Are you a nicer person?

"The study presented a scenario where players who just finished playing games — in this instance, Halo: Reach and TimeSplitters — could behave aggressively toward other players by blasting them with a loud noise. While that’s hilarious and also brings back fond memories of playing Taboo, the experiment found that players who just played co-op in both games were much less aggressive than players who played alone."

NOTE: the co-op playing, the author claims, led to less aggression after the game, as measured by the blasting of the horn.  My suggestion would therefore be: because co-op playing actually requires more social energy (meaning more monitoring of the cues of social interaction) the players who participate in a co-op style may be more attuned to social cues immediately after leaving the game, while the "alone" player, having less social interactions during the play, may have not been "warmed up" to the social environment.  To test this it would be interesting to see how long the effects of co-op play lasted and if there was a degree of difference between before and after co-op play.

Just a thought.

AJ

http://www.geek.com/games/the-craziest-scientific-discovery-of-all-time-playing-online-games-makes-you-nicer-1623394/