A new study from Pennsylvania State University finds that playing video games using motion controls does not produce aggressiveness in gamers compared to using traditional controls. The new study raises interesting new questions about how user experience affects how gamers react to playing games, versus the content of the games themselves.
The study was conducted by PSU Assistant Professor Eric Charles, with Christopher M. Baker, Kelly Hartman, Bryan P. Easton, and Christian Kreuzberger, and published in the Computers in Human Behavior journal. All testing was done on the Wii and Playstation 3, with the games Punch-Out!!, Lego Indiana Jones and Soul Calibur.
In the first experiment, test subjects played Soul Calibur and Lego Indiana Jones, using either the PS3 with a standard controller, or with motion controls on the Wii. After playing, each subject is given a written test to assess aggression. When entering violent scenarios, subjects who played with motion controls exhibited less agression.
In the second experiment, subjects played Punch-Out!!, with a choice of either traditional or motion controls. This experiment repeats earlier findings that using motion controls led to less aggression.
In the final experiment, subjects again played Soul Calibur with motion controls on the Wii, in both competitive and cooperative scenarios. They found that neither cooperative or competitive scenarios led to a difference in aggression compared to single player motion gaming.
This latest experiment puts a crinkle on the ongoing research on video games and aggression, violence, and antisocial behavior. To be clear, this adds to and does not dispute prior research that has so far yielded no proven connection between video games and violent behavior. It is surprising that motion gaming elicits fundamentally different emotional reactions compared to traditional games. Maybe we should be looking at them at a completely different way after all.
Source: Computers in Human Behavior via Science Direct
