Researching Games

There is a long-lasting and at times intense debate about the possible link between violent computer games and aggressiveness. A group of researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, are now questioning the entire basis of the discussion. In a recently published article, they present a new study showing that, more than anything, a good ability to cooperate is a prerequisite for success in the violent gaming environment.

A study, authored by Ulrika Bennerstedt, Jonas Ivarsson and Jonas Linderoth and titled How gamers manage aggression: Situating skills in collaborative computer games, is presented in International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.

The Gothenburg-based research group spent hundreds of hours playing online games and observing other gamers, including on video recordings. They focused on complex games with portrayals of violence and aggressive action where the participants have to fight with and against each other. The situations gamers encounter in these games call for sophisticated and well-coordinated collaboration. We analysed what characteristics and knowledge the gamers need to have in order to be successful, says Jonas Ivarsson, Docent (Reader) at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.

It turns out that a successful gamer is strategic and technically knowledgeable, and has good timing. Inconsiderate gamers, as well as those who act aggressively or emotionally, generally do not do well.

In a nutshell, we're questioning the whole gaming and violence debate, since it's not based on a real problem but rather on some hypothetical reasoning, says Ivarsson.

Recent video games have begun depicting religion as a violent, problematic force, according to research from a new University of Missouri study.

Greg Perreault, a doctoral student at University of Missouri's School of Journalism, studied five extremely popular games from the last few years that incorporate religion heavily into their storylines: Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, Assassin's Creed, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

In each case, Perreault found that religion became equated with violence within the video games' narratives. Perreault said in a press release:

In most of these games there was a heavy emphasis on a 'Knights Templar' and crusader motifs. Not only was the violent side of religion emphasized, but in each of these games religion created a problem that the main character must overcome, whether it is a direct confrontation with religious zealots or being haunted by religious guilt.

Just because religion was associated with violence, however, does not mean it was always depicted as evil. For example, Perreault noted that in Mass Effect 2, the character of Thane is an extremely spiritual assassin who assists the player.

Of those five games, Mass Effect 2, Final Fantasy XIII, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all deal with religions created specifically for the game. The remaining two titles, Assassin's Creed and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, both center around Catholicism.

Still, Perreault emphasized that he did not believe game developers were attacking religion with these themes:

It doesn't appear that game developers are trying to purposefully bash organized religion in these games. I believe they are only using religion to create stimulating plot points in their story lines. If you look at video games across the board, most of them involve violence in some fashion because violence is conflict and conflict is exciting. Religion appears to get tied in with violence because that makes for a compelling narrative.

While Perreault's study of just five games is far from an exhaustive survey of all of modern video games, he does believe game writers should be aware of how they use religion in their plots.

A new report from the Swedish Media Council comes to the conclusion that there's no conclusive evidence that there is no evidence that violent computer games cause aggressive behavior.

The Media Council is a Swedish government agency in charge of film and media classification and whose mission statement is to reduce the risk of harmful media influences among minors and to empower minors as conscious media users.

The findings are based on a review of more than 100 articles about violent games and aggression which have been published in international scientific journals since 2000. The review found that there is a clear and statistically significant link between violent games and aggressive behavior. But the review also found that many of those same studies use different methods to measure aggression, and few produced a clear connection to violent behavior. Many of those same studies suffered from serious methodological deficiencies and didn't provide sufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship.

The studies that did attempt to examine other causes of aggression found that factors such as poor physical health or family problems were factors that lead to violent behavior and a propensity to play violent games.

If research can't provide any simple answers about how games make children aggressive, perhaps we adults should stop judging the games children play based on whether they are violent or not, Media Council researcher Ulf Dalquist said in a statement.

A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis of long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain has found changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men after one week of game play. The results of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

The controversy over whether or not violent video games are potentially harmful to users has raged for many years, making it as far as the Supreme Court in 2010. But there has been little scientific evidence demonstrating that the games have a prolonged negative neurological effect.

For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home, said Yang Wang, M.D., assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. These brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior.

For the study, 22 healthy adult males, age 18 to 29, with low past exposure to violent video games were randomly assigned to two groups of 11. Members of the first group were instructed to play a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week and refrain from playing the following week. The second group did not play a violent video game at all during the two-week period. Each of the 22 men underwent fMRI at the beginning of the study, with follow-up exams at one and two weeks.

The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the second week without game play, the changes to the executive regions of the brain were diminished.

These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning, Dr. Wang said.

Coauthors are Tom Hummer, Ph.D., William Kronenberger, Ph.D., Kristine Mosier, D.M.D., Ph.D., and Vincent P. Mathews, M.D. This research is supported by the Center for Successful Parenting, Indiana.

Game Politics points out that the Center for Successful Parenting, Indiana is in fact a nutter group with a website that is designed for parents to learn about the negative side effects of violent video.

Abstract

A one-year longitudinal study with 324 German third and fourth graders was conducted in order to find out whether a preference for violent electronic games socializes children to become more aggressive or whether aggressive individuals tend to select this type of game.

Cross-lagged panel analyses suggest that children who were rated as openly aggressive at Time 1 intensified their preference for violent electronic games over time. We determined that it could be ruled out that this selection effect was due to a number of underlying variables ranging from ecological variables (neighborhood) to family variables (migration status, older brother) and child variables (gender, self-esteem, level of achievement).

