[HN Gopher] Video game play is positively correlated with well-b...
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Video game play is positively correlated with well-being
Author : wallflower
Score : 129 points
Date : 2021-11-16 15:04 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (psyarxiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyarxiv.com)
| tablespoon wrote:
| > In this study, we investigate the relations between video games
| and positive mental health, namely affective well- being of
| players (from here on called well-being)....
|
| > We designed a survey measuring players' well-being, self-
| reported play, and motivations for play and discussed the survey
| structure with Electronic Arts.
|
| > We assessed well-being with the validated Scale of Positive and
| Negative Experiences [59], which measures the affective dimension
| of well-being [38]. We asked respondents to think about how they
| had been feeling in the past two weeks and report how often they
| experienced each of six positive and six negative feelings.
|
| If you gave heroin addicts and unrestricted supply of heroin and
| performed a similar study, would you find that heroin use is
| "positively correlated with will being"?
|
| I have a young toddler. When I was reading about letting them
| watch TV, an article I read made a good point: babies and
| toddlers _enjoy watching TV_ , but it doesn't do them any good
| (they're too young to make sense of the pictures) and tends to
| deprive them of experiences (e.g. language exposure) actually
| that does do them good. My intuition is video games are similar
| for adults.
| meursault wrote:
| My mind immediately went to surveying the participants in a
| Skinner box on their perceived well being. It would be
| incredible if people DIDN'T self-report feeling great after
| pulling the dopamine levers
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| No idea why you're being downvoted. The vast majority of
| today's games are literally designed from the ground up to be
| habit forming. They use timed random rewards in order to impose
| schedules on players. EA is of course a major offender, it's
| one of the reasons why they are universally hated.
|
| The article essentially concludes that being rewarded feels
| good in the short term. What I'd like to see is long-term
| happiness and socioeconomic impact.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| If one is depressed they are likely not keen on gaming either.
| Conversely, when in good mood activities such as gaming or
| whatever hobbies people have are on the rise so this one is
| pretty obvious how it generally relates to well being. In my
| opinion too much gaming can't be good for you but some moderate
| amount could be a decent stimulant. For good wellbeing we need to
| satisfy a few more needs and a surplus of one does not compensate
| for the others.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > If one is depressed they are likely not keen on gaming either
|
| Do you have a source for that? In my anecdotal opinion, video
| games offer a refuge from the real life that can be helpful in
| depressions. It's addictive and causes addiction style issues,
| but that is another story.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's a symptom for major depression. DSM-5 criteria:
|
| > Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost
| all, activities most of the day, nearly every day
|
| Depression could conceivably present as a person who loves
| video games but can't find the energy to play them anymore.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| It is my personal opinion, sorry, I should have mentioned
| that. When depressed I don't feel like doing anything at all,
| I lack stamina and feel weak. The refuge/escapism part is
| when I'm less depressed but still am ruminating on how
| pointless everything is and that's when escapism does its
| trick. While it helps at the moment I don't think escaping
| reality does us any good in the long run though.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| For me it becomes more difficult to get started on anything.
| Once I get some momentum it isn't as bad but eventually there
| will be a moment of 'this is doing nothing' and crash out.
|
| That isn't so bad for solo play but most of my playtime is
| co-op games like Deep Rock or Vermintide and I am lucky to
| have an IRL friend group to play them with.
| allemagne wrote:
| My guess would be that it would vary a lot by game and by
| person. Sometimes even getting started on video games that I
| know I would enjoy seems like "too much work".
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I disagree, games are a form of escapism. Nothing is better for
| the passage of time than immersive gameplay, but passage of
| time is not always beneficial.
|
| If someone was happy, they're less likely to escape that world,
| unless they're playing with the people they're social with in
| reality not a gamer they play with, usually with local LAN or
| multiplayer it's different than single player or playing with
| strangers.
| penjelly wrote:
| playing video games is still existing in the world. Just
| because youre focused on something doesnt mean you cease to
| be human. If that were true, sport would be the same,
| programming the same, etc.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Sport is not tricking your sound and vision it is
| elsewhere. In programmer terms you know that perfect flow
| state, where you're attuned to everything and you're
| programming really efficiently then some error or bug comes
| up and kills your streak of productivity? That's what games
| induce by default.
| penjelly wrote:
| so what? theres something wrong with "flow state" now? it
| seems to me youre just against videogames. Your point
| about sound and vision doesnt even mean much, all
| entertainment is then, by your definition, escapism:
| movies, books, programming, video/photo editing,
| playing/listening to music, the list goes on. Even sports
| are an imaginary set of rules set aside which are
| unnecessary for actual survival. Maybe youre right all
| those things are escapism but im much happier with
| any/all of those things then i am without.
