Research conducted at the University of Missouri has found that certain patterns of hormonal responses in men are associated with playing the computer game Unreal Tournament 2004.
Jonathan Oxford, Davide Ponzi, and David C. Geary investigated whether playing a violent video game against one’s own group would cause hormonal responses different than playing against another group.
The study was published in Evolution and Human Behavior in 2010.
Unreal Tournament 2004, a popular sci-fi first-person shooter, was chosen for the study because it has two relevant types of games: deathmatch and onslaught.
The game mode “deathmatch” is a free-for-all in which each player tries to attain the greatest number of kills. The game mode “onslaught,” on the other hand, pits two teams of players against one another.
The study included 42 undergraduate men who were divided into fourteen three-member groups. Each group had three 2-hour practice sessions before playing two 30 minute tournaments. The practice sessions were meant to allow the players to gain some familiarity with the game and also to build a group identity between the teammates.
After their three practice sessions, the participants played a “deathmatch” tournament against the members of their own team and an “onslaught” tournament against another team.
“Men on winning teams and who contributed the most to their teams’ win had a significant increase in testosterone immediately after the between-group victory,” as Geary and his colleagues explain.
This finding is consistent with other research on competitive victories, which found an increase in levels of testosterone after winning a professional basketball game. This effect has been referred to as “the testosterone winner effect.”
“In other words, the video game simulation of coalitional male-male competition triggered a pattern of testosterone response similar to that found during actual physical male-male coalitional competition.”
Interestingly, when participants played against their own teammates in a “deathmatch,” those with the highest score had the smallest increase in testosterone. They also had the greatest increases in cortisol.
“Although preliminary, the results suggest that the appeal of these games is related to their engagement of the motivational and hormonal systems that evolved to facilitate coalitional male-male competition. The finding that the hormonal responses may be reversed following victory over ingroup teammates suggests constraints on the expression of these mechanisms during within-group male-male competition.”
Reference:
Oxford, J., Ponzi, D. & Geary, D.C. (2010). Hormonal responses differ when playing violent video games against an ingroup and outgroup. Evolution and Human Behavior, Vol 31: 201-209.