Press

Based on article from monstersandcritics.com

The research suggested there was a risk that this preference for violent video games would become entrenched in these children. However, the researchers found no evidence in the group they studied that violent computer and video games led to increased aggression in real life.

This is the good news from our study into the educational effects of media, said Jens Vogelgesang of Hohenheim University: But it should be noted that this applies expressly only to the group of 8-to-12 year olds that we looked into in a study on the effects.

One of the researchers seems disappointed that results don't support the concept that games cause violence. The research team leader Maria von Salisch throws in a totally out of context comment:

In the case of older children, the negative effects from violent games on their behaviour has already been documented and this remains a cause for concern.

We are unable to rule out the possibility that an entrenched preference for violent computer and video games might over the course of a game-playing career lead to greater readiness to commit acts of violence.

What sort of researchers title their supposed scientific study with nutter phrases like 'downward spiral' anyway?

Being exposed to strong language on TV as well as playing video games are linked to aggression in teenagers, a university report shows.

A US study in the medical journal Pediatrics appears to be the first to examine the impact of strong language.

To explore the issue, scholars at the mormon Brigham Young University in Utah gathered information from 223 middle school students.

Family life professor at the university, Sarah Coyne, explained that the findings revealed that exposure to bad language is associated with acceptance and use of similar language, which in turn influences both physical and verbal aggression. Professor Coyne said:

On the whole, it's a moderate effect.

We even ran the statistical model the opposite way to test if the violent kids used more profanity and then sought it out in the media, but the first path we took was a much better statistical fit even when we tried other explanations.

Profanity is kind of like a stepping stone. You don't go to a movie, hear a bad word, and then go and shoot somebody. But when youth both hear and then try profanity out for themselves it can start a downward slide toward more aggressive behavior.

Researchers from the University of Bonn have found brain activity patterns in heavy gamers that differed from those of non-gamers. The study's results have just been published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

Psychologists, epileptologists and neurologists from the University of Bonn studied the effect of shoot em up game images and other emotionally charged photos on the brain activity of heavy gamers. Compared to people who abstain from first-person shooters, they show clear differences in how emotions are controlled, reported lead author Dr. Christian Montag from the Institute of Psychology at the University of Bonn.

21 subjects ranging in age from 20 to 30 years played first-person shooters for about 15 hours per week on average. During this study, they were shown a standardized catalog of photos that reliably trigger emotions in human brains, using video glasses. At the same time, the researchers recorded the responses in their brains using one of the brain scanners at the Life & Brain Center of the University of Bonn. The images included photos as they are used in the violent games, but also shots of accident and disaster victims. This mix of images allowed us to transport the subjects both to the fictitious first-person shooter world they are familiar with and to also trigger emotions via real images, explained Dr. Montag. This catalog of photos was also shown to a control group of 19 persons who had no experience with violent video games.

When the subjects regarded the real, negative pictures, there was greatly increased activity in their amygdalas. This region of the brain is strongly involved in processing negative emotions. Surprisingly, the amygdalas in the subjects as well as in the control group were similarly stimulated, reported Montag: This shows that both groups responded to the photos with similarly strong emotions.

But the left medial frontal lobes were clearly less activated in the users of violent games than in the control subjects. This is the brain structure humans use to control their fear or aggression. First-person shooters do not respond as strongly to the real, negative image material because they are used to it from their daily computer activities, Montag concluded: One might also say that they are more desensitized than the control group.

On the other hand, while processing the computer game images, the first-person shooters showed higher activity in brain regions associated with memory recall and working memory than the control group members. This indicates that the gamers put themselves into the video game due to the computer game images and were looking for a potential strategy to find a solution for the game status shown, said Dr. Montag.

One question raised while interpreting the results is whether the users showed altered brain activity due to the games, or whether they were more tolerant of violence from the start and as a consequence, preferred first-person shooter games. The researchers from the University of Bonn were able to suggest an answer to this question based on the fact that they took into account various personality traits such as fearfulness, aggressiveness, callousness or emotional stability. There were no differences between the subjects and the control group in this area, reported Dr. Montag: This is an indication that the violent games are the cause of the difference in information processing in the brain.

In the wake of Grand Theft Auto being mentioned in a murder trial, the Daily Mail seized upon a piece of research about computer gaming.

The Daily Mail reported:

How video games blur real life boundaries and prompt thoughts of violent solutions to players' problems

See article from dailymail.co.uk. By Jenny Hope

Some video game players are transferring their screen experiences into the real world - prompting thoughts of violent solutions to their problems, say researchers.

Fans of computers can become so immersed in their virtual environment they do things in the real world as if they were still playing.

The findings come after sailor Ryan Donovan was sentenced to 25 years in jail for shooting dead an officer on a nuclear sub to copy the violent video game Grand Theft Auto.

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm University have for the first time identified evidence of Game Transfer Phenomena (GTP), which results in some gamers integrating video experiences into their real lives. The study to be published in the next issue of the International Journal of Cyber Behaviour, Psychology and Learning.

The study involved 42 in-depth interviews with participants aged between 15 and 21 years old, all of whom were frequent video game players and had been recruited from gaming forums.

They thought in the same way as when they were gaming, with half of participants often looking to use something from a video game to resolve a real-life issue.

