Do drug deals, shoot-outs, and police raids sound like your idea of a relaxing evening?
If so, scientists say you might have a dark personality.
A study from the University of Luxembourg found that people with Machiavellian personality types found violent games like GTA 6 more relaxing.
The researchers say this could be because the game fulfilled their need for power and dominance.
Contrary to some claims, however, the study found no link between violent games and increased aggression.
Researchers have found that people with ‘dark’ personality types showed a bigger relaxation reaction to playing violent video games like the upcoming GTA 6 (pictured)
Previous studies have raised concerns that playing violent video games causes a rise in violent behaviour.
To put this theory to the test in their new study, researchers recruited 54 men aged 18-60 and randomly assigned them to play either a violent or non-violent section of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End.
Saliva samples were taken before playing, after 25 minutes of play, and 20 minutes after play ended to examine how the subjects’ hormone levels reacted to the game.
The subjects also took a test for ‘aggressive cognition’ to see if they had become more violent after playing the game.
Previous theories suggested that playing a violent game would cause the body to go into flight or flight mode, increasing the levels of the ‘aggression hormones’ cortisol and testosterone.
However, the researchers discovered that the opposite was actually true.
Lead author, Gary Wagener, said: ‘Despite previous research suggesting a link between playing violent video games and acts of aggression, our findings show that violent video gaming does not increase aggression and may also relax some players, depending on their personality.’
Subjects played 25 minutes of either a violent or non-violent section of Uncharted 4 (pictured) and had their cortisol levels measured
Subjects playing the violent section showed significant decreases in cortisol and no increase in testosterone, or aggressive cognition.
However, the study also found that people with dark personality types experienced a much larger drop in their cortisol levels.
The researchers tested the subjects for each of the ‘dark tetrad’ personalities: Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, Narcissism, and everyday sadism.
Machiavellian personality types respond positively to questions such as: ‘It is not wise to tell your secrets’.
People with these personality traits showed larger than normal reductions in stress when playing the violent game but actually became more stressed when playing the non-violent section.
People with Machiavellian personalities, much like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, have a craving for power or control and will use violence as a tool to achieve it
However, Narcissism, everyday sadism, and Psychopathy didn’t have any effect on how people reacted to the game.
The researchers suggest this is because people with high scores for Machiavellianism tend to have more desire to assert control.
Writing in their study, published the journal Physiology & Behavior, Wagener and his co-authors said: ‘Participants who tend to assert more control based on their personality characteristics and who were given the opportunity to do so in the violent game condition could fulfil their need for control and domination.
‘Also, participants with higher Machiavellianism scores see and use aggression as an instrumentalization to achieve their needs and goals of exerting power.’
The report’s authors found that playing violent video games did not cause any increase in levels of aggression, despite the common belief that this is the case (stock image)
Violence in video games has long been pointed to as the reason behind real-life incidents of violence.
Most famously, Wayne LaPierre blamed the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook on the perpetrator’s obsession with violent games.
Likewise, Donald Trump blamed the 2019 El Paso shooting on social media and violent games rather than on America’s lax firearm regulation.
However, multiple studies have shown that there is no evidence of a link between on-screen and off-screen violence.
A 2021 London-based study found that adolescent boys’ violent behaviour was unaffected by exposure to violent video games.
The report’s authors concluded that policies aimed at reducing children’s exposure to violence in games would be unlikely to reduce violence.
However, the NHS maintains that video game addiction can cause children to become violent.
