14 DAY TRIAL // What would the world come to without regular input from British researchers? We don't know. We do know that a lot of things related to videogames will remain a mystery forever. Like the recent findings of Doctor Simon Goodson and Sarah Pearson from Huddersfield University, who have determined that driving games create more aggressiveness in players than shooters. The conclusions were presented at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, which took place on April 1 (we really hope that this is in no way a hoax).
The analysis conducted seems to be quite complex. The researchers used the Xbox 360 gaming console and three games: an unnamed first person shooter, a driving game, in the form of Project Gotham Racing, and a generic 3D table tennis game. There were 30 subjects, aged 18 to 45, who took part in the study, monitored for both physical responses to the games the played, through EEGs and heart rate monitors, and for the mental response, as expressed in aggression.
The surprising result was that the FPS generated the smallest reaction, in both heart rate and brain activity, while the racing game generated the biggest response. The scientists explained that “Previous researchers have made sweeping generalisations about the nature of videogames. This study is one of the first to use one of the latest games consoles that have a much higher level of realism. Surprisingly the results showed that the driving game made participants more agitated and aggressive than the game with graphic violence. Given the high levels of realism in modern games a re-evaluation of the relationship between videogames and violence is needed.”
As always, such studies should be taken with a grain of salt. The sample of participants is very small for such a study, the number of games played is also small, and there is no clear way of saying that the physical responses were linked to aggression or rather only to increased excitement generated by the videogame that was played. There's also no proof that the increased aggressiveness translated into behavior.