| afavour wrote:
| I imagine this headline will be used by pro-gaming folks in just
| as disingenuous ways as anti-gaming folks use their studies.
|
| IMO, everything in moderation. Video games are fine unless they
| dominate your life, in which case you're probably overdoing it.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Definitely anecdotal but I think a lot faster because of the
| mental workout that comes from fast-paced fighter games and
| shooters. Additionally, some fighter pilots noted over the years
| that new generations of pilots had faster reflexes than their
| older peers specifically because the younger generations had
| gotten into the habit of playing lots of video games growing up.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What games were they playing? PvZ and Animal Crossing? ;)
|
| Stimulations are different, and you can see gaming influences
| like F1 wheels.
| https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/en/news/2019/03/how-does-an-f1...
|
| Gran Turismo also helps drivers.
|
| https://www.industrytap.com/worlds-best-gran-turismo-video-g...
|
| https://drivemag.com/news/uk-policemen-use-gran-turismo-spor...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I remember reading a study claiming that realistic
| tridimensional simulations are correlated with visuospatial
| intelligence.
| Borrible wrote:
| A little hint for contract researchers of the video game
| industry:
|
| Its regime would be more impressed with the finding, video games
| provide to strengthen the People's Republic of China's defense
| forces.
|
| It doesn't care for the well-being of individuals. It cares for
| the well-being of the Chinese Nation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Or perhaps feeling poorly means one doesn't feel like playing
| video games.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Or having free time and money to spend playing video games
| comes from success and stability.
|
| I'm starting to wonder if correlational studies even produce
| better results than a random number generator.
| danschumann wrote:
| Can you assert no conflict of interest if you play, or associate
| with people who play? Also, socially functioning people may play
| games because a majority plays games, and social function would
| be the cause. Is there a way to isolate game playing? Like a
| version of Tarzan where he's raised by a game? What about game
| playing vs reading novels?
| curiousgal wrote:
| I think paper titles should be as thoroughly reviewed as their
| content. This goes for almost all psychology papers. Researchers
| should not generalize their results haphazardly.
|
| In this particular case, they have only looked at two particular
| video games. And yet they claim that video game play is
| correlated with well-being.
|
| I know that the title is technically correct but if you always
| have to resort to such cheap tactics to make your research seem
| relevant then the entire field should be put into question.
|
| There is no way you'd find a paper in CS titled "An optimal
| solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem" when the paper has
| only solved a constrained, limited version of the problem.
| glennonymous wrote:
| The many skeptical comments on this thread are well founded,
| however the idea that video games positively correlate with well-
| being seems to resonate with my own experience. When I have
| downtime nowadays, I often tune out by listening to podcasts
| while playing video games on my phone. I jokingly refer to this
| with my wife as "dial tone mode". This doesn't take the place of
| reading; I read a lot of articles and books, both fiction and
| non-fiction. I reckon I read much more since I acquired a smart
| phone and basically carry a library in my pocket FWIW. But I
| don't think reading serves the same function as dial tone mode. I
| suffer from depression and anxiety. When I'm not reading, I don't
| usually sit around and have wonderful ideas. Instead, I listen to
| the often nasty voices in my head telling me there's something
| terribly wrong with me and my life. This is especially true if
| I'm stressed out. Dial tone mode feels therapeutic to me, and
| iPhone video games are a part of that. I'm quite aware I could be
| wrong, even about my interpretation of my own experience. But so
| it seems to me.
| ammanley wrote:
| fellow depression+anxiety+spectrum compatriot; I echo your
| experience, and do not think you're wrong that (video) games
| can and are a valuable coping tool against the nasty voices
| that like to try to run our minds.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Collaboration with EA? Let's see how much well being they have
| after playing this war of mine.
|
| Correlation with self reported well being could be applied to
| opiate use. Let's try
|
| > People have never used more prescription opiate medication and
| no stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad. So
| far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these
| worries are justified and if policymakers should act to more
| heavily regulate opiates. We attempt to provide much-needed
| evidence with adequate data. Whereas previous research had to
| rely on self-reported opiate use, we collaborated with two drug
| companies, Purdue Pharma and Johnson and Johnson, to obtain
| user's actual drug usage behavior. We surveyed users of Oxycodone
| and Dilaudid for their well-being, motivations, and need
| satisfaction during drugs and merged their responses with
| prescription data. Contrary to many fears that excessive drug
| prescribing will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we
| found a positive relation between drug use and affective well-
| being. Need satisfaction and motivations during use did not
| interact with high time but were instead independently related to
| well-being. Our results advance the field in two important ways.
