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**Chapter 7** 

© 2012 Pokorski et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Psychological Fitness in Young** 

Mieczyslaw Pokorski, Lukasz Borecki and Urszula Jernajczyk

player to virtually harm the other players' avatars (Griffiths, 1999).

withdrawal (Kestenbaum & Weinstein, 1985).

Video games have been available to the public for several decades and are increasingly used by persons of all ages, mostly as part of the entertainment world (Kent, 2001). The games are thought to have either positive or negative effects on the users; the unsettled effects are a matter of scientific scrutiny of late (for a review see Ferguson, 2007; Papastergiou, 2009). The games are often portrait as a potential source of social and health problems, which is of increasing concern to legislators and policymakers (Phillips, 2004; Gray & Nikolakakos, 2007; Collier et al., 2008, Weaver et al., 2009). A number of studies show an impact on individuals of using video games. The use, or overuse, of certain types of games may increase aggressive behaviors. That concerns mostly 'violent games' which were found to increase children's aggression and to decrease school performance and attention (Hastings et al., 2009). In adults, interestingly, the more the game pertains to the real life situation, the more the players display aggressive thoughts and attitudes, and physiological arousal. Such effects are seen as quickly as 45 min into the play (Barlett & Rodeheffer, 2009). The studies which pertain to the detrimental influence of games on behavior are however riddled with controversies stemming mostly from inadequate methodological issues. The great majority of these studies is carried out in children. The most common methodology consisting of the observation of free play does not fulfill the criteria of scientific scrutiny. Moreover, as in the study on the effects of violent video games alluded to above, usually short-term measures of aggressive consequences are taken into consideration. The negative effects of playing the video games are often associated with the games that include violent scenes and enable the

The psychological maleficency of games, particularly when overused, is however debatable as there also are reports to the contrary, indicating that games may help manage untoward behaviors such as conflicts, frustration, aggression, and do not necessarily result in social

**Adult Video Game Players** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/47921

**1. Introduction** 


**Chapter 7** 
