Parents trying to teach their kids to be cautious drivers may want to think twice about letting them whiz around in virtual race cars. According to new research published this week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the more frequently people play video racing games, the more likely they are to be aggressive drivers who take risks and get into accidents. The games make it seem acceptable to drive at high speeds, and this changes driving behavior, says study coauthor Jorg Kubitzki, a traffic psychologist at the Allianz Center for Technology in Munich, Germany, via E-mail.
In the first of three studies, the researchers surveyed nearly 300 teen and adult volunteers and found that those who reported the most speeding tickets and traffic accidents were also the most likely to play racing video games on a daily basis. The team then recruited 83 university students and randomly assigned them to play either a popular racing video game like Burnout or Midnight Racer, in which they "drove" at high speeds and crashed into barriers and other cars, or a sports video game. Those who played the racing games reported a higher level of arousal and excitement and were more likely than the other group to use risk-taking words like "dare" and "beat someone" to describe how they felt after playing the game.
In a third study, 68 participants who were given racing games to play and then put through a driving simulation took an average of one second longer to brake for a driver who cut them off or for a closing gate at a railroad crossing. (The delay in reaction time was not seen in women.
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