In some cases these thoughts were accompanied by reflexes, such as reaching to click a button on the controller when it wasn't in their hands, while on other occasions gamers visualised their thoughts in the form of game menus.

...

Violent solutions to real life conflicts appeared to be used by few of the players, at least in their imaginations says the study.

One 15-year-old gamer said: There (in the video game) you can get guns. This I want to do in real life, to get some guns, shoot down people. This I want to do sometimes with irritating people.

The study concluded: The close resemblance to real life scenarios in video games may have opened a 'Pandora's Box for some players.

...Read the full article

The UK's national health service has responded to this Daily Mail write up and added a much needed bit of perspective:

Video games blur reality, claims newspaper

Based on article from nhs.uk

The Daily Mail has today reported that video games blur real life boundaries and prompt thoughts of violent solutions to players' problems.

This headline is based on a small study exploring whether frequent video game players integrated elements of video game playing into their real lives - a theoretical process the researchers called game transfer phenomena (GTP). The study showed that most gamers experienced GTP, including experiencing brief involuntary impulses to perform actions as they would when playing a game. For example, they might try to click a button on their controller while it was not in their hand.

It is important to note that not all the players were affected by the games and the degree that people were affected varied significantly from person to person. Additionally, it is not clear from this study whether GTP was related to the game played or whether it related to the specific characteristics of individual game players. Many of the actions reported by participants were also unusual or novel, and do not provide evidence that games affect perception of behaviour. For example, one participant said that they like to pack their suitcase neatly like Tetris blocks.

Further studies will be needed to investigate whether GTP is a real, significant phenomenon and the potential link between GTP and a player's individual characteristics.

...

The Daily Mail's report covering this study tended to focus on the violent and negative aspects of game transfer phenomena (GTP) highlighted in the study. The Daily Mail presents GTP as a proven phenomenon with definite results, but the results of this interview-based study are debatable and GTP is still only a theory.

News coverage also linked the study results to a recent murder trial where video games were reportedly implicated. This angle seemed to be a confused addition to news coverage of the research, as it could suggest to readers that games were found to be the primary cause of the incident, or that they could cause ordinary people to consider murder.

...Read the full article

Research from Brock University in Canada seems to indicate that playing highly competitive video games may lead to aggressive behavior faster than playing games with more violent content. Competitiveness, says a new study published by the American Psychological Association, may be the main video game characteristic that influences or causes aggression.

In a series of experiments lead by Paul J.C. Adachi, M.A., a PhD candidate at Brock University in Canada, video games were matched on competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action. Researchers found that video game violence did not elevate aggressive behavior on its own. The more competitive games produced greater levels of aggressive behavior than less competitive games, no matter how much violent content was found in the games.

In one of the experiments, 42 college students played one of two video games, Conan or Fuel, for 12 minutes. Both games were even when it came to competitiveness, difficulty and pace of action, but differed in levels of violence. After participants finished playing the game, they were then told they were going to take part in a separate food tasting study. Participants had to make up a cup of hot sauce for a taster who they were told did not particularly like hot or spicy food. The participants could choose from one of four different hot sauces (from least hot to most hot) for the taster to drink. The authors found that there was no significant difference in the intensity and amount of the hot sauces prepared by the participants who played Conan and those who played Fuel. The authors concluded that video game violence alone was not sufficient to elevate aggressive behavior.

In the second experiment, 60 college students played one of four video games: Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe, Left 4 Dead 2, Marble Blast Ultra, and Fuel. Afterward, the students completed the same hot sauce test from the first study. Electrocardiograms measured the participants' heart rates before and during video game play. On average, students who played the highly competitive games - Fuel and Mortal Kombat versus DC Universe - concocted what researchers called significantly more of a hotter sauce than participants who played Marble Blast Ultra and Left 4 Dead 2. They also had significantly higher heart rates.

Adachi concluded:

These findings suggest that the level of competitiveness in video games is an important factor in the relation between video games and aggressive behavior, with highly competitive games leading to greater elevations in aggression than less competitive games.

Psychological studies invariably find a positive relationship between violent video game play and aggression. However, these studies cannot account for either aggressive effects of alternative activities video game playing substitutes for or the possible selection of relatively violent people into playing violent video games. That is, they lack external validity.

We investigate the relationship between the prevalence of violent video games and violent crimes.

Our results are consistent with two opposing effects. First, they support the behavioral effects as in the psychological studies. Second, they suggest a larger voluntary incapacitation effect in which playing either violent or non-violent games decrease crimes.

Overall, violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime.

According to a group of researchers in England, games with goals such as football are more likely to make participants aggressive than anything encountered in Grand Theft Auto or Call Of Duty.

According to research conducted by Dr. Simon Goodson and Sarah Pearson of Huddersfield university, games with goals cause more of an aggressive reaction in participants than killing an animated character because sports is closer to real life.

Researchers measured the heart rates, respiration and brain activity of 40 male and female participants randomly selected to play violent Xbox 360 game or a football game. They found that when players killed someone in a game it caused little brain activity. But when participant's conceded a goal or foul in the sports game it caused a higher level of brain activity.

Dr. Goodson added that participants generally reacted with more agitation during the football game and that maybe violent games have been misrepresented as the worst thing a gamer can play.

Dr. Goodson is presenting his research this week at the British Psychological Society's annual conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

According to researchers at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), violent video games do not desensitize players to violent imagery. The study was lead by Holly Bowen and co-authored by psychology professor Julia Spaniol.

