Racing Games Influence Reckless Driving Behavior?
So far, we have seen studies assert correlations between so called "violent" video games and real world acts of violence in both positive and negative fashion. In what seems to be a first, psychologists revealed the results of a study that posits a link between reckless driving behavior and the playing of racing games.
The German team from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich constructed a study involving 68 university students that were instructed to play, for twenty minutes, one of three racing titles (Burnout, Midnight Racer, or Need for Speed) or from a selection of three neutral titles (Tak, Crash Bandicoot, or FIFA 2005).
Once the subjects became engrossed in their assigned games, they were then assigned to take a "Vienna Test," which utilizes videos to gauge responses to traffic situations, such as passing other cars on a highway. As the event progresses in the video, participants are instructed to use a button to signal when they would stop the maneuver.
As was culled from the data, the participants that played the racing games showed increased readiness toward risk-taking behavior during the follow-up testing.
Playing such titles as Burnout, Midnight Racer and Need for Speed "increases risk-taking behaviour in critical road traffic situations," said team leader Peter Fischer.
"The time that had elapsed since participants gained their driver's licence, the number of accidents reported, sensation-seeking and enjoyment of the games had no significant effect on risk-taking behaviour," Prof. Fischer writes.
In an act of professionalism, unlike most so called "scientific studies" on video game violence, the founders of this study expressly identified the primary flaw within their experiment.
"Practitioners in the field of road traffic safety should bear in mind the possibility that racing games indeed make road traffic less safe, not least because game players are mostly young adults, acknowledged as the highest accident rate group," Prof. Fischer writes.
Study links video games to reckless driving [Canada.com]
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Posted to Miscellany on 25 March 2008
· Comments (1)
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So risk-taking in a virtual environment increased risk-taking in ANOTHER virtual environment. I'm not convinced that the results are relevant. Why wouldn't they have the group take a real driving test?