Video games have been thought to relieve stress from those who have played them, now a new study at McGill University has proof that gaming can reduce a person's stress levels. Sciencecentral.com released an article about a study that shows that people who played games with happy faces were 17 percent less stressed than those who did not.
According to researchers at McGill University, they took a three groups of telemarketers from one company and made two of the groups play a video game. The first group played a game that grouped different pictures of happy and sad people. The object of the game was to find the happy people.The second group was asked to find a five petaled flower next to a group of seven petaled flowers. The third did not play any of the games.
Research found that 17 percent of the people who played the happy game felt less stressed and had a 68 percent increase in sales. The happy game players also felt more confident in their work and better self esteem.
“There are several conclusions,” says social psychologist Mark Baldwin. “One is just how critical this issue of, 'Where do you pay your attention in your social life? Do you play attention to positive things or negative, rejecting, attacking things?' But in some sense, the more important finding is that it is possible to change that fairly simply by practicing over and over again a certain pattern of thought at a very specific level. And that you can actually do that within the context of a kind of computer game is, in some sense, the novel finding that has great potential, we think.”
This is good news for the casual games industry. Pin-pointing more ways to make your game a more effective stress reliever, while still keeping it fun, could be a great way to increase the popularity of your title. If you want to get more information on this study, you can find it in the October 2007, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