| First, we show that collaborations with industry partners can be
| done to high academic standards in an ethical and transparent
| fashion. Second, we deliver much-needed evidence to policymakers
| on the link between drugs and mental health.
|
| (Self reported surveys are not ever scientific I don't know how
| they can say high standards and post this after)
|
| > Another limiting factor on the confidence in our results is the
| low response rate observed in both of our surveys. It is possible
| that various selection effects might have led to unrepresentative
| estimates of well-being, drug usage, or their relationship.
| Increasing response rates, while at the same time ensuring
| samples' representativeness, remains a challenge for future
| studies in this field.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| A few things:
|
| * only looking at animal crossing and a plants vs. zombies game.
| I can only speak to animal crossing but I wouldn't be surprised
| if that game sparks a lot more joy and well being than most.
|
| * They do some... weird visualization choices with bars going
| both up and down but both implying a positive impact. I've never
| seen this. Super weird. You can't even compare the two options.
|
| * R^2 of play time and well begin is 0.01. Technically
| significant.
| r-zip wrote:
| > * R^2 of play time and well begin is 0.01. Technically
| significant.
|
| Wow, that's complete garbage!
| rexreed wrote:
| Don't we all know the story of causation vs correlation? Here's
| some more interesting correlations:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kjh2110/the-10-most-biz...
| vlunkr wrote:
| The title says "correlated" so they're not necessarily claiming
| causation.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Correlation =/= causation.
|
| In particular, correlation goes both ways. Not only is "video
| game play positively correlated with well being", but so is "well
| being positively correlated with video game play".
|
| If we go back to the 1800s and look at masters at Chess, Shogi or
| Go / Baduk, we'll see that they're all well-off individuals.
| kube-system wrote:
| The study mentions this on page 14, I'd paste a quote but the
| highlighting is wonky.
| babygoat wrote:
| That's probably why they used the word correlated, and
| suggested how a causal relationship could be established.
| golemiprague wrote:
| It depends what game and what is the context. During corona times
| online collaborative games helped my kids staying in touch with
| their friends but when no in lockdown it is better to actually
| see people. Oculus Quest games promote a lot of activity for many
| people who would be couch potatoes without it but maybe is not so
| good for someone who is already training or working in physical
| job and need some rest time. Bottom line, it depends
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I find video games definitely get the brain working, much in the
| same way as playing chess or other board games, thinking about
| problems, etc... Definitely more 'active' than consuming (most)
| media.
|
| I'd even theorize that video games have become so popular because
| our brains need some sort of conflict and stimulation; now that
| we're sedentary and no longer concerned with daily survival and
| conflict with the natural world/other tribes.
| gosukiwi wrote:
| _laughs in League of Legends_
| abledon wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/qv5jtg/tyle...
|
| from last nights challenger cut off series... definitely
| correlated with wellbeing
| cblconfederate wrote:
| This sounds reasonable. When people are depressed they re not
| much in the mood to play, right ?
| provobro wrote:
| Everything is fine in moderation. Everyone needs time to
| decompress from a long day in some way or another. If video games
| are your way to do that, that's great
| hiking-duude wrote:
| Testing to see if burner account is shadow banned
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| What a surprise. A study involving a gaming company shows that
| games are good for you.
|
| Studies funded by tobacco companies in the 1950s found that
| smoking cigarettes is good for you as well.
| cle wrote:
| And also, studies funded by education companies show that
| reading is good for you.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| I'm not saying games are necessarily bad, just that this
| study's conflict of interest makes its conclusions worthless.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| I've noticed something improving after using FPSs - my hand-eye
| is better. Noticeably better. IRL if something starts to
| accidentally drop off a shelf, 10 out of 10 times, I will catch
| it. ok maybe 19 out of 20, but there is this 'peripheral vision
| enhancement' coupled with 'gotta get this noob before s/he gets
| me!' that -- for me at least -- results in real-world gain. Now,
| is it worth 45 mins/day to do this? I dunno, different discussion
| I suppose.
| skeaker wrote:
| There are plenty of anecdotes of games having real world skill
| benefits that I think people overlook. One of my favorites is a
| friend who ended up majoring in business because of the in-game
| trade economy of Team Fortress 2 of all things, and also ended
| up marrying a woman he met through the game. TF2 basically
| shaped his entire adult life, and lately with the pandemic
| we've been going back to the game together online which has
| been wonderfully social.
