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Science says: FPS players enjoy getting shot
Intuitively, winning at a video game should be more fun than losing, right? Thankfully, science is around to show us exactly how our intuition is totally wrong. According to a study in the February issue of science journal Emotion, "the wounding and death of the player's own character may increase some aspect of positive emotion." The Helsinki-based study, which looked at 36 young-adults playing James Bond 007: Nightfire, found that getting hurt and killed in the game "elicited an increase in SCL and zygomatic and orbicularis oculi EMG activity and a decrease in corrugator activity" -- in layman's terms, it made the players less anxious. Even more interestingly, the study found that "wounding and killing the opponent may elicit high-arousal negative affect (anxiety)." The study also found that students that scored higher on a common test for "psychoticism" experienced less anxiety when shooting opponents. So the next time you enjoy fragging an opponent in Halo 3, remember ... there is a good chance you are psychotic![Via GameCritics. Photo Credit]
