The Relationship Between Video Game and Psychological Functions

Survey studies conducted in Germany show that video games have negative effects on people’s psychology.

Video games have become one of the most popular entertainment elements around the world. According to research conducted in 2019, more than two billion people on average are playing video games at any time. The increasing popularity of video games has naturally brought the games to a point where they are talked about and criticized in places.

In the world, many groups such as governments, mainstream media and healthcare professionals, as well as parents, sometimes make harsh criticism against the games. The reason for most of these criticisms is the violent elements of the games and the heavy language elements in some games.

The Psychology department of Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany has done a research on how video games have an impact on people’s psychology. The university applied a survey to 2,734 people in total for their research. The gender of the majority of the population included in this survey is male. While 2,377 of the people answering the questions in the survey are men, 357 of them are women.

In this survey, the researchers asked the participants questions about their video game habits according to the participants’ personality, psychological state and health. After the survey, the results show that; There are symptoms between some problematic video games and psychological functionality.

However, the participants who play video games have problems in terms of controlling their emotions, self-problems, inability to cope with problems compared to normal people.

Again, research shows that the type of game played shows the psychology of the person. For example, there can be serious psychological functional differences between users who prefer to play action games and those who prefer to play strategy-type video games. However, it is worth noting that the research conducted is not enough to reach a general conclusion.

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While the total time spent playing video games worldwide was 5.1 hours per person per week in 2011, this figure increased to 6.5 hours per week in 2017. Previous research has shown that video games contribute to improving people’s capacity to focus, multitasking, and use their working memory. However, the increase in the habit of playing video games at high hours after this situation can lead to a decrease in the performance of people in their education and business careers. It has also been observed that people who play video games for long hours tend to show low social skills.

A lot of research has been done on the effects of video games on personalities and abilities. Studies show that video games have an impact on people’s lives in some way. However, despite all this research, the effects of video games on people’s psychology have not been fully investigated. The aim of this study, conducted by Johannes Gutenburg University, is to observe the effects of video games on people.

Parents may be worried that their children may become addicted to excessive play. Again, parents often complain that children playing video games are less active and their eating habits change.

According to the research conducted by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013, online game addiction is closely related to gambling addiction. In the same study, the researchers concluded that offline gaming did not cause any addictive events.

As a result of the literature studies and meta-analyzes made as a result of the survey, it has been understood that video games do not cause any negative effects on people with a healthy psychological structure. However, research shows that games can have negative effects on people who do not have a healthy mood.

Games seem to trigger anxiety and aggression in players with low self-efficacy and low self-efficacy. Again, according to the research, depression and anxiety disorders are also found in the players, depending on their personality traits. However, it is worth noting that i games do not directly cause these disorders.

Video games can cause different psychological effects in many people. In addition, video games affect younger men more. The reason for this is that online video games, in particular, stimulate more competitive passion among men. With all these, young players may be affected by online games. The reason for this is that young players are more satisfied with social communication compared to real life.

When examining people who are psychologically affected by games, we should not only look at age and gender differences. During the research, it is also very important to look at what types of people prefer to play which games.

It is seen that men who play video games prefer action and strategy games more than women. On the other hand, it was also noticed during this research that female actors prefer skill-based games over male actors. In addition, it is observed that relatively young players generally prefer action games, while relatively older players prefer skill games more.

People who play video games for much longer than usual may be showing weak psychology elements. This situation also paves the way for people to be more addicted to games than people who have a healthier psychological life. The main reason for this is that video games are an opportunity for these people to escape their daily problems.

Materials and Methods

Participants:

The researchers included all age groups in the study. (13-65) 95% of the people who participated in the survey stated that they played video games. 95% of those who stated that they played video games were subjected to further analysis by obtaining their consent. The place of residence of all participants is Germany.

Procedure and Tools:

The survey study has been organized online. The survey was posted on various online forums and popular online gaming sites, reaching the pool of participants. The only criterion required to participate in the questionnaire study was determined as knowing German. In order to encourage participation in the survey study, coupons worth 50 Euros were presented to the participants.

Playing Frequencies:

Players were asked how often they played games and were asked to give a score of 1 to 4 to express their frequency of playing. In the scoring system, 1 means no time, while 4 means very often.

Psychological Functioning

Participants made it possible to evaluate psychological functions according to the following structures.

General Psychopathology

During the study, SCL-K-9, a short sub-version of SCL-90 R, was applied to evaluate the subjective disorders of the participants regarding psychological symptoms. Thanks to this test, the tendencies of the people participating in the survey in psychological issues such as depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid thinking and psychosis were measured. 9 questions were asked to all participants during the survey. Participants were asked to give a score between 1 (totally agree) and 5 (totally disagree) to these 9 questions posed to them.

