rachel-kowert
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MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher
Following yesterday's article discussing current research on psychology and MMOs, we have today our conversation with Dr. Rachel Kowert herself, the lead author on the paper that originally prompted these articles. Kowert, unlike many other researchers in her field, has established gamer cred; her earliest experiences were playing basic games on a Tandy computer with her brother, but the first game to really grab her was Super Mario Brothers. Her favorite game of all time is Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy 3 in the US), and most recently she's played Banished and The Sims 4. Late in Kowert's Master's degree studies, her supervisor told her about an influx of parents expressing concern about their children's gaming habits. Finding information on the topic to help ease concerns proved difficult due to a severe lack of on-point research. This is what prompted her to switch her research focus to game studies.
MMOs and gaming psychology, part one: The research
Last month, Massively wrote a short article about research on the relationship between shyness and online game friendships. The topic is of interest to me not just because of the MMO connection but because I myself am someone who used to identify myself as shy but believe online games help me cope with and surmount it. Games are what I rely on to help myself meet new people as cultural and language barriers prevent me, an American, from making strong attachments in Japan, the country where I live and work. In preparing for this two-part article, I spoke to the research paper's lead author, Dr. Rachel Kowert, who helpfully provided me with a reader's digest version of recent research in this subfield of psychology. Tomorrow, we'll tackle our interview with Dr. Kowert herself, but today, we'll have a look at the research to bring us all up to speed.
Claims that MMOs are a 'threat to public health' are 'exaggerated' says new study
Dr. Rachel Kowert, lead author on the relationship between shyness and online gaming paper that we covered back in October, has just released another study relating to MMOs, this one investigating the psychosocial causes and consequences of online video gameplay. Due to be published in the science journal Computers in Human Behavior in April 2015, the paper seeks to improve on past research that links online video gaming to loneliness, depression, social anxiety, poor self-esteem, and social incompetence. Kowert and her colleagues from the Universities of Muenster and Hohenheim studied 4500 gamers over 1- and 2-year periods to determine whether negative psychological traits are a consequence of engaging in online games like MMOs or simply act to draw people to online games that help them compensate for those negative traits (the "social compensation hypothesis"). MMORPG gamers will be happy to know that the findings suggest that the latter is true; no, your MMOs won't make you depressed or suddenly unable to manage interpersonal communications: The results uncovered here do not support the claims that exposure to, or prolonged engagement within, OVG [online video game] spaces negatively impacts players' psychosocial well-being. In that respect, concerns regarding OVGs being a threat to public health seem to be exaggerated. These findings do, however, provide the empirical evidence for a social compensation model among young adult participants, indicating that OVGs have likely become alternative social outlets for young adult players with [low] social and psychosocial resources, as reflected by lower reported life satisfaction and social competence. In fact, the effect was strongest for young gamers: "For adolescent players, being a member of the online game playing community was found to bolster their reported life-satisfaction." Stay tuned later this month for a full Massively report on Kowert's MMO-related research.
