Anger Management Crisis? 3D Gaming Might Be The Reason, Say Researchers

Has your teenager become more aggressive lately? The cause might not be in his hormones. Check out what kind of games he plays and you might find the source of anger. Analyze this - modern 3D games that involve violence seriously affect susceptible people in most nefarious ways. 

A research in the Ohio State University has come with some troubling conclusions - 3D gaming makes people prone to aggression, or simply those who are easily affected or influenced, even more aggressive in real life. The researchers focused specifically on 3D gaming as such, without diving deeper into the entertainment industry, for example the 3D movies, but their conclusions are yet another ringing bell for anyone willing to listen. Parents, this one is for you. 

The study involved a group of people playing immersive 3D games where violence is an option. When people were asked to act violently in the games like Grand Theft Auto, they found themselves feeling angrier in real life, too. 

Apparently, there is a psychological connection between in-game violence, immersive gameplay and susceptible people, which are basically all gamers. The more atmospheric, addictive and engrossing a game, the more gamers tend to be so affected by the violence in the game, they translate that anger to real life.

Notably, 2D gaming did not prove to be as immersive and violence-inducing as its 3D counterpart. I can only imagine what these folks will discover when they ask people play violent games in Oculus Rift and the likes of it. 

The research has been lead by Brad Bushman, Professor of Communication and Psychology, and it was published in the Psychology of Popular Media Culture journal. Notably, two thirds of a 194 students group were women, and the experiment consisted of them playing GTA IV for 15 minutes. 

Images: random GTA screenshots of violent scenes

Half the group were asked to do violent things in the game and kill people, while the other half had a different instruction to go bowling. 

After the gameplay, participants had to rate their emotions and moods, including anger, annoyance, fury, on a scale from one to five. The group that played without the instructions to play violently, did not report high levels of anger and fury for both 2D and 3D games.  

At the same time, the group that played rough reported high levels of anger after both 2D and 3D gameplays, but the students who played in 3D showed significantly higher levels of anger if compared to those who played in 2D. 

The participants were also asked to evaluate how immersive the game was, and naturally, 3D games are more immersive, so here the scientists find a direct  relation to the increased levels of anger in students who played in 3D and engaged in violent scenarios. 

'3D gaming increases anger because the players felt more immersed in the violence when they played violent games. As the technology in video games improves, it has the ability to have stronger effects on players. The combination of violent content and immersive technology like 3D can be troublesome,' Bushman said. 

'This is something that needs to be considered by everyone involved - electronics manufacturers, video game developers, consumers, parents and content ratings agencies.' 

Source: Daily Mail.