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Video game test shows breast-feeding moms more prone to aggression

by cortjezter
01 September 2011
GN Version 4.0

To test this theory researchers found 18 mothers who were nursing their children, 17 who were using formula, and 20 women who did not have kids. All of the participants were asked to play a video game against a research assistant who pretended to be overly aggressive and competitive player. when a participant