|
| A personal anecdote for me would be Smash Bros Melee which
| completely reshaped my teenage life by giving me a huge friend
| group that played the game, taking me out to local tournaments
| where I met plenty of new people and broke out of my asocial
| shell, giving me an appreciation for traveling when I went long
| distance to major tournaments, and helping me understand how
| rewarding it feels to tangibly improve at a skill that you've
| been working hard on which has helped me immensely when it came
| time to learn new skills in college.
|
| Discussions of games being "good" or "bad" miss so many of
| these. Video games are another facet of life that you can do
| plenty with. Sure, there are awful, predatory games that exist
| to suck money and time out of the lonely, but there are games
| that exist to just have fun, games that teach actual valuable
| life lessons, and plenty of chances to use games to further
| your own life. Football is a good comparison because it is
| similarly meaningless on paper and easy to look down on (and
| I'll admit I used to do this myself), but it has absolutely
| changed the lives of uncountable people for the better in all
| sorts of ways. It really is more about how you use the tools
| that are given to you than the tools themselves.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| You are getting downvoted, but this dovetails nicely with my
| experience. I used to have not-so-good reflexes. Then I started
| to play FPS games a little more seriously without the usual
| "bullet time modes", and my reflexes improved markedly -
| including the ability to catch falling items most of the time,
| which I didn't have before.
| FriendWithMoon wrote:
| They must have never played LoL.
| [deleted]
| jp_sc wrote:
| If you have time to play video games, you probably have time to
| sleep well and exercise... which is proved to be positively
| correlated with well-being
| falcolas wrote:
| You could say this about any leisure time activity, from
| interacting with friends to watching TV to reading books.
|
| Leisure time is not a bad thing, as the title says.
| watwut wrote:
| I dunno ... I have seen multiple people skip sleep and exercise
| so that they can play. And then everybody else had to deal with
| sleep deprived cranky them.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| also from personal experience, I find video games a lot more
| enjoyable when i have good mental health. When I'm depressed or
| anxious or numb video games don't feel rewarding at all, they
| actually feel like work.
| kube-system wrote:
| I'm curious as to whether these are actually correlated. I
| anecdotally doubt that video game players exercise at a higher
| rate than non players.
|
| Alternatively, I would guess that just generally having free
| time to spend _in any way_ is a healthy thing. We already know
| that stress is correlated with worse outcomes. The study does
| mention that income could be a third causal variable, I think
| stress is probably a similarly correlated factor.
| dragontamer wrote:
| You might be surprised. Take a look at Fly (DOTA professional
| gamer) for example:
|
| https://www.gosugamers.net/dota2/news/47182-fly-
| and-s4-out-o...
|
| Turns out that a healthy body is correlated with reflexes.
| You need a level of workout activity if you want to be a
| professional-level video game player.
|
| The "fat and lazy" trope kinda-sorta works for maybe casual
| games. But a fit body means a fit mind, and a fit mind plays
| games at a higher level.
| kube-system wrote:
| People who play professionally are a very different
| population of people than what this study was looking at.
|
| This study was looking at _Plants vs Zombies: Battle for
| Neighborville_ and _Animal Crossing: New Horizons_ players
| from the general population.
|
| Also note that I didn't claim that gamers were "fat and
| lazy" as you suggested. I doubt that they exercise at a
| rate _higher_ than the general population. I would guess
| they probably exercise at a rate similar to the general
| population, particularly because so many people play games.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Neither of those games seem correlated with the "Fat and
| Lazy gamer" trope. "Fat and Lazy" is usually associated
| with games with high-levels of grind, like World of
| Warcraft or maybe Genshin Impact as a more recent
| example.
|
| Certain games suck you in and require abnormal amounts of
| time to feel good about anything. Other games, like
| Animal Crossing or Plants vs Zombies, are more casual,
| and have a better life / play balance.
|
| IMO, the "dangerous" games are these grindfests,
| basically Skinnerbox games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /Operant_conditioning_chamber).
| kube-system wrote:
| That's correct, I don't think they do correlate with "fat
| and lazy" stereotypes. I think they correlate with
| "similar to the general population"
| rajin444 wrote:
| That's not a great example. There's plenty of fat
| successful Dota players - xinq most recently (and
| historical as well).
| ronaldj wrote:
| As the partner of someone who is addicted to a computer game
| this is 100% not true. The game takes over any non-working
| hours and eats in to sleep time.
