Study: Role-playing video games numb users to physical and emotional pain

Those who spend too much time as an avatar or virtual character in a role-playing video game can numb their body to the point that it does not recognize important incoming signals like physical pain, emotional response, and more. 

While this message might sound like an after-school PSA, it actually comes from Ulrich Weger of the University of Witten/Herdecke (Germany) and Stephen Loughnan of Melbourne University (Australia), who studied what happens when gamers take on the role of — and begin to identify with — the characters they use during role playing video games. 

 
If you recognize any of these popular video games, this study might be of interest to you.

The team specifically focused on the user’s experience with pain. Study participants were first asked how much time they spent playing video games each week. Responses were then correlated with a measure of pain tolerance by counting how many paper clips the individual could retrieve from ice cold water.

In the second part of the experiment, participants who admitted to playing some form of role-playing game during the week were asked to first play an immersive-styled video game before taking on the retrieve-as-many-paper-clips from-ice-cold-water part of the study.

Weger and Loughnan noted that this group of participants exhibited a reduced sensitivity to pain, and were able to retrieve significantly more paper clips than the time before.

Additionally, their attitudes changed, as they came across more indifferent to people experiencing displeasure. This was most evident when Weger and Loughnan compared the group’s attitude to participants who had not played the video game prior to the ice water challenge.

These findings led the team to conclude that by taking on the perspective of an avatar, people become more desensitized to pain in themselves and in others.

Weger points out that their conclusion proves contrary to the theory on why the human-machine boundary is becoming more blurred. He said that it’s widely believed that technology today is taking on more human characteristics, but their study proves humans are taking on more machine-like characteristics in their own way.

“We see this blurring as a reality of our time but also as a confused and misleading development that has begun to shape society,” says Weger. “We believe this should be balanced by other developments, for example, by working on our awareness of what it really means to be human. We should also look into how we can best make use of the beneficial applications of robotic or artificial intelligence advances, so as to be able to use our freed up resources and individual potentials wisely rather than becoming enslaved by those advances.”

The team’s article was published in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review , where it is available for purchase. 

Study via: springer.com