Gamers are more moral than non-gamers

@ 2019/02/13
Must have been playing halo

Young people who play video games, including violent titles, display more developed moral reasoning skills than their non-gaming peers, a study has found.

Researchers from Bournemouth University asked 166 adolescents aged between 11 and 18 years old about their video game habits and questions designed to measure their moral development – the thought process behind deciding what is right or wrong.

The children and teenagers who said they played more video games from a wide variety of genres had increased moral reasoning scores, including those with violent content.

The report published in published in journal Frontiers in Psychology showed that violent games were found to have a positive relationship with moral reasoning while mature content was more likely to produce a negative one.

The Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty franchises were highlighted as examples of titles related to lower moral scores, alongside variables including the length of time spent playing games, how many years they’ve been playing games, the level of engagement and moral narrative within a game.

Male participants displayed significantly higher moral reasoning scores than their female counterparts, which contradicted previous findings, the researchers claimed. Girls also experienced higher levels of stress while playing.

While most of the students did play some form of video game, male students played games for longer and were more likely to play higher-rated and more violent titles than the girls.

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