Researchers examined the impact of chronic exposure to violent video games on emotional memory and responses to negative stimuli.

Emotional long-term memory helps us avoid negative situations, Bowen said. This has significant implications for public health. For example, if you remember the negative experience of being involved in a bar fight, you will avoid future situations that may lead to an altercation.

Participants were shown 150 images representing three different stimuli: negative, positive and neutral scenes. One hour later, the students viewed those same images again (along with a new set of 150 distractor images) in random order. As each image was displayed, participants had to respond whether or not they had seen it before. Finally, at the end of the experiment, the students completed a self-assessment test regarding their state of emotional arousal.

The researchers believed going into the study that game players would prove to be less sensitive to the negative images and therefore show reduced memory for these materials. The results showed no difference in the memory of video game players and non-players. Exposure to video games were not associated with differences in self-reported arousal to emotional stimuli.

The findings indicate that long-term emotional memory is not affected by chronic exposure violent video games, said Bowen. Researchers caution that further study is needed to see if these results apply to all age groups and not just young adults.

New research by Dr. Christopher Ferguson from Texas A&M International University finds that depression in young people has more of a correlation to aggressive and violent behavior than gaming does - at least among Hispanics.

Ferguson recruited 302 (mostly) Hispanic youths between the ages of 10 - 14 years-old, from a small city on the border of Mexico. The population of this unnamed city was primarily of Hispanic dissent. Participants were interviewed at the start of the study and at the end of the study 12 months later.

He then looked at how much exposure the subjects had to violence in video games, television, and negative events in their lives. Negative events included neighborhood problems, bad relationships with adults, antisocial behavior, family attachment, delinquent peers, family interaction and communication, exposure to domestic violence, depressive symptoms, serious aggression, bullying, and delinquent behavior.

One year later, 7% reported being involved in at least one criminally violent act during the previous 12 months, with the common crime being physical assaults on other students or the use of force to take something away from someone else. 19% reported engaging in at least one nonviolent crime during the same period, such as shoplifting or theft on school property.

Ferguson found that symptoms of depressions were a strong predictor for youth aggression and rule breaking. Depression was especially influential in those who were identified as having preexisting antisocial personality traits. The research did not find that exposure to violence from video games or television at the start of the study was a good predictor of aggressive behavior in young people.

Dr. Furgeson's research will appear in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

A new study into the effects of computer games has revealed that fast-paced action games turn us into faster and better decision-makers.

Scientists at the University of Rochester in New York conducted a series of tests to gauge whether regular bouts of high-speed gaming could help to improve our cognitive abilities.

The researchers tested dozens of 18- to 25-year-olds who were not ordinarily video-gamers, splitting them into two groups.

The first group were told to play adrenalin-packed action games such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament, in which participants dash around online arenas shooting each other. The second group were given The Sims 2, a more sedate, strategy-based game that mimics the pace of everyday life.

After 50 hours of playing, both groups were given a series of tests to see whether they could make quicker decisions. Scientists discovered that those who had trained on the action games made decisions 25% faster than their counterparts. They also answered just as many questions correctly as their strategy game-playing peers.

It's not the case that the action game players are trigger-happy and less accurate – they are just as accurate and also faster, said Daphne Bavelier, a cognitive scientist at Rochester who has been testing how computer games affect the brain and eyes for much of the past 10 years. Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference.

This benefit, researchers suggest in a forthcoming edition of Current Biology, has repercussions in the real world, such as improving our ability to multitask, drive, read small print and keep track of friends in a crowd.

Decisions are never black and white, she said. The brain is always computing probabilities. As you drive, for instance, you may see a movement on your right, estimate whether you are on a collision course, and based on that probability make a binary decision: brake or don't brake.

Action-filled computer games – which force the brain to make a whole series of fast-paced decisions in a split second – appear to improve our ability to make those decisions quickly.

Shooting off a few rounds of nonsense sound bites

Based on article from news.sky.com

But Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch-UK, told Sky News the study could send out the wrong message about shoot 'em ups:

I dont dispute the findings, it is going to improve you reactions if you click something enough, of course it is, but I'm not just talking about mental reactions - these games dehumanise violence.

There have been other studies that link them to violence and you could get the same reactions from a driving game.

Young adults—male and female—who play violent video games long-term, handle stress better than non-playing adults and become less depressed and less hostile following a stressful task, according to a study by Texas A&M International University associate professor, Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson.

The article on the research appears in the European Psychologist 2010.

In this study, 103 young adults were given a frustration task and then randomized to play no game, a non-violent game, a violent game with good versus evil theme, or a violent game in which they played 'the bad guy.' The results suggest that violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management, Dr. Ferguson explained.

Whether violent video games cause aggression or violent crime has been a source of contention in public and academic circles. The results do not support a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior.

Ferguson said that the results of this study may help provide others with ways to come up with a mood-management activity that provides individuals with ways to tolerate or reduce stress: It probably won't come to a surprise to gamers that playing games may reduce stress, although others have been skeptical of this idea. This is the first study that explores this idea, however. It does seem that playing violent games may help reduce stress and make people less depressed and hostile.