| ericmcer wrote:
| There is a certain difficult to quantify benefit to video games
| vs sleep and exercise though. I have done 4-6 week stints of
| extreme discipline with a strict keto diet, 6X a week gym and
| no video games. I usually end up a little depressed after a few
| weeks. I think it is because we need to feel some enthusiasm or
| emotion in our day to day life, and if you combine a 40hr work
| week with disciplined free time you are just void of that.
| Video games and Movies allow you to feel a high level of
| engagement and escape in a 2 hour window. There aren't too many
| other activities that generate that feeling and can be slotted
| into the constrained time windows that working full time allow.
| rsiwerz wrote:
| One need not exclude the other. You can do both;)
| Footkerchief wrote:
| The point is that the correlation probably points to an
| underlying variable (e.g. leisure time) instead of direct
| causation.
| mc32 wrote:
| I don't know. Back when I was younger and friends were younger
| and we had few responsibilities, gaming cut into regular sleep
| hours and know that we tended to do fewer outdoor activities.
|
| Maybe the gaming landscape has changed a lot, but it would
| surprise me.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| You get 1-2 hours a night from 8-10pm what do you do? Exercise
| wakes me up so I don't want to do that before I sleep and it's
| too early to sleep. So I can watch tv, play video games, or
| work on my personal projects. The rest of the day is work,
| kids, cooking, and cleaning.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| At the height of WoW, most of my guild was raiding from 10PM to
| 3AM every single day, after solo play starting at 5 or 6 PM.
| And these were parents in their 30's/40's that would put the
| kids to sleep and game. And then go to work after 5 hours of
| sleep. The ones I knew in person were fat to obese and did not
| at all exercise because that would take away from grinding
| Molten Core or Nef.
| throwaway_cG7pW wrote:
| I read only title but I'm interested in video games.
|
| If you are interested in this subject I recommend watching this
| video from Game Developer's Conference: "How the Industry Can
| Change the "Games Are Bad" Narrative" (27 minutes) [1]. It is
| commentary about current situation - how public opinion sees
| games and how change opinion to be it more based on actual data
| and facts.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH7FfRwgJwc
| blackbrokkoli wrote:
| So they collaborated with EA, a company so infamous for anti-
| consumer practices like real-money gambling for minors that they
| are basically synonymous with "evil" within the gaming subculture
| and found out...that EA games make you happy!
|
| If you are actually interested in this topic, there are _a lot_
| of reviews including way longer periods, variables and genres. Of
| course, you still have to apply the same filter to sift through
| moral panic and game ads, but this study is even if not biased
| still unnecessarily limited in scope. Not a good base for a
| discussion IMO...
| [deleted]
| nottorp wrote:
| Yep, it would have been much more believable if they didn't
| involve EA's predatory titles...
| robrenaud wrote:
| Do you have a summary of the research, given your interest in
| the topic?
| KarlKemp wrote:
| It's notoriously difficult to study because you can't tell
| some 6-year old that they should become a gamer as that is
| what your random number generator wants them to do.
|
| But, it's also difficult to study because the effect size,
| whatever it direction may be, is rather small. (nobody ever
| agreed to a double-blind experiment proving that bullets
| kill, just as a point of comparison).
|
| From what I read back when it interested me, it seems
| suggestive of a mild negative effect. But it's hard to say
| because of the absolutely overwhelming effect of in the other
| direction: there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or
| more of weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age
| groups 16 and up. (valid for PC/console only. Gaming on
| mobile phones is often more indicative of using public
| transport than anything else).
| 3520 wrote:
| > there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of
| weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16
| and up.
|
| Since you're putting it forth as an absolute truth, surely
| you'd have no problem providing us all with a citation;
| would you be so kind?
| boomlinde wrote:
| _> there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of
| weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16
| and up._
|
| From whom?
| mbg721 wrote:
| > there is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of
| weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16
| and up.
|
| Surely it depends on the game and the context; that would
| encompass just about anyone who plays Civilization.
| fsloth wrote:
| "There is absolutely no doubt that eight hours or more of
| weekly gaming is evidence of depression for age groups 16
| and up."
|
| But is it a form of self medication or pathology?
|
| Being over 16 and gaming too much is an obvious probable
| pathology, but I would not see pathology as the only
| interpretation.
|
| I had a pretty dark time in my life during which Kerbal
| Space Program may well have saved my life (by taking my
| mind completely off the bad stuff and giving a nice boost
| of the positive brain transmitters).
| SeanFerree wrote:
| I agree. Of course, as with any thing, in moderation
| gabrielsroka wrote:
| Has anyone read Jane McGonigal's books on the subject? I read
| "Reality Is Broken" a while ago but I don't remember the
| conclusion.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_McGonigal
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