GTA Causes Reckless Driving

A team of Belgian researchers conducted a study involving a questionnaire and video game usage.  They found that adolescents who played a lot of games like GTA had more reckless attitudes towards driving - though did not display any nonchalance for drunk-driving.  In the team's defense, they did wait 2 years prior to the participants getting driver licenses.  Still, one must wonder that if 'reckless attitudes to both speeding and risky driving were significantly linked with having played driving games at the age of 16 and 17' how many of these actually lead to accidents?  Does the team plan on controlling for confounding variables such as personality type and tendency for risk-taking?

As with most preliminary studies, this one should be taken with a grain of salt.  Perhaps a virtual reality game that does not have music that puts you in the mood to run over pedestrians - which deducts points if you do commit vehicular homicide - after playing some GTA would be a good start.  This could be integrated with a personality questionnaire and statistics for the number of accidents or even near accidents that participants experience.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19399-computer-games-may-be-spawning-reckless-drivers.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news>

1 comment:

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