Video game banishes stress
2007-10-27 21:52
Toronto - Find the smiling face on
the computer screen and reduce stress.
Researchers at McGill University in Montreal say that
tests have shown that doing just that for five or 10 minutes
helps cut stress and boosts confidence.
The McGill research team has developed the MindHabits
Trainer game, in which one exercise shows a grid of faces, with
15 of them frowning and one smiling. The player must find the
smiling face as quickly as possible.
"It's harder than it sounds," said McGill psychology
professor Mark Baldwin, who led the team.
The idea is that through repetitive playing, the mind is
trained to focus on the positive aspects of life.
In a field test, a sample group of telemarketers was asked
to play the game everyday for a week just before their shift. A
control group spent five to 10 minutes playing another game,
without smiling faces, before their shift started.
At the end of the week, the group that played the "find the
smile" exercise reported feeling less stressed, had higher self
esteem, made more sales, and were rated as being more confident
in their phone calls. Most remarkably, said Balwin, they had 17%
lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Findings from the study appear in the October issue of the
American Psychological Association's Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology.
"It's not like an adventure game where you plug yourself in
and you lose track of time for six hours. It's the kind of
thing where you do it for a little bit everyday just for a
break," Baldwin said.
Like Nintendo DS's extremely popular Brain Age game series
- which stimulates the brain with math and memory exercises -
MindHabits offers several different activities. There's also a
"lab" section that explains the science behind the exercises.
The game can be found online at www.mindhabits.com,
available as a free trial version, or C$19.99 for the full
version.
"Our hope is that it will be useful to pretty much anybody
who has stress in their lives - which we figure is probably
just about everyone," Baldwin said.