Video games can make people kind

A new study has shown that though violent video games often lead to more aggression and anger in players, relaxing video games can have just the opposite impact – it can make people happier and kinder.

A new study has shown that though violent video games often lead to more aggression and anger in players, relaxing video games can have just the opposite impact – it can make people happier and kinder.

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“With all the evidence about the dangers of violent video games, it’s good to know that game players can choose games that will provide a positive experience,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University.

Bushman along with Jodi Whitaker, a doctoral student in communication at Ohio State and the lead author on the study, conducted two studies.

In the first, 150 college students were assigned to the participation in a study of different types of computer games. They were randomly put to play one of three types of games for 20 minutes: a relaxing game, a neutral game or a violent game.

They then participated in a reaction time task where they were told that they were competing with an unseen other player (actually, there was no other player). The goal was to see who could push a button faster when prompted.

In the second study, very similar to the first one but tougher, the researchers experimented with 116 different college-student participants.

After playing a violent, neutral, or relaxing video game for 20 minutes, participants completed a questionnaire that measured their mood and they were given some pencils for sharpening. The number of pencils that participants chose to sharpen was used to measure pro-social behavior.

Results showed that people who played the relaxing video games chose to sharpen more pencils than those who played a violent video game.

The study appeared online in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science and is set to be published in a future print edition.