In a special issue of the journal Review of General Psychology, published in June by the American Psychological Association, researchers looked at several studies that examined the potential uses of video games as a way to improve visual/spatial skills, as a health aid to help manage diabetes or pain and as a tool to complement psychotherapy. One study examined the negative effects of violent video games on some people.

Much of the attention to video game research has been negative, focusing on potential harm related to addiction, aggression and lowered school performance, said Christopher J. Ferguson, PhD, of Texas A&M International University and guest editor of the issue. Recent research has shown that as video games have become more popular, children in the United States and Europe are having fewer behavior problems, are less violent and score better on standardized tests. Violent video games have not created the generation of problem youth so often feared.

In contrast, one study in the special issue shows that video game violence can increase aggression in some individuals, depending on their personalities.

In his research, Patrick Markey, PhD, determined that a certain combination of personality traits can help predict which young people will be more adversely affected by violent video games. Previous research has shown us that personality traits like psychoticism and aggressiveness intensify the negative effects of violent video games and we wanted to find out why, said Markey.

Markey used the most popular psychological model of personality traits, called the Five-Factor Model, to examine these effects. The model scientifically classifies five personality traits: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Analysis of the model showed a perfect storm of traits for children who are most likely to become hostile after playing violent video games, according to Markey. Those traits are: high neuroticism (e.g., easily upset, angry, depressed, emotional, etc.), low agreeableness (e.g., little concern for others, indifferent to others feelings, cold, etc.) and low conscientiousness (e.g., break rules, don't keep promises, act without thinking, etc.).

Markey then created his own model, focusing on these three traits, and used it to help predict the effects of violent video games in a sample of 118 teenagers. Each participant played a violent or a non-violent video game and had his or her hostility levels assessed. The teenagers who were highly neurotic, less agreeable and less conscientious tended to be most adversely affected by violent video games, whereas participants who did not possess these personality characteristics were either unaffected or only slightly negatively affected by violent video games.

These results suggest that it is the simultaneous combination of these personality traits which yield a more powerful predictor of violent video games, said Markey. Those who are negatively affected have pre-existing dispositions, which make them susceptible to such violent media.

Violent video games are like peanut butter, said Ferguson. They are harmless for the vast majority of kids but are harmful to a small minority with pre-existing personality or mental health problems.

Inspired by a plotline from the 2003 movie Runaway Jury, University of Southern California researcher Kwan Min Lee, and associates, conducted research under the title Will the Experience of Playing a Violent Role in a Videogame Influence People's Judgments of Violent Crimes?

The inspiring scene from Runaway Jury involved the lawyer for a defendant accused of committing a violent shooting tried to have a hardcore video game player selected as a member of the jury. The lawyer carried the belief that a hardcore gamer would judge the shooter less negatively because of similar, though virtual, experiences.

52 undergrads were involved in the study—who had never played the game used in the experiment (True Crime)—and were randomly assigned to either a game-playing group or a control group. The game-playing group was tasked with playing True Crime for 2 hours. Both groups were then asked to read two real-life crime cases committed by police officers and two by generic criminals, and then to answer a series of questions in which they judged the crime and the criminal.

It was reported that, people who played the violent game had more favorable judgment of the crimes and perpetrators than people who did not play the violent game in terms of their negative judgment of the perpetrators.

The researchers concluded that that even a few hours of game playing as a particular game character can significantly influence one's attitude towards real-life criminal behaviors conducted by an individual similar to the game character.

It was also theorized that perhaps the jury selection process should take into account both real and virtual experiences as it was shown that attitudes towards real criminals can be influenced while taking on a similar role in a videogame.

Games may not bad for you after all, according to a joint study conducted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.

More precisely, first-person shooters are better at training you for the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and less effective at making you a killing machine.

DOOM'd to switch: superior cognitive flexibility in players of first person shooter games, a research paper published on Frontiers in Cognition focuses on the benefits of playing first-person shooters.

Thirty-four adults (17 video game players and 17 non-gamers) participated in the study, with video game players defined as those who have played video games at least four times a week for a minimum period of 6 months. All of the video game players had some experience with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Unreal Tournament, Battlefield, and Grand Theft Auto IV. Non-gamers were described as having little to no video game experience. All of the participants were recruited among student populations and through advertisements on internet forums catering to video game players.

While details of the study are pretty complex, the short story is that the video game players were able to rapidly react to fast moving visual and auditory stimuli, and to switch back and forth between different subtasks faster than the non-video game playing group. The study also conducted test to make sure that these results weren't based on age or I.Q. After eliminating those possibilities, researchers found that it had more to do with first-person shooter games than any other possible factors.

A new study conducted by a Wheaton College professor has concluded that people that play action and puzzle games are better able to think through complex problems.

Rolf Nelson, a professor of psychology, conducted the study and published his findings in the November edition of the journal Perception.

In the study, he had 20 students try to solve a spatial relation problem. The students were then given a puzzle game or action game to play. Once done with the game, the students were given the chance to finish the spatial relation problem again.

Results showed that puzzle players finished the task slower, but with more accuracy, while action players finished the task quicker but less accurately. Both finished quicker than if they had not played a game at all.

