Why Most Gamers are Male?
source: http://www.sinlung.com/?p=121
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Itâs common knowledge that a man is more likely to love (and use) his gaming console than a woman, but the question, naturally, is why? In a first-of-its-kind experiment, this has been answered â sort of.
Allan Reiss, managing director, and his fellow researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine probably started off by recalling that most conquerors in history (as well as canines that mark their territory) are male. So, âwhy not have an elementary game where players try and gain territory?â And they made one â with a wall down the center of the screen, and balls appearing on the right. Click on a ball and it vanished; if you prevented a ball from getting close to the wall, the wall moved to the right and you gained territory. And in case a ball hit the wall, the latter moved left, and you lost territory.
Two groups - of men and women respectively - were asked to play the game without having been told the rules; they were asked only to click the balls. Both groups figured what was going on, of course, and managed to click on the same average number of balls. But the men clicked the balls such that they were more successful at getting more territory: they were more motivated to.
The researchers could decide this was the case because everyone was playing with a âFunctional Magnetic Image Resonanceâ machine (which shows which brain regions are more active) hooked up to their head. In the men, the region responsible for âaddictionâ and ârewardâ (the kind of happy feeling you get when you receive a gift you like) was more intensely activated while playing the game than in the women. (The region is called the mesocorticolimbic center, in case you want to know real bad.)
Allan Reiss, managing director, and his fellow researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine probably started off by recalling that most conquerors in history (as well as canines that mark their territory) are male. So, âwhy not have an elementary game where players try and gain territory?â And they made one â with a wall down the center of the screen, and balls appearing on the right. Click on a ball and it vanished; if you prevented a ball from getting close to the wall, the wall moved to the right and you gained territory. And in case a ball hit the wall, the latter moved left, and you lost territory.
Two groups - of men and women respectively - were asked to play the game without having been told the rules; they were asked only to click the balls. Both groups figured what was going on, of course, and managed to click on the same average number of balls. But the men clicked the balls such that they were more successful at getting more territory: they were more motivated to.
The researchers could decide this was the case because everyone was playing with a âFunctional Magnetic Image Resonanceâ machine (which shows which brain regions are more active) hooked up to their head. In the men, the region responsible for âaddictionâ and ârewardâ (the kind of happy feeling you get when you receive a gift you like) was more intensely activated while playing the game than in the women. (The region is called the mesocorticolimbic center, in case you want to know real bad.)
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