Study Shows Men More Prone To Videogame Addiction Than Women

[Andy Chalk]

Study Shows Men More Prone To Videogame Addiction Than Women

A new study claims that neural chemistry makes men much more likely to "feel addicted" to videogames than women.

In the study, conducted at Stanford University [http://www.stanford.edu/], a group of men and women played an unnamed videogame while hooked up to brain-scanning devices. The "reward regions" of the brain, which according to researcher Dr. Fumiko Hayft are also tied in with areas of the brain associated with addiction, responded much more strongly in men than in women during gameplay. The same areas of the brain also responded more strongly in men as a result of territorial acquisition in the game.

"We didn't tell them to gain more territory, which was the implicit, sort of hidden goal, and males were able to learn faster and eventually gain more space than females," Dr. Hayft said, suggesting that "neural circuitry" meant men were more liable than women to feel rewarded by videogames, and more motivated to continue playing. According to the Harris poll [http://www.kcbs.com/pages/1595099.php?contentType=4&contentId=1509521], which found that men were two to three times more likely to feel addicted to videogames than women.


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[tendo82]

Considering the "hidden goal" of the game, the study seems to show that men are more prone to aggression, and that the reward from aggression is in fact what is driving the addiction. Most videogames are based around rewarding aggressive behavior and not surprisngly, a high number of young males are interested in them.

I wonder what the study's results would have looked like with a game like Animal Crossing?

 

[Andy Chalk]

Hammer meets nail, baby. It hardly seems valid as a videogame study simply because it could just as well be referring to any competitive, reward-based undertaking.

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

Well, in my opinion this is just a downside of genetics.

 

[werepossum]

I don't think anyone who's ever watched someone dry up from, say, cocaine or heroin would refer to video games as addictive.

 

[Andy Chalk]

We live in a society that takes seriously the idea of "sex addiction." Would you expect anything less for videogames?

 

[goodpoltergeist]

What about bein addicted to Meteos or Tetris, no aggression there, just falling blocks!

FALLING BLOCKS MAN!!! THEY'RE COMIN DOWN FOR ME!!!

 

[PurpleRain]

My mum's addicted to Solitar. Does that count?

 

[Metonym]

Visceral Reward is rewarding regardless domain. Men do seem more prone to violence, check any crime data base. The aggressive rewardsystem prevalent in "games" seems to be taken out of context compared to the natural habitat where it developed.

The potential for reward is defacto greater in systems designed for "entertainment" with a "synthetic" reward schedule that also can be tampered with to induce addiction. Nature is not designed in that way and intervals for reward IRL cannot be compared to the reinforcement schedules that trigger our pscychological mechanisms in a game.

The "reward system" in Heroine is way off the chart...

 

[Arbre]

My mum's addicted to Solitar. Does that count?

The study would tell that she's untertained by genocide-1, and that she secretly loves I am Legend and Highlander.

Now, should video games give male players reward for acquiring territory, and female players rewards for nursing ressources?

 

[Lightbulb]

I don't think anyone who's ever watched someone dry up from, say, cocaine or heroin would refer to video games as addictive.

What about all those people who play for 40 hour straight and have a heart attack and die?
or jump out of a tall building, or just die due to lack of water and food?

They just like games i guess?

 

[monodiabloloco]

Considering the "hidden goal" of the game, the study seems to show that men are more prone to aggression, and that the reward from aggression is in fact what is driving the addiction. Most videogames are based around rewarding aggressive behavior and not surprisngly, a high number of young males are interested in them.

I wonder what the study's results would have looked like with a game like Animal Crossing?

I second that.
I have seen MANY a woman so freakishly addicted to games like the Sims and Animal Crossing that I would tend to dispute this study. I think that, like all other things, our brains just work differently. If you did the study with Animal Crossing.. just let them play, I think more women would be addicted. If you made it (same game) a competition where you had rankings based on amount of items collected, the house design, etc.., the mens' figures would rise as our natural aggression kicks in.
Of course, I have also watched my fiance log many hours.. near to the point I would call addiction.. with Diablo II just to get that next magic item. I don't think it even needed a plot or story at all, she just likes to kill things and take their stuff.
Same thing now with Hellgate. Heck, even I got bored with the same ol same ol, but she kept chugging along with the occasional, "Babe! Check this out! This sword is pretty bad ass!"

 

[L1ddl3monkey]

Men more likely to be addicted to videogames.
In other news: Water discovered in ocean.

Who pays for these studies and where can I get a job being paid to state the obvious?

 

[Arbre]

Considering the "hidden goal" of the game, the study seems to show that men are more prone to aggression, and that the reward from aggression is in fact what is driving the addiction. Most videogames are based around rewarding aggressive behavior and not surprisngly, a high number of young males are interested in them.

I wonder what the study's results would have looked like with a game like Animal Crossing?

I second that.
I have seen MANY a woman so freakishly addicted to games like the Sims and Animal Crossing that I would tend to dispute this study. I think that, like all other things, our brains just work differently. If you did the study with Animal Crossing.. just let them play, I think more women would be addicted. If you made it (same game) a competition where you had rankings based on amount of items collected, the house design, etc.., the mens' figures would rise as our natural aggression kicks in.
Of course, I have also watched my fiance log many hours.. near to the point I would call addiction.. with Diablo II just to get that next magic item. I don't think it even needed a plot or story at all, she just likes to kill things and take their stuff.
Same thing now with Hellgate. Heck, even I got bored with the same ol same ol, but she kept chugging along with the occasional, "Babe! Check this out! This sword is pretty bad ass!"

Well, the satisfaction of having the best and biggest item, until you find another one that craps on the former item.
Rinse and repeat.

 

[Wildcard6]

They tested "a videogame", as in ONE game? You might as well show NFL to a group of men and women and based on the results of brain activity determine that men are more addicted to TV than women.

They have determined that those men are more likely to be addicted to THAT GAME. Are they going to take the time to test the other few thousand games out there, perhaps games that don't feature territory acquisition (or even rewards) that the men responded so favorably to?

This appears to be another case of people who don't know anything about games making broad statements about them. Let's face it, if somebody is making the effort to study the effects of game addiction, they're probably not huge fans.

 

[slyder35]

Men more likely to be addicted to videogames.
In other news: Water discovered in ocean.

Who pays for these studies and where can I get a job being paid to state the obvious?

Hahahaha too true.
The next study will be "Men find porn more appealing than women". Doh.

 

[Limasol]

Every British town centre at 10:00pm onwards proves that women are more likely to get addicted to alcohol than men, and statistics back that up, more women smoke too.
Im sure such studies were released with the same panaze as this one was in the general media (not issue specific like here).
People could do with the whole truth when they're reading something and the article would have turned out so differently if it had concluded that while women are killing their livers and lungs and chasing footballers round nightclubs men are being healthier in their vices.

 

[Frederf]

Men get bored and play video games.
Women declare themselves bi and rub up against other women in clubs.

Which would you choose?