From the study abstract:

To understand the way in which video-game play affects subsequent perception and cognitive strategy, two experiments were performed in which participants played either a fast-action game or a puzzle-solving game. Before and after video-game play, participants performed a task in which both speed and accuracy were emphasized. In experiment 1 participants engaged in a location task in which they clicked a mouse on the spot where a target had appeared, and in experiment 2 they were asked to judge which of four shapes was most similar to a target shape. In both experiments, participants were much faster but less accurate after playing the action game, while they were slower but more accurate after playing the puzzle game. Results are discussed in terms of a taxonomy of video games by their cognitive and perceptual demands.

Education minister Mike Russell said the technology, often seen as a distraction, could motivate young people to develop skills.

Russell said the Nintendo DS console, for example, could lead to surprising educational benefits for young people, particularly its top-selling brain-training games.

He said: We need to embrace new technologies and tap into all the resources available to us to ensure that our young people develop successfully in a modern society within which computers are so important.

Educational computer games can be a great way of motivating young people to learn in a way that is relevant and enjoyable for them.

Computer games are often perceived as solely a distraction to learning. But alongside traditional learning aids, they can help make learning more engaging.

Parents and teachers across the country are starting to see the benefits they can have.

Dr David Miller of the University of Dundee has conducted studies into the effects of brain-training games on improving learning in partnership with government education body Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS).

Miller said it was clear many games had tremendous learning potential. The research focusing on a brain-training game showed it could improve pupil's basic computational skills. Children who used the game for 20 minutes each morning over a ten-week period demonstrated statistically significant gains in accuracy and speed of processing.

He said: Research is starting to point towards computer games providing some real and tangible benefits to young people. These can include faster processing of information, enhanced selection of relevant material and higher levels of engagement. Computer games are part of our culture and while we may have concerns about aspects of some popular games, many have huge potential for supporting learning.

University of Rochester researchers found that children who played video games were quick thinkers and had good hand-eye co-ordination.

Contrary to the widely held belief that video games are contributing to Britain's obesity crisis, a team of American researchers has found that there are benefits to sitting in front of a screen for hours on end.

Dr Matthew Dye said there were good points about playing video games even though many critics claim they distract children from more healthy outdoor pursuits: Avid players got faster not only on their game of choice, but on a variety of unrelated laboratory tests of reaction time.

Sceptics agree that gamers are fast but that they become less accurate as their speed of play increases. Gamers don't lose accuracy in the game or in lab tests as they get faster - this is a result of the gamer's improved visual cognition.

Dr Dye said video game fans did well on hand-eye co-ordination tests and comprehension tests: Playing video games enhances performance on mental rotation skills, visual and spatial memory, and tasks requiring divided attention.

Dr Dye said that parents and grandparents should play their children's computer games to improve their own memory and brain function: Training with video games may serve to reduce gender differences in visual and spatial processing, and thwart some of the cognitive declines that come with ageing.

Results of a study performed by researchers at Iowa State University have led them to believe that there is a relation between frequent videogame playing and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

Video Games and Cognitive Control was designed to quantify the effects of playing videogames on two types of cognitive activity—proactive and reactive. Proactive attention is described as a gearing up mechanism, or where a player can anticipate what is coming next, versus reactive attention, which is more of a knee-jerk response (a monster jumping out).

A visual task was used to test both attention types with brain waves and responses measured in both frequent videogame players and occasional players. Both groups were charged with identifying the color of a word when the color and word matched, such as 'RED' presented in red, or did not match, such as 'RED' presented in blue or green. This is also referred to as the Stroop task.

While reactive control was similar in both groups, frequent gamers (participants in this study who play four or more hours a day) had a propensity for exhibiting significantly diminished proactive attention.

From a press release: While admitting that the study did have a few limitations, the researchers hoped that our results may serve to constrain the claims of some scholars, game manufacturers, and journalists who have suggested that playing action video games 'improves attention.'

The study is being published in the October 2009 issue of Psychophysiology.

Did you know that playing violent multiplayer games will make you more aggressive against strangers than friends? That's the conclusion of a new study published in the latest issue of the Evolution and Human Behavior science journal.

The study, conducted by psychologists from the University of Missouri, observed 42 young men divided into 14 teams of three. The players played Unreal Tournament 2004 within their team and against other teams. When playing against teammates, the mode was Deathmatch. When playing against other teams, the mode was Onslaught. Before and after each match, the testosterone and cortisol levels of each player was tested.

According to the study's abstract from the journal's web site:

For 14 teams of three young men, salivary testosterone and cortisol were assessed twice before and twice after competing in within-group and between-group video games that simulated violent male-male competition. Men who contributed the most to their teams' between-group victory showed testosterone increases immediately after the competition, but only if this competition was played before the within-group tournament. High-scoring men on losing teams did not show this immediate effect, but they did show a delayed increase in testosterone. In contrast, high-ranking men tended to have lower testosterone and higher cortisol during within-group tournaments. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that men's competitive testosterone response varies across ingroup and outgroup competitions and is muted during the former. The testosterone response during the between-group competition also suggests that violent multiplayer video games may be appealing to young men because they simulate male-male coalitional competition.

The Researchers at the Mind Research Network found that playing Tetris for three months had increased efficiency and beefed up the amount of gray matter in the brains of a group of adolescent girls.

The results, which will be published in BMC Research Notes later this week, showed that focusing on a challenging visuospatial task such as a video game could not just increase brain activity but alter the structure of the brain as well by thickening the cortexes.

