How you represent yourself in the virtual world of video
games may affect how you behave toward others in the real world, according to
new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
for Psychological Science.
“Our results indicate that just five minutes of role-play in
virtual environments as either a hero or villain can easily cause people to
reward or punish anonymous strangers,” says lead researcher Gunwoo Yoon of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.