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Dansk forskning har skabt stor værdi i udviklingen af e-sporten samt bidraget til at ændre opfattelsen af sportens vækstpotentiale. Der er dog stadig meget, vi ikke ved endnu, som forskningen skal være med til at afdække, skriver en række forskere fra Aalborg, Aarhus og Københavns Universitet.

Many parents worry over their children’s gaming habits, but to what extent do such worries match possible detrimental effects of excessive gaming? We attempted to answer this question by comparing children of highly concerned parents with other adolescents of the same age.34 parents who identified as highly concerned over their children’s video game habits were recruited for a public study in collaboration with a national TV station. Using an online experimental platform in conjunction with surveys of parents’ beliefs and attitudes, we compared their children to age-matched peers in an exploratory case-control study.The scores of children with highly concerned parents on tests of cognitive control (cued task-switching and Iowa Gambling Task) and psychological wellbeing (WHO-5) were statistically similar to controls, suggesting no selective cognitive or psychological detriments from gaming or otherwise in the cases with concerned parents. The case group however, did spend more time gaming, and scored higher than controls on problem gaming indicators (Gaming Addiction Scale), which also correlated negatively with wellbeing. Within the case group, wellbeing effects seemed mainly to consist in issues of relaxation and sleep, and related to gaming addiction indicators of playing to forget real-world problems, and the feeling of neglecting non-gaming activities.Where most results of research staged for TV never get published, making it difficult to interpret both methods and results, we here present, this paper describes findings and participant recruitment in detail.The relationship between parental concern and children’s gaming is discussed, as is the merits and challenges of research conducted with media, such as TV programs and their recruited on-screen participants.

Educational institutions in countries such as Denmark, US and UK are adopting esports as a way of accommodating to a growing interest in competitive gaming, and to attract and retain students in the educational system. In light of inconclusive research on the effect of gaming on issues like social isolation associations between screen-time and mental health, the question remains whether students opting for esport programmes fare worse than regular students in terms of everyday well-being. The current study explored whether students enrolled in sport programmes differ from regular students (gamers and non-gamers) on psychological measures of mental well-being, social and academic self-efficacy as well as loneliness and gaming addiction through a survey conducted at a school offering both esport and regular school programs (N=104). Additionally, participant observation was used to explore how esport students experienced and engaged in their gaming environment. Results showed no significant difference in well-being, loneliness, and academic and social self-efficacy between esport students and regular students. Observations provided insight into an esport environment challenged by both inexperienced coaches and students unaccustomed to participation in formal training environment.

This project brings a personality psychological perspective to the debate about why and how so many people sympathize with, or root for, or simply like unambiguously villainous characters. The presentation reports the results of a large-scale online survey (n=1804) that explores the connections between personality and positive forms of engagement with villainous characters. In particular, it explores whether the personality psychological constructs of Agency/Communion and/or the Dark Triad (consisting of the traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy) predict positive forms of engagements with villainous characters. The results of the survey suggests that the Dark Triad is uniquely predictive of positive forms of engagement with villainous characters.