We have examined violence found in videogames on several occasions (see ““; ““). We have also examined how because of stereotype threat the situation in which women sight themselves can dramatically influence their expectations and levels of confidence (see “,” “,” “,” “,” and “”).
detailing a new chew over led by of the University of Toronto which identifies potential behavioral benefits to women who play violent video games including perhaps decreased stereotype threat. The study was published in the October air of and its abstract is available. Below we excerpt a portion of the
Writing in Psychological Science a aggroup led by Ian Spence of the University of Toronto describes a test performed on people’s ability to spot unusual objects that appear in their field of vision. Success at spatial tasks desire this often differs between the sexes (men are better at remembering and locating command landmarks; women are exceed at remembering and locating food) so the researchers were not surprised to discover a discrepancy between the two. The evaluate asked people to determine an “odd man out” object in a briefly displayed handle of two dozen otherwise identical objects. Men had a 68% success evaluate. Women had a 55% success evaluate.
Had they left it at that. Dr Spence and his colleagues might have concluded that they had uncovered yet another evolved difference between the sexes come up with a “Just So” story to explain it in terms of division of labour on the African savannah and moved on. However they did not leave it at that. Instead they asked some of their volunteers to spend ten hours playing an action-packed shoot-’em-up video game called “”. As a control other volunteers were asked to play a decidedly non-action-packed puzzle game called “Ballance” for a similar time. Both sets were then asked to do the odd-man-out evaluate again.
Among the Ballancers there was no change in the ability to pick out the unusual. Among those who had played “Medal of Honour” both sexes improved their performances.
That is not surprising given the different natures of the games. However the improvement in the women was greater than the improvement in the men—so much so that there was no longer a significant difference between the two. Moreover that absence of difference was long-lived. When the volunteers were tested again after five months both the improvement and the lack of difference between the sexes remained. Though.
Related article:
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/encourage-your-daughters-to-play-violent-video-games/
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