So, what benefit does a fatter, more efficient brain offer? According to one of the study's authors, Dr. Richard Haier, it may be a way to help combat the mental decline that occurs with age.

A report published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin maintains that playing pro-social games increases helping behavior by participants while playing violent games increases hurtful behavior.

GamePolitics has previously reported on the research, which combines the results from three separate studies conducted in the U.S., Japan and Singapore. But a press release issued today by the University of Michigan offers new insight about the methodologies used by the researchers involved.

UM's Brad Bushman said:

These studies show the same kind of impact on three different age groups from three very different cultures. In addition, the studies use different analytic approaches---correlational, longitudinal and experimental. The resulting triangulation of evidence provides the strongest possible proof that the findings are both valid and generalizable...

[The research] suggests there is an upward spiral of prosocial gaming and helpful behavior, in contrast to the downward spiral that occurs with violent video gaming and aggressive behavior...

Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children. The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing.

Perhaps the most interesting experiment involved 161 U.S. college students. From the press release:

After playing either a prosocial, violent, or neutral game, participants were asked to assign puzzles to a randomly selected partner. They could choose from puzzles that were easy, medium or hard to complete. Their partner could win $10 if they solved all the puzzles. Those who played a prosocial game were considerably more helpful than others, assigning more easy puzzles to their partners. And those who had played violent games were significantly more likely to assign the hardest puzzles.

In a guest lecture at Macquarie University, Sydney, Professor Anderson, Director of Centre of the Study of Violence at Iowa State University spoke of the risks of violent videogames.

Research was clear by 1975 that media violence caused aggressive behaviour, Prof. Anderson said: We know that short term exposure to violent media can lead to aggressive behaviour and aggressive thinking within five minutes of watching a violent film or playing a violent game, while long term exposure can lead to aggression into early adulthood.

To highlight this connection, Prof. Anderson examined the likelihood of violent videogames leading to aggressive behaviour by drawing on well-known examples of cause and effect. Such examples included the chances of regular consumption of aspirin leading to heart attacks, the chances of asbestos causing cancer, and the chances of condom use reducing the risk of contracting HIV. In all these examples, violent videogames proved to be a higher risk factor, going as far as being approximately three times more likely to happen than asbestos exposure leading to cancer.

On the scale of youth violence risk factors, violent videogames were more likely to increase aggression than substance abuse, poverty, and anti-social peers. Violent games are more likely to provoke aggressive thoughts in players.

Anderson was careful to point out that this did not necessarily mean that everyone who played violent videogames would begin committing violent acts. Rather, violent games made players more prepared to think aggressive thoughts.

He cited another study where college students were asked to play a pro-social, neutral, and violent game, after which each was tested to see how willing they were to help their peers solve puzzles. The study showed that those who played non-violent, pro-social games were more inclined to be helpful by choosing easier puzzles for their peers to complete, whereas those who had just played violent games chose difficult puzzles to impede on their peers' ability to complete the challenge.

While Anderson believes that this increase in aggressive behaviour is a cause for concern, he doesn't think that violent games are solely to be blamed for anti-social behaviour.

Extreme acts of violence always require multiple risk factors being present. You just don't ever have a school shooter, for example, who only has one risk factor. It just doesn't happen. There's usually four, five, six, seven risk factors, sometimes more. Media violence is one of those risk factors. he said.

Does that mean playing violent videogames is going to create a school shooter? No, not if there aren't any other risk factors. But in kids who have a lot of other risk factors, can it contribute to the likelihood of some sort of extreme violent behaviour occurring? Probably, it can. More so than other risk factors? We don't know. There's no data on it.

If you want to make blood-and-gore video games less appealing to minors, toss those restrictive age and violent-content warnings. The lure of something off-limits only increases demand, a new study says.

In the study, researchers tested 310 Dutch children ranging in age from 7 to 17. Participants read fictitious game descriptions and rated how much or how little they wanted to play each game. In every group, the more objectionable the content, the more kids clamoured for the controller—forbidden fruit, the researchers called the games.

The findings are published in the March issue of Pediatrics.

While research has found that ratings increase the attraction to raunchy TV shows and movies, the hypothesis had never been tested with video games, reported two of the study's authors, Brad Bushman of the University of Michigan and Elly Konijn of VU University Amsterdam.

They suggest that youth should not be allowed to buy their own games, that parents and physicians be aware of risk factors (such as a drop in grades) and that policy-makers rethink the classifications (such as M, appropriate for those 17 and older), which will only make the games "unspeakably desirable."

A just-released research report claims that playing violent video games makes players comfortably numb to the pain and suffering of others.

The study, conducted by University of Michigan professor Brad Bushman and Iowa State University professor Craig Anderson, appears in the March 2009 issue of Psychological Science.

A press release describes the research methodology employed in the new report:

320 college students played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for approximately 20 minutes. A few minutes later, they overheard a staged fight that ended with the victim sustaining a sprained ankle and groaning in pain.

People who had played a violent game took significantly longer to help the victim than those who played a nonviolent game---73 seconds compared to 16 seconds. People who had played a violent game were also less likely to notice and report the fight. And if they did report it, they judged it to be less serious than did those who had played a nonviolent game.

In the second study, the participants were 162 adult moviegoers. The researchers staged a minor emergency outside the theater... The researchers timed how long it took moviegoers to help. Participants who had just watched a violent movie took over 26% longer to help than either people going into the theater or people who had just watched a nonviolent movie.