Coping

Brief Cope, a shorter version of COPE, was applied to the participants during the researches. Another element that was evaluated through Brief Cope was the participants’ strategies for coping with problems. At this stage of the study, the participants were asked whether they had orientations such as distraction, denial, substance use, expression, self-blame, behavioral disconnection, and acceptance. Participants were asked to give a score of 1 (never) to 5 (always) whether they carry the above-mentioned trends.

Affect Chart

Participants were asked about the general emotional states they felt during the games using positive and negative affect charts. Players who scored from 1 (Negative) to 5 (Positive) shared with the researchers what emotions they usually feel during the game.

Shyness

Another criterion used as measurement values ​​during the research was the level of shyness that the individuals showed during the games. As with the vast majority of the questionnaire, again, the participants were asked to give a score of 1 (none) to 5 (completely) related to the level of shyness they experienced in this section.

Preference for Solitude

During the research, a 10-item section was included for loneliness. In this section, participants were asked to score between 1 (none) and 6 (completely) for the questions asked.

Life Satisfaction

In this part of the study, using a 4-point system, people who played video games were asked how satisfied they were with their lives. Scoring ranged from 1 (not at all) to 4 (completely) was another necessary factor for the researchers to understand the life satisfaction of people playing video games.

Self respect

In this section, in which the Rosenberg self-esteem scale was used, the participants gave the researchers the opportunity to have an idea about their self-esteem by giving 10 questions from 1 (none) to 4 (completely).

Social Support and Friends

In this section, which was created using the Berlin social support scale, researchers tried to determine the friendship relations and social positions of people playing video games. In this part of the questionnaire, the researchers asked 8 questions to the participants. At the end of this test using a 5-answer scale, the participants were also asked how many offline and online friends they have. Before the results were included in the study, the data were collected and made logarithmic.

Analysis

In the first step, the researchers calculated zero-order correlations between video game variables and psychological functioning measures. In the second step of the analysis study, the researchers calculated partial correlations for gender and age control. The reason for this is past research. According to previous studies, it has been observed that gender and age are related to both video games and psychological functioning.

The contribution of the psychological functioning measure has also been investigated during the work carried out. For this reason, gender, age and psychological functioning measures are also included in the calculations.

Using these procedures, the effect of each variable on the others was determined. To give an example of this situation, when the effects of all variables (shyness, loneliness, and others) were held constant, it was attempted to determine whether general psychopathology was a predictor of potentially problematic video game use.

In addition, analysis of gender and age differences has been included in the link between video games and psychological functionality. These findings are only preliminary, as different sex and age groups are not equally represented and a self-selected sample was collected. However, current studies may shed light on future research.

Result

As a result, looking at the researches, playing video games for a long time has some effects on people. This situation is clearly seen as a result of the researches. One of the most important parts of the psychological effects of the games is the time spent at the beginning of the game. In addition to this situation, another factor affecting psychology is the type of game played. It was one of the factors that was clearly seen as a result of this research that especially action games caused high affect.

Based on these studies, it is important not to look at games as bad products. However, it is also necessary to know the effects of the games. As in many areas of our daily life, too much video games can have negative effects on people. These researches exist to understand and learn about these effects.

As a result of the research, we see and learn that video games do not turn people into violent individuals. Yes, there are effects of video games on psychology and behavior. However, these effects often lead to problems such as being alone, self-problems, depressiveness, inability to create a social environment, and shyness.

Another thing to be aware of about video games is of course the age restriction tags that video games have. Usually, users do not pay attention to the age limits stated by the games. However, games can also be subject to various age restrictions, just like in daily life. The reason for the limitations can be attributed to the content of the games, such as violence, sexuality, and brutality. Therefore, such supervisions and controls are important especially for parents when their children play games.

Again, another situation that especially needs to be considered by parents is the online play habits of young children. Online games can accommodate many ages and types of people together. Therefore, protecting children, especially on online platforms, can be much more difficult than protecting them in normal life. Children who are found unsupervised on an online platform can be vulnerable to abuse, violence and threats by strangers. Various adverse situations that may occur following this situation may cause trauma in children.

In the end, games are not commodities that negatively affect people’s lives. However, just as too much of everything is harmful, too much consumption of video games can harm people of all ages and types. Therefore, as long as you pay attention to what needs to be paid attention while playing video games, it is worth noting that games are enormous structures that can make people’s lives a more enjoyable and beautiful place.