Digital Sportspage Blog

CNN reports on an article to be published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, which supposedly presents evidence that playing driving games increases risk-taking behavior in subsequent driving. But from what’s reported in the CNN article, there’s little evidence supporting the headline’s claim that “racing games may spur risky driving”.

From the CNN article:

The researchers first questioned 198 men and women. Those who played the games most often were more likely to report engaging in aggressive and risky driving and getting in auto accidents. Those who played these games less often reported driving more cautiously, the researchers said.

This infers that the researchers found a correlation between risky driving behavior and playing risky driving video games. And yes, people that like risky driving may like risky driving video games. There may also be a high correlation between people that play music and music games, sports and sports games, etc. However, a correlation between playing racing games and risky driving doesn’t mean that playing racing games leads to risky driving.

The researchers then studied 68 men and found those who played even one racing game took more risks afterward in traffic situations on a computer simulator than those who played another type of game.

The article doesn’t state what kind of simulator was employed, and how akin it was to a racing game. But why would it be surprising that people, after having played a racing game, will still act like they’re playing a racing game? And how can someone extrapolate behavior on a computer simulation with behavior in a real life situation, with real life consequences? The experiments reported provide no evidence that increased risk-taking behavior in a computer simulation is associated with increased risk-taking behavior in actual driving.

Then the researchers had 83 men play either a racing game or another type of game, and found that those who played the racing game reported more thoughts and feelings associated with risk-taking than the others.

I’m curious to see what the non-racing control game was. But again, it makes sense that subjects would have risk-taking thoughts after playing a risk-taking game. But the important question is whether playing a risk-taking driving game leads to risk-taking driving actions.

Nothing reported in this article seems to support that conclusion. It will be interesting to read the actual article and see if the headlines (”racing games may spur risky driving”) are consistent with the conclusions of the researchers. This could be a case of over reach by the headline makers, researchers, or both.

UPDATE: Here is the actual article (pdf). I’ll post again after reading it.