attuned to this gender bias in advertising and equally adept at ignoring it. Couple that with the fact that none of us watch much TV and that most of us are aware that large numbers of people are still institutionally sexist and we usually just laugh and decide not to let it offend us. Not sure if the US gets it worse than we do in the UK (there's an inherent sample bias in that people bitching abotu it on /. are largely male

I like being a barbarian.

The majority of these things paints males as much closer to barbaric creatures.

I see nothing wrong with that. I like being barbaric. I like to scratch my nuts when I first wake up in the morning. I like to just shrug it off when women talk about their feelings (Here's a clue, ladies. If you're not my wife, I don't give a flying fuck about your feelings). I like to eat leftover pizza for breakfast and wash it down with a colder beer. I like porn. I like loud, nasty rock 'n roll. I like sex and violence.

After I'm done with my day's work I like to fire up a game and beat the everlovi

I call bull!

My girlfriend is JUST as addicted, if not MORE to the same games as I am. Oblivion and Black and White 2! It becomes a system of trade offs of who's playing what at what time...

It has more to do with the person then the gender! She can wale on me in UT and I make rockin' brownies.

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All that means is that your girlfriend is actually a man.

Re:I call bull!

All that means is that your girlfriend is actually a man.

What? No! With those sweet pouting lips, soft skin, and the cutest little Adam's apple you've ever seen...

Wait a second...

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The plural of anecdote is not data

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It is if you're doing a study on Anecdotes.

GF + Sims = zombie

I agree. I have trouble putting down the controller, but my gf is afraid of picking it up because she can't stop whatsoever until I snap her out of it.

I think it has to do with attention span. Those who love constant stimulation like my gf get a serious high from video games like the Sims where there is always things going on.

Sure?

Mario and Sonic told me this isn't true.

Says more about Slashdot editors than brains.

Title of the article: "Male brains wired for video game obsession"

That is VERY offensive. Men in the U.S. are the targets of an extreme amount of hostility. I'm guessing that the person who wrote that headline knew that being hostile toward men is in fashion, and wrote it to get attention for the advertisements.

Quote: "These gender differences in the brain may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become hooked on video games than females," he said.

Fraud: He has not shown any gender differences in the brain. He has shown that, at the time, those particular subjects were using their brains differently.

The article does imply something useful about brains, however. The fact that Slashdot editors wanted us to see it may be an indication that the editors are not in touch with reality. Maybe that's because the editors spent so much time playing games rather than trying to relate to reality.

If you want to experience a society where men aren't hated, go to Brazil. However, don't fall in love with the first woman you meet, like many of my acquaintances.

Q: What's all this about Brazil?

A: If you are male, and go to Brazil (and Thailand), you will begin to realize that all your life in the U.S. you have been treated badly by women.

It's reasonably easy, for me anyway, to find women in the U.S. who are personally very interesting and are responsible. They are often valuable employees, for example. It is difficult to find a woman in the U.S. who I would consider marriageable. My women friends say the men in the U.S. are just as bad, and I have every reason to believe they are right, but ha

Re:In other news...

The pictures my brain is wired for interest in leave nothing to question.

Questionable?

I prefer to be certain they are pictures of the opposite sex.

Re:studies

Please take your politically correct pronouncements elsewhere. I am a liberal, but also a science-minded person. I feel ashamed for all liberals when science is denounced when it might suggest that humans are not all equal in the ways liberals would like them to be. Sorry, but real science doesn't care how the world should be, it only cares how it is.

Why is it not controversial to investigate whether certain races are more prone to certain illnesses, but it is controversial to offer a drug that seems to have more health benefits to one race than another?

Well I'll answer my own question. Some of the concern is based on justified anger over past atrocities committed by people who called themselves 'scientists' (e.g. infecting blacks with Syphilis). But when that anger translates to 'In 2008 I won't accept a drug that is targeted for my race because it might be a plot to harm us', I think we're talking tinfoil hat time.

Why is it not controversial to suggest that one gender has more physical strength than another, but it is heresy to even wonder whether one gender might have more intelligence/compassion/aggression/addiction than the other?

My suspicion is that people get more sensitive when we're talking about the mind vs. the body, because then the subject is the core of who we are. Fine, we're all sensitive about that. But what justifies a knee-jerk reaction that this is just 'junk science'? As a scientist would say, prove it!

By the way, personal anecdotal evidence suggests that this study is on to something. I know that my son and I are certainly prone to being hooked on territorial/aggressive games, while my daughter and wife don't show such tendency. And this pattern extends to other people I know. This is not proof, just commentary.

Re:studies

Some of the concern is based on justified anger over past atrocities committed by people who called themselves 'scientists' (e.g. infecting blacks with Syphilis).

Just so we're clear, the Tuskegee expiriments did not involve infecting black men with syphilis. I know it was a minor point in your post, but it was inaccurate, is a common mistake, and I think given it's historical significance it's important to get it right. The men already had syphilis, and when the study began there was no known cure for it. 15 years into the study penicillin was known to cure it, so there was no reason to continue the study other than to watch poor uneducated black men die, which they did, and furthermore the men were lied to to keep them from getting cured.

But the study did NOT involve infecting them men with the disease directly. In some ways that's worse, because the study seems to have started off as a good study by good scientists and then morphed somehow into preventing patients from getting cured entirely because of their race. An evil study like "let's infect black men with syphillis" is something only comic book villians will waste time doing. A good study eventually turning into evil, I don't know how that happens or how we would prevent that today.

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Just because it's difficult to come up with a good experiment doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Many famous scientists of the past earned their fame by creating a brilliant experiment that nobody had thought of before. Just because you or I cannot think of a good test doesn't mean that it's not testable.

While people can absolve themselves by citing some scientific report about their behavior, it would just be an excuse like any other. Conversely someone could become more aware of their nascent nature and t

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Well, the IQ test regardless of race is controversial. On a recent Colbert Report a guest discussed how the IQ test is targeted for people within a certain environment and are not truely universal tests. He speculated that if someone like Lincoln were to take a modern IQ test he would quite possibly score less than 100 simply because people of his generation faced different problems and wouldn't have the needed experience to do well on the typical IQ test. Another example he gave was to show how a tribe in