Video games may not desensitize players to violence as much as previously thought, reports a new study published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Researchers at Ryerson University in Toronto worked with 122 volunteers with varying levels of exposure to video games. Most were female – 96 of the 122 – and the average age of the volunteers was 19. In the six months leading up to the study, 45 had played at least one video game, while the remaining 77 had no exposure to games.
The participants were shown 150 images which belonged to three different categories of stimuli: positive, negative and neutral. Another 150 images were then mixed in and the participants were asked to identify which images they had seen before.
Researchers expected those who played violent video games to have less recall of the violent images, indicative of desensitization – but no such link was found.
"People who play video games didn’t differ in memory, and physical arousal wasn’t different between gamers and non-gamers. And there was no difference in how each group felt after seeing negative or violent pictures," explained study author Holly Bowen.
"And, while this is an important study,” said Tracy Dennis, an associate professor of psychology at the City University of New York, “what they’re asking people to remember isn’t necessarily linked to video game memories, so I think it’s important to draw only moderate conclusions. A lot more research needs to be done on video game violence.”