Study: Players feel relief when killed in violent games
A study by Finnish researchers published in the journal Emotion concludes that players of violent video games experience relief when they are killed in game, and that repeated play does not desensitize players to violence:
From the article: "instead of joy resulting from victory and success, wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger, or both." In addition, "death of the player's own character...appear[s] to increase some aspects of positive emotion." This latter finding the authors believe may result from the temporary "relief from engagement" brought about by character death. Whatever the underlying basis, however, the results seem highly counterintuitive...Link (via Collision Detection)The researchers also found that: 1) Players showed no signs of desensitization over the course of multiple play sessions; and 2) Subjects who tested higher for psychoticism (based on a pre-trial psychoticism questionnaire) experienced less anxiety from killing enemies. That higher psychoticism would correlate with lower negative feelings about violence is not surprising. It is interesting, however, that players showed no signs of physiological or emotional desensitization. While this doesn't necessarily disprove that desensitization to videogame violence can occur over long periods of time, it does suggest that brief exposure has little or no desensitizing effect.
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Cheer up, emo kid.
They were probably just happy to stop playing "James Bond 007: Nightfire".
Relief when killed?! I tend to be angry when I die just before getting that chopper support on COD4!
Sooo ... as a society, we're training suicide bombers. That makes me feel much happier this morning.
First I would love to find out if they used "seasoned" regular game players or just any average joe off the street that may have little or no experience or even desire to play these types of games in the first place. They weren't very specific in that area.
Secondly, they really didn't pick very good games. I mean, there's tons of much better fps games out there that are probably much more enjoyable to play than James Bond and Monkey Ball, though a fun game, is also a pretty damn frustrating game to play at times.
As for me, I cheer and get very excited when I torch a bunch of enemy players when playing pyro in TF2 and get pretty damn mad when some spy stabs me from behind. Of course, maybe I'm crazy.......... lol
I think they're misinterpreting the 'emotion' being felt. When I score a kill, I get a boost of aggression, spurring me on to the next kill. When I'm killed, I immediately relax, and am often surprised at how many muscle groups I had unconsciously tensed. Also, depending on how I was killed, I may mutter unprintable things about the person who just knifed me in the back or who was camping my spawn point.
I wonder how much of this is a cultural thing? I certainly don't feel relieved if I'm playing and get killed; I'm frustrated because my forward momentum through the game has been interrupted.
My 2 cents: no wonder they feel relief when the nerve-wracking action suddenly stops ;-)
"That's fun. Why do they make that? If you can't even win, then why am I playing?"
When I'm killed, I immediately relax, and am often surprised at how many muscle groups I had unconsciously tensed.
Hell, in some intense team situations, waiting for a rez is your only downtime. Catch some ZZZs while you can. :-)
Ths w gt cgntv dssnnc:
"Gns r bd! Mrly wnng n cn mk y mr prn t kllng yr lvd n whn thr's n rgmnt! nd kllng smn vr prkng spc! nd...nd...nd..."
"...bt vlnt vdgms n whch th ctl *ct* f kllng s prtryd grphclly wth spryng bld nd dsmmbrmnt d nt mk th plyr mr prn t vlnc."
Sgh. Smtms 'm shmd t b lbrl.
@11 -- and the way to resolve that is to dismiss the first graph. Guns are not bad. Neither are violent videogames.