PLAYING violent video games makes you more aggressive, claim researchers in
the US. Karen Dill of Lenoir-Rhyne College in North Carolina and a colleague
asked 210 university students to play either a violent or a non-violent video
game—Wolfenstein 3D or MYST. Immediately afterwards, the students played a
reaction-time game, in which they had to hit a button faster than an opponent.
If they won, they got to blast their opponent with a burst of obnoxious white
noise. People who had played the violent game gave longer blasts than those who
had played the non-violent game, the researchers report (Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, vol 78, p 772). “Parents should
understand that these video games have serious violent content,” says Dill.
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