Bushman commented: These studies clearly show that violent media exposure can reduce helping behavior. People exposed to media violence are less helpful to others in need because they are 'comfortably numb' to the pain and suffering of others, to borrow the title of a Pink Floyd song.

Among young college students, the frequency and type of video games played appears to parallel risky drug and alcohol use, poorer personal relationships, and low levels of self-esteem, researchers report.

This does not mean that every person who plays video games has low self-worth, or that playing video games will lead to drug use, Laura M. Padilla-Walker told Reuters Health. Rather, these findings simply indicate video gaming may cluster with a number of negative outcomes, at least for some segment of the population, said Padilla-Walker, an associate professor at the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

She and colleagues examined the previous 12-months' frequency and type of video game and Internet use reported by 500 female and 313 male undergraduate college students in the United States. The students also recounted their drug and alcohol use, perceptions of self-worth and social acceptance, and the quality of their relationships with friends and family.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, showed stark gender differences in video game and Internet use, Padilla-Walker said. However, regardless of gender, clear correlations were seen between frequent gaming and more frequent alcohol and drug use and lower quality personal relationships, as well as more frequent violent gaming and a greater number of sexual partners and low quality personal relationships.

The investigators linked similar negative outcomes with Internet use for chat rooms, shopping, entertainment, and pornography, but a contrasting plethora of positive outcomes with Internet use for schoolwork.

Volunteers who played a simple cycling game learned to favour one team's jersey and avoid another's. Days later, most subjects subconsciously avoided the same jersey in a real-world test.

As video games become more immersive and realistic, all involved ought to realise the potential, says Paul Fletcher, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, UK, who led the study

I don't think this is evidence that video games are bad, says Fletcher, a former gamer: We just need to be aware that associations formed within the game transfer to the real world – for good or bad.

Fletcher and several colleagues recruited 22 volunteer subjects and told them they were testing an experimental sports drink delivery system. Volunteer played a bicycling game on a laptop with two straws attached to their mouths.

If cyclists from their same team – as indicated by a jersey design – passed by, participants received a slurp of their favourite juice. However, if a cyclist from the rival team passed the participant, he or she got a swig of salty tea.

Three days later, the same volunteers came back for a follow-up brain scan and a surprise test. Before the scan, Fletcher and his colleagues asked each subject to sit in a waiting room with two chairs, both with small towels dangling on one arm. One seat corresponded to the insignia of the juice-giving jersey, the other to the symbol for salty tea.

Three-quarters of the subjects sat in the chair that reminded them of juice, though most participants said they did not notice the towel design.

Our research suggests whatever you've learned in the computer game does have an effect on how you behave toward the stimulus in the real world, Fletcher says.

A researcher at Texas A&M International University has concluded that there is no significant relationship between school shootings and playing violent video games.

Writing for the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Prof. Christopher Ferguson criticizes the methodology used in earlier research linking games to violence and aggression. He also points out that no evidence of violent game play was found in recent high-profile incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre, the Utah Trolley Stop mall shooting and the February, 2008 shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University.

Ferguson examines the notion of moral panic as it relates to the supposed relationship between violent video games and school shootings:

Moral panics may emerge from culture wars occurring in a society... politicians, news media and social scientists, arguably [have] motives for promoting hysterical beliefs about media violence, and video games specifically. Actual causes of violent crime, such as family environment, genetics, poverty, and inequality, are oftentimes difficult, controversial, and intractable problems. By contrast, video games present something of a straw man by which politicians can create an appearance of taking action against crime...

Ferguson, who cites GamePolitics among his numerous sources, notes that many video game critics are unfamiliar with the medium:

It has been the observation of this author, for instance, that the majority of individuals critical of video games are above the age of 35 (many are elderly) and oftentimes admit to not having directly experienced the games. Some commentators make claims betraying their unfamiliarity, such as that games like Grant Theft Auto ‘award points’ for antisocial behaviour... despite that few games award points for anything anymore, instead focusing on stories.

Ferguson also points out what he sees as design flaws in a number of studies relating to video games and aggression. He also examines school shooting research conducted by the FBI and Secret Service before concluding:

School shootings, although exceedingly rare, are an important issue worthy of serious consideration. However, for our understanding of this phenomenon to progress, we must move past the moral panic on video games and other media and take a hard look at the real causes of serious aggression and violence...

the wealth of evidence... fails to establish a link between violent video games and violent crimes, including school shootings. The link has not merely been unproven; I argue that the wealth of available data simply weighs against any causal relationship.

While video games are often slammed over violent content, a new study suggests that it is the challenge presented by a game rather than graphic violence which attracts players.

The research, which appears in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, was conducted at the University of Rochester.

A press release quotes Andrew Przybylski, the study's lead author: For the vast majority of players, even those who regularly play and enjoy violent games, violence was not a plus. Violent content was only preferred by a small subgroup of people that generally report being more aggressive.

Immersyve president Scott Rigby commented on potential ramifications for the video game industry: Much of the debate about game violence has pitted the assumed commercial value of violence against social concern about the harm it may cause. Our study shows that the violence may not be the real value component, freeing developers to design away from violence while at the same time broadening their market.

Researchers incorporated the popular Half-Life 2 and House of the Dead III into their study, using both high and low gore scenarios.