Note: Nintendo's endless ocean, which researchers categorized as "relaxed", can not be non-people.(Credit: HeyRocker/Flickr)Brad Bushman, a communication and psychology professor at the Ohio State University, has many studies the negative effects of violent video games on teenagers and young people have been able to demonstrate.
He was not investigating the possible effects of games "relaxed" because, he says, "until recently ... these games did not exist. Most video games people try rev up rather than calm them. "
But the researcher says that a growing genre of relaxed play him to examine whether, as violent games can lead to aggressive behavior, nonviolent games promote positive behavior can be enabled.
Bushman and Jodi Whitaker PhD student now reporting their findings: that players these games not only relax, but they can lead to, in their words, "kindness." Their research will be published in the journal social psychological and personality Science.
The relaxing game they chose was Endless Ocean, in which players are divers explore sea life and sunken treasure, a peaceful world where even shark encounters are of the non-violent variety. The violent game was Resident Evil 4, and the neutral was Super Mario Galaxy.
In the first study, they recruited 150 students to play one of the three games on the Nintendo Wii for 20 minutes. They then took a test response time, and while they were told that they were competing against an invisible enemy, the test involved no actual competitors.
Subjects were told that their goal in the time trial was to press one button faster than their opponent when prompted. They were told the winner of the race would receive money, and the loser would be blasted with sound through the headphones. Each subject got to choose how much money their opponent must be awarded for a win, and how long and loud noise blast should be for a loss.
The students who just played a violent game chose the largest penalty for the loser of the timed matchup, those who chose a neutral played the next largest, and those who played a relaxed a chose the least. The reverse was also true, with that playing such games as endless ocean the highest reward for the winning opponent to choose.
In the second study, carried out almost the same, 116 college students played randomly assigned games for 20 minutes but then a questionnaire on their moods. Those who played a relaxed game reported feeling more happiness, love, joy, and other positive emotions than those who played a violent game.
But the researchers took their experiment a step further: if each student the questionnaire, the researcher asked if they wouldn't mind help sharpen pencils for the next study for the departure. It turns out that those who are just a relaxing game played more pencils than those who had not been tightened.
"These findings are not the result of some video games or enjoyable is less entertaining than others--we were very careful to choose games that were similar in these assessments," said Bushman. "Video games relax people put in a good mood. And when people are in a good mood, they are more inclined to help others. "
Whether this "relaxed" video games in the long term impact on behavior remains to be seen.
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