Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.
Brain Imaging Centre (BIC), Research Centre for Natural Sciences (RCNS), Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Psychol Addict Behav. 2017 Nov;31(7):807-817. doi: 10.1037/adb0000316. Epub 2017 Sep 28.
Video games are more popular than ever and the general public, including parents, educators, and the media, tends to consider intense video gaming fundamentally problematic. To test this hypothesis, participants were recruited via gaming-related websites resulting in a sample of N = 5,222 online video gamers (mean age: 22.2 years, SD = 6.4). Besides assessing gaming time, we administered the Ten-Item Internet Gaming Disorder Test, the Brief Symptom Inventory, and the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire. Two structural regression models were estimated with both gaming time and problematic gaming as outcome variables. Predictors were psychiatric symptoms in the first, and gaming motives in the second model. Both models yielded adequate fit indices. Psychiatric symptoms had a moderate positive effect on problematic use (β = .46, p < .001) whereas their effect on gaming time was practically zero (β = -.01, p = .84). In the second model, Escape was the most prominent motive and was moderately to-strongly associated (β = .58, p < .001) with problematic use. However, the association between Escape and gaming time was substantially weaker (β = .21, p < .001). The correlation between gaming time and problematic use was weak-to-moderate in both models (r = .26, p < .001 and r = .21, p < .001, respectively). Data suggest that gaming time is weakly associated with negative psychological factors such as psychiatric symptoms and Escape motive, which were found to be consistently related to problematic use. Therefore, the amount of gaming time alone appears to be an unreliable predictor of problematic use, which questions the aforementioned idea that intense gaming is essentially problematic. (PsycINFO Database Record
视频游戏比以往任何时候都更受欢迎，包括家长、教育者和媒体在内的公众倾向于认为，激烈的视频游戏从根本上是有问题的。为了检验这一假设，通过与游戏相关的网站招募参与者，最终得到了 5222 名在线视频游戏玩家的样本（平均年龄：22.2 岁，标准差=6.4）。除了评估游戏时间外，我们还使用了 10 项网络游戏障碍测试、简明症状量表和在线游戏动机问卷对参与者进行了评估。使用游戏时间和游戏障碍作为因变量，我们分别建立了两个结构回归模型。在第一个模型中，精神症状是预测因子，在第二个模型中，游戏动机是预测因子。两个模型都得出了适当的拟合指数。精神症状对问题使用有适度的正向影响（β=.46，p<.001），而对游戏时间的影响几乎为零（β= -.01，p =.84）。在第二个模型中，逃避是最突出的动机，与问题使用呈中度到强烈相关（β=.58，p<.001）。然而，逃避与游戏时间的关联要弱得多（β=.21，p<.001）。在两个模型中，游戏时间和问题使用之间的相关性都是弱到中度（r=.26，p<.001 和 r=.21，p<.001）。数据表明，游戏时间与负面心理因素（如精神症状和逃避动机）的相关性较弱，这些因素与问题使用呈一致性相关。因此，仅游戏时间似乎不能可靠地预测问题使用，这质疑了激烈游戏从本质上是有问题的这一观点。
