If you’ve ever played Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and felt down that you don’t possess Nathan Drake’s rugged good looks–don’t get down–you’re not alone.
According to research by a Kansas State University Psychology professor, gamers that view extremely muscular men or very thin women are more likely to feel self-conscious about their own physique.
Richard Harris, (author of the research) said that his research shows that simply viewing the attractive game character for 15 minutes can negatively impact the player’s image of their own looks and body.
“It was kind of sobering that it did have such a short-term effect,” Harris said.
Harris divided a group of university students up, having the males play a wrestling video game while the females played a beach volleyball game. Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image. After they played the game for fifteen minutes, they were surveyed again. The new survey showed that the participants, as a whole, viewed their bodies more negatively.
The professor was quick to point out that there might be other factors contributing to the lowered body image.
“I’m not saying that everyone with major body-image issues has them because of video games,” Harris said. “There may be other issues of concern with video games besides the well-known concern about violence.”
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December 26, 2008
#1
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Seeing an obnoxiously large chested woman in a video game doesn’t make me self-conscience of my own body, but rather glad that I don’t have that much of a chest to carry around – think of the back pain!
December 31, 2008
#2
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http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/12/31/ pretty much sums it up for the vast majority of serious gamers (and geeks in general, for that matter): meh.
December 31, 2008
#3
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They used the wrong “there” in the second to last paragraph….
Anyway. I don’t think more negatively about myself when I see impossibly beautiful ladies in video games, because I know that no body is going to look like that and move like that unless they’ve been training their body from birth, like some gymnasts, or contortionists.
December 31, 2008
#4
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Thanks for the catch, Pichi.
January 1, 2009
#5
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The image of a beautiful man or woman in a video game makes me self-conscious about my own male or female body, but the impossibly beautiful people in TV, Magazines, Hollywood, Billboards, etc, etc, etc, do not?
WHEN will we see the last attempts to demonize video games by college professors, angry moms and decrepit politicians?
January 1, 2009
#6
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Question, I am a gamer… a little too much of a gamer, OK, But seriously if we had good lookingbodies to begin with, we wouldn’t be gamers, now would we?Usually a gamer was self conscious when they started, a lot of us use games as an opportunity to be one of the pretty people, an opportunity we would never be allowed in the “real” world.
January 1, 2009
#7
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Oh yeah the question… Why is it that the only time anyone cares about this stuff is after I gave up and became a gamer?
January 2, 2009
#8
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I just had to comment, does anyone else see the flaw in the study. When creating a study, you have to take into account that the study structure itself can effect the results.
1) Before they played, the students completed a survey about their body image.
2) Had them play games with half nude characters with over exaggerated features. (Wrestling is what the guys played not Drake as the article postulates)
3) Take the survey again about their body image.
By taking a survey about their body image, they were thinking about their body image while they played the games, thus it made them actively compare their body image to the charters in the games. Of course the second survey would have different results.
Was there a control group, was the survey masked so that it was not obviously about body image. All of these things have to be considered. Research must be designed in a way were the testing has as little impact on the results.
March 20, 2009
#9
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“The image of a beautiful man or woman in a video game makes me self-conscious about my own male or female body, but the impossibly beautiful people in TV, Magazines, Hollywood, Billboards, etc, etc, etc, do not?
WHEN will we see the last attempts to demonize video games by college professors, angry moms and decrepit politicians?”
Of course they do. It’s all part of the same thing: Packaging impossible body images, selling sex, etc.
If you look at Nader and a lot of the Left, they (we) have concerns about video games, not because of some Puritanical insanity but because video games contain plenty of fairly nasty messages about violence, sex, etc. alongside quite positive messages about heroism.
“By taking a survey about their body image, they were thinking about their body image while they played the games, thus it made them actively compare their body image to the charters in the games. Of course the second survey would have different results.”
And, of course, in the real world no one ever gets prompted to be concerned about their body image.
I think the study indicates that video games, like other media representations of body images that almost no one in the population actually possesses, undermine people’s confidence in their own attractiveness and body shape.