People who team up to play video games cooperatively, don't seem to
foster aggressiveness as against those who do it competitively, says a
study.
In two studies, researchers found that college students who
teamed up to play violent video games later showed more cooperative
behaviour, and sometimes less signs of aggression, than students who
played the games competitively.
The first study was reported in
the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking and the
second appeared in the journal Communication Research.
The results
suggest that it is too simplistic to say violent video games are always
bad for players. The new research suggests playing a violent game with a
team-mate changes how people react to the violence, said David
Ewoldsen, study co-author and professor of communication at Ohio State
University.
"Most of the studies finding links between violent
games and aggression were done with people playing alone. The social
aspect of today's video games can change things quite a bit," Ewoldsen
said, according to an Ohio statement.
"You're still being very
aggressive, you're still killing people in the game but when you
cooperate, that overrides any of the negative effects of the extreme
aggression," said co-author John Velez, graduate student in
communication at Ohio State.
The first study involved 119 college
students who were placed into four groups to play the violent video game
Halo II with a partner. The groups differed in whether they competed or
cooperated in playing the game.
The results showed that
participants who played the video game cooperatively were more likely
than those who competed to show cooperative tendencies.
The second
study extended the findings by showing that cooperating in playing a
violent video game can even unite people from rival groups in this
case, fans of Ohio State and those of their bitter rival, the University
of Michigan.
Source: NDTV
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