Research into what affect violent video games has on youth continues
There has been a lot of discussion about what type of negative impact video games have on young gamers -- including addiction, real-life speeding, desensitization, paranoia. A study published in Psychology, Crime & Law claims that stable personalities are unaffected by violent video games.
Researchers had 110 boys and 15 girls -- mean age of 14.6 -- play Quake II for 20 minutes once researchers had a personality profile of each participant. Anger levels were measured again immediately after the gaming test session ended. Researchers discovered three distinct groups once analyzing the data. Seventy seven participants maintained the same anger level. Twenty two subjects had anger levels that doubled from the same starting point as unaffected participants. Eight participants started out a higher level of anger before the test started, but dropped them down to normal levels after 20 minutes of game play.
There are two groups that gamers from the studied fell into -- stable personalities, and the other group was comprised of gamers whose emotional states can be susceptible of game play. Angry gamers tend to cool off after game play, where as calm gamers will most likely become agitated.
Regardless of what this particular research team discovered, a possible link between violent video games and real-life violence will continue to be studied by researchers around the world. The authors of the report understand that any correlation between aggression and anger remains very unclear to researchers, and the next step is to run the tests over with different subjects and different video games.
There has been a lot of discussion about what type of negative impact video games have on young gamers -- including addiction, real-life speeding, desensitization, paranoia. A study published in Psychology, Crime & Law claims that stable personalities are unaffected by violent video games.
Researchers had 110 boys and 15 girls -- mean age of 14.6 -- play Quake II for 20 minutes once researchers had a personality profile of each participant. Anger levels were measured again immediately after the gaming test session ended. Researchers discovered three distinct groups once analyzing the data. Seventy seven participants maintained the same anger level. Twenty two subjects had anger levels that doubled from the same starting point as unaffected participants. Eight participants started out a higher level of anger before the test started, but dropped them down to normal levels after 20 minutes of game play.
There are two groups that gamers from the studied fell into -- stable personalities, and the other group was comprised of gamers whose emotional states can be susceptible of game play. Angry gamers tend to cool off after game play, where as calm gamers will most likely become agitated.
Regardless of what this particular research team discovered, a possible link between violent video games and real-life violence will continue to be studied by researchers around the world. The authors of the report understand that any correlation between aggression and anger remains very unclear to researchers, and the next step is to run the tests over with different subjects and different video games.
