It would seem that this is study week – apt, considering many high schoolers will be returning to school next week (see? We’re helping) – but luckily the study we’re presenting you today isn’t one telling you that excessive gaming will cause your eyeballs to implode, or something.
Nope, instead, according to a study conducted by the American Psychological Association, it has been shown that ‘hardcore gamers’ are less likely to have big bad nightmares than their ‘not-so-hardcore’ counterparts.
The study took 64 hardcore gamers and 22 less-frequent gamers – all from a military background. They were all on par in terms of military experience and weren’t suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. During interviews and research into each participant’s dream content – specifically relating to military content, the study found some interesting things:
The hardcore gamers’ dreams were far less threatening than the less-frequent participants. The less-frequent also tended to be passive victims in the dreams, while hardcore gamers were active participants.
Interesting to note – the hardcore gamers out-numbered the casual gamers in this study, so the results actually say quite a bit.
Okay, so what the study is really saying is that games desensitize gamers to violence – but with the positive benefit of not waking up in a cold sweat, fearing for your life.
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Nightmares? Whazzat? :p