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Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, Including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage
Farmer, G.; Lloyd, J. Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage. Healthcare2024, 12, 772.
Farmer, G.; Lloyd, J. Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage. Healthcare 2024, 12, 772.
Farmer, G.; Lloyd, J. Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage. Healthcare2024, 12, 772.
Farmer, G.; Lloyd, J. Two Sides of the Same Virtual Coin: Investigating Psychosocial Effects of Video Game Play, including Stress Relief Motivations as a Gateway to Problematic Video Game Usage. Healthcare 2024, 12, 772.
Abstract
Video gamers can play to negate the psychological impact of stress (Pine et al., 2020), which may become problematic when users over-rely on the stress-relief potential of gaming. This study used a repeated-measures experimental design to investigate the relationships between stress, video gaming, and problematic video gaming behaviours in a convenience sample of 40 students at a UK university. Results indicated that positive affect increased and negative affect decreased, whilst a biological stress measure (Instantaneous Pulse Rate) also decreased after a short video gaming session (t(36) = 4.82, p < .001, d = 0.79). Results also suggest that video gaming can act as a short-term buffer against the physiological impact of stress. Further research should focus on testing individuals who have been tested for Gaming Disorder as opposed to a general population. Research could also utilise variations of the methodological framework used in this study to examine the intensity of a stress-relief effect under different social situations. The study’s findings in relation to published work are also discussed.
Keywords
Video Games; Stress; Motivation; Problematic Gaming; Stress-relief
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
