NCT03445156

Effect of Violent First-Person Shooter (FPS) Video Games on Shooting Accuracy

"Boom, Headshot!": Violent First-Person Shooter (FPS) Video Games That Reward Headshots Train Individuals to Aim for the Head When Shooting a Realistic Firearm

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 327 (actual)
• Sponsor: Ohio State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 46 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

The present research tests the effects of violent shooting games on behavior within the game (Pilot Study) and on behavior after the game is turned off (Experiment Proper). The Experiment Proper is an exact replication of a previous study conducted in our lab that was retracted (see citation), but with a larger sample to get more reliable results (N=287 rather than N=151).

Detailed description

Violent shooting games are used to train soldiers and police officers. This research tests whether violent shooting can train people to shoot targets in the head, both during gameplay (Pilot Study) and after the game is turned off (Experiment Proper). Participants in both studies played a violent shooting game with humanoid targets that rewarded headshots, or a nonviolent shooting game that punished shots to bull's-eye targets with faces. Afterward, participants shot at a mannequin with a realistic CO2 gun. We anticipate that participants who play the violent game which rewards headshots to hit the mannequin's head more often than those who play the non-violent game.

Conditions

• Gun Shot Wound

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Video game	Participants played either a violent shooting game or nonviolent shooting game in the pilot study, and either either a violent shooting game, nonviolent shooting game, or nonviolent non-shooting game in the experiment proper.
BEHAVIORAL	Controller	Participants used either a gun-shaped or regular controller to play the violent and nonviolent shooting video games.

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-02-01
• Primary completion: 2016-04-25
• Completion: 2016-04-25
• First posted: 2018-02-26
• Last updated: 2019-08-05
• Results posted: 2019-08-05