3.06.2008

YOU’RE NOT A HEARTLESS KILLING MACHINE AFTER ALL

An interesting but inconclusive study (is there any other kind?) has found that people playing first-person-shooter games experience negative emotional reactions when they are killing their enemies and feel relief when they are killed. The experiment tracked the players’ facial expressions and physiological activity via electrodes and other monitoring equipment and discovered that “wounding and killing the opponent elicited anxiety, anger, or both,” while "the death of the player's own character... appears to increase some aspects of positive emotion.” (GameCritics.com)

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