Computer games do not make people more prone to violence. This conclusion is made by British psychologists in the article of the magazine Entertainment Computing. Discussion about the benefits and dangers of computer games, their impact on the behavior of children and adults, as well as on brain work is conducted by scientists, politicians, public figures and simply worried parents, probably for the last twenty years.
Concerning the latter, neurophysiologists connected to this topic, eventually concluded that some types of games can actually have a positive effect on the work of certain brain departments responsible for the reaction and memory, while others, on the contrary, force these departments to decrease in size .
Some researchers believe that computer games are able to produce in a certain group of people a real dependence, and so strong that it is like a drug. Others complain that the high level of realism and freedom in games has reached such a level that the violence and violence that they encounter in them can in some cases be "transferred" to the real world.
David Zendl and his colleagues from York University decided to test this by organizing a very unusual experiment, in which several dozens of volunteers took part, including both amateurs of computer games and people who were far from having such a pastime.
"If games really" program "a person, then he must quickly categorize and respond to the concepts and objects that are contained in them, rather than objects from the real world. It was completely uncharacteristic for the two games we learned, "says David Zendl from York University.
For the experiment, scientists developed two similar, but different in content games. One player was asked to drive the car along the freeway and try to avoid collisions with trucks, and in the second - to take on the role of a mouse, which the cat tried to catch.
According to Zendl, if the position of opponents of games is correct, then such games should leave a certain psychological "imprint" in the minds of players, causing them to respond more sharply and quickly to images of cats and cars and related words and ideas.
Guided by this approach, scientists after each session of the game showed the participants of the experiments a set of photographs on which various objects, animals and people were depicted, and asked to distribute them in one or another category.
Measurements of reaction time and reflection of response showed that volunteers reacted to pictures of cars and cats with the same speed and attention as the rest of the photos, which indicates that games do not change the human psyche.
Selll says that the study of the question of whether there is a difference in the impact on the psyche of games with realistic physics and graphics and their more primitive and abstract competitors is similarly completed. No differences in this case, the scientists could not find.
"The information gathered indicates a lack of a direct link between realism in games and violence in life. We have shown that in the logical task to complete the words, the participants in the experiments did not make a choice in the direction of concepts related to cruelty. In addition, we did not notice any difference in the data from people who played a realistic game, with those who worked with products with less reliable graphics, "commented Zendl.
According to the psychologist, this suggests that statements about the psychological dangers of such hobbies as computer games are so far lacking in scientific grounds.
True, it should be noted here that all these experiments were conducted with the participation of adults, so it is not yet clear whether these statements can be considered just as true for children and adolescents. The scientists are going to find an answer to this question in the near future.
The article is based on materials .
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