Computer Games Make Players Less Violent 192
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."
From the no shit sherlock school of thought (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.
This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Incredible! What else can they do with this? Maybe through this experiment they've found the link between the "fun" and "happy" genes among gamers!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
My comment was in reference to the "ruthless" gene article discussed yesterday, and I was pointing out the ridiculousness of correlation being interpreted as causation.
Re: (Score:2)
So do video games.
So does fucking.
The first is the act of destroying society.
The second is the act of withdrawing from society.
The third is the act of creating society.
The third is what you aim for.
The first is where you go after the human rights activists have killed your potential.
The second is where you end up once you're completely broken, if you're not already in jail or dead.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for you, society is a fuck of a lot more complicated than that, which is why we have multiplayer games and PAX [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who'd really thunk it? Most people who play games, do crosswords, go out to their garage for a
few hours and tinker, take up gardening or do other activities surprise are able to relax.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
There would have to be an argument against graphic violence in games first. There isn't. There is a measurable increase in aggression shortly after playing a violent video game. It's short term, something like 20 minutes, probably commensurate with the adrenaline surge of playing an exciting game. Big surprise there, that getting someone excited can cause them to be
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Heroin reduces Jonesing (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This just in...leisure reduces stress!
Re: (Score:3)
I have been playing WoW since the week of release. The way I keep my head clear is to just step away for a few weeks to a month at a time. It was hard the first time.. leaving the heavy raiding scene and the comfortable routines, but it was not worth the frustration or anger I would feel when things would go badly. I missed it like hell for the first couple of weeks, then I just stopped thinking about it. Once you can sit on the computer surfing, playing music, and just chatt
Re: (Score:2)
Middlesex University (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Middlesex University (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Surprise! (Score:2)
Cue the picture of the US murder rate plotted against video games, like Doom, etc...
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, you have these highly reported outbursts from some unstable people from time to time, but it's not representative of the big picture.
Ticking time bombs.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In later years this turned into an evenings doom, or CnC.
Nowadays it's X3, that's beside the point though The one constant theme has been that I play games to go from stressed to unstressed, or just to wind down if there's no stress.
I wouldn't pick an online game for that though, like a
Re: (Score:2)
"Get a pug together and run Arc."
I'm pretty sure the stress level will go way up.
Finally. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Finally. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
* Americans sue the school, lots of money is involved and afterwards a few individuals might be richer and most people have to suffer ridiculous consequences.
* Here in Europe he will be properly treated in a quality hospital immediately, will be back in school the next day, and be able to play again in a week.
* In Africa he might never be able to walk properly again because there's no money for a treatment.
* Japanese would blame the kid for beeing s
Cigarettes can too... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, the addicts are going to heavily bias the results. Unless you separate out the addicts the whole measurement is really worthless, and it is going to devolve to being attributable to the unknown number of addicts in the test.
Re:Cigarettes can too... (Score:5, 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).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean addiction? (Score:2)
No, that isn't even research into agression, that is still another thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I seriously doubt the relaxing effect mentioned
Re: (Score:2)
Although I don't play WoW (anymore), I'm on Second Life in another window as I type this, and given how much time I spend on my computer, if I've gotta be addicted to some aspect of the internet (gaming or otherwise). When I find myself stuck without internet, I get bored. No shakes, no extreme agitation, nothing like that... just overwhelming boredom mixed with loneliness, because all of a sudden I have a huge void in my life, and I don't know
Shocking results (Score:2)
Shocking that a tool could be used in multifarious ways.
Re:Shocking results (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
WoW is fine, but what about shooters? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Video games may make a person more violent temporarily, but they doesn't make them a vi
Warcrack/Gaming Addiction (Score:2, Insightful)
Headline (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Junk Science (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [pd.infn.it] speech.
Desperate grad students + deadlines = junk science (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
As to whether the science is "junk", I would say not. Lets say that the conditions that it was conducted under were
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting study (Score:5, Interesting)
The take home point is that all "violent" games are not equal. Some games fire us up and some cool us down.
Re: (Score:3)
Eeeehm, no. First of all, there are no innocent people living in your computer, and there are no computer games that I know of whose point is to kill innocent people. Representations thereof, maybe, real people, no.
Moreover, very little shooters involve innocent characters. Most are just plain adversaries, you know, soldiers from the other side, the other gang, monsters, aliens, etc.e
Re: (Score:2)
What I'm saying is that researchers have found that people are more aggressive after playing a game like Carmageddon which rewards "bad" behavior. The research has not found that people are more aggressive after playing social games like WoW which also involve violence. Part of the reason may be that being involved in a scenario where friends are treated well and enemies are attacked leads to less generally aggress
Choice of games (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
I'm Jane's flatmate (Score:2, Funny)
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 pla
Response to games is personality dependent (Score:2, Insightful)
Stress reduced by gaming or by doing something els (Score:3, Interesting)
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?)
Yeah right (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I will have to disagree.. (Score:2)
Then you want to go outside and randomly shoot people...
ps to the person above complaining about the horde... we liked killing you
Re: (Score:2)
Of course. They just got their fix (Score:2)
Tell me about it (Score:2)
Thank god we have games; they're the only thing keeping me out of jail.
*twitches*
debate rages on (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Two things from the article (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm the opposite, I'm pretty skeptical that physical measurements can accurately measure stress and relaxation. I refer here to emotional relaxation or happiness. After playing sports or pedaling my way through traffic, my heart rate is elevated and I'm breathing hard, but I've got a smile on my face that I didn't have before. I'm physically stressed, b
Misleading headline (Score:2)
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...
Other things that calm (Score:3, Interesting)
Are people made less stressful, or like preparing for a sport, are the stress levels simply being trained to be more intense?
Flawed Logic (Score:3, Insightful)
I realize no-one RTFA, but (Score:2)
Like geeks need yet another claim on being high-function aspergers?
Re: (Score:2)
Heroin has the same effect on junkies (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
My stress levels are increased by YOU!
Drug Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Don't tell this to the Onyxia Wipe guy... (Score:2)
This is an interview [kotaku.com] with the same guy, by the way, relaxing with a stogie and alcohol, the old fashioned way.
Endgame? (Score:2)
Someone tell my neighbor about this..... (Score:2)
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
After Games Much Later (Score:2)
And In Other News... (Score:2)
It's the opposite with me (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
but then conversely playing the same game for many thousands of hours, introduced me to the fun OF playing Games To make your team loose!
I mean it's an activity that people always say 'they'll ban you for this' but to be honest I've never heard of anyone getting banned, except this one guy who had used 'alt +q +q' 20,000 times on the same account... he was called 'world peace' he
Well duh...... (Score:2)
World of warcraft is BORING though... (Score:2)
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 cy
misleading headline (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Overall, though, I don't think the game stressed me out. Getting ganked wasn't much fun, but it wasn't too hard to get revenge or just do something else for a while. Any increase in stress didn't last long.