Study links aggressive driving to racing video games

People who play racing-themed computer and video games tend to drive more aggressively, take greater risks on the road and get into accidents, German researchers say.

In a report on a series of studies published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, psychologists found that those who played vehicle racing games were more likely to report driving aggressively and getting into accidents than people who played such games less frequently.

"Playing racing games could provoke unsafe driving," the researchers concluded. "Practitioners in the field of road traffic safety should bear in mind the possibility that racing games indeed make road traffic less safe, not least because game players are mostly young adults, acknowledged as the highest accident-rate group."

The researchers at the at Ludwig-Maximilians University and the Allianz Centre for Technology, both in Munich, Germany, set out to determine whether racing games have any impact on real-world driving.

Citing research into violent video games that suggests they can help predispose people to aggressive thoughts, feelings or behaviour, the scientists wrote in their paper that they hoped to gather similar information about the effect of driving games.

"Despite the increasing popularity of racing (driving) games, nothing is known about the psychological impact of this genre," they wrote.

In one of the studies, the psychologists tested 198 men and 98 women and found that the impact of the racing games demonstrated so-called "media priming" effects, in which simulated aggression can predispose people to the real thing.

A second study of 68 men found that after playing even one racing game, they took "significantly higher risks in critical traffic situations" in a simulation when compared to men who played a "neutral" game.

In the third study in the series, 83 men were asked to play either a racing or a neutral game. In the racing games, "participants had to massively violate traffic rules" to win, the researchers wrote. Violations included driving on the sidewalk, crashing into other cars and driving at high speed.

Those playing a racing game reported a "significantly higher accessibility of thoughts and feelings linked to risk-taking" than those who played the neutral game, the psychologists found.

The researchers stated they were concerned that risk-taking attitudes may be instilled in children as young as 10 years old, based on previous research.