Playing hours upon hours of violent video games has no discernible effect in desensitizing long-term players to real-life violence, a new study finds, science-news website Eureka Alert reported Wednesday.
The study, conducted by German researchers, looked at male gamers who played first-person shooter video games at least two hours daily for the past four years, Eureka Alert said. Those test subjects were required to abstain from those video games at least three hours before the experiment commenced, to avoid inadvertently registered the short-term, rather than long-term impact of violent imagery, Eureka explained.
“The psychological questionnaire revealed no differences in measures of aggression and empathy between gamers and non-gamers,” the science-news site reported. “This finding was backed up by the fMRI [functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging] data, which demonstrated that both gamers and non-gamers had similar neural responses to the emotionally provocative images.”
“These results surprised the researchers, as they were contrary to their initial hypothesis, and suggest that any negative effects of violent video games on perception or behavior may be short-lived.”
The study, published March 8 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, can be found online here.
• Ken Shepherd can be reached at kshepherd@washingtontimes.com.
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