Abstract
The gaming industry is rapidly developing and dominating people’s daily entertainment. However, there are mixed findings about the effects of playing video games on stress. The effects of video game related activities, such as watching others playing, is also under-explored. This thesis proposes a study to fill in the gap to examine the physiological and psychological reactivities of playing video games and watching video games after acute stress among the players of Honor of Kings. The Trier social stress test (TSST) will be applied to all participants to induce acute stress. Then participants will be randomly divided into five groups: Bot Match (offline), Valley of Kings (classical mode), Ranked Matchmaking, Infinite Brawl, and watching play, with the first four groups as game playing (with four different game modes) and the last group as game watching. Physiological and emotional data for the participants will be collected at six time points. This research hypothesizes that video game activities (actual playing vs. watching playing) and game modes will play a role in physiological and emotional responses after acute stress, and that there may be gender differences. The relationship between physiological reactivity and emotion outcomes is expected to vary by different activity groups.