Video games are becoming an incremental part of our daily lives, and as such have gained the attention of quite a lot of researchers who have indulged in numerous studies to show just what kind of influence they can have on us.
While a lot of them were very biased and set out to show that violent games would turn children into
violent people, some of them approached the issue with an open mind, and studied the effects of all types of games on young people. That is what the researchers from the Iowa State University did while conducting a survey on a broad audience - children, middle schoolers, high schoolers and students from Singapore, Japan and the United States.
The results were pretty interesting, but only showed things that a lot of gamers already know, which is that positive games generate
good behavior while violent games make people more inclined to committing violent acts. Here are the results posted by the researchers.
• Of 727 Singaporean middle schoolers, research showed “those who played prosocial games exhibited more cooperation and empathy.”
• A study of 780 fifth-graders and 1,050 eighth and 11th-graders in Japan found that “prosocial gameplay predicted later increases in prosocial behavior over a three- to four-month time span.”
• And a study of 161 U.S. college kids found that those who played prosocial games behaved more prosocially toward another student in a subsequent task than “those who played either neutral or violent video games.”
The prosocial games that were given to the children were Chibi Robo and Super Mario Sunshine; the neutrals were Pure Pinball and Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, and the violent ones were Ty2 and Crash Trinsanity. “Those who played the violent games engaged in more harmful behaviors toward other students.”
All in all, it's nice to see some good studies, once in a while, that showcase that video games can have a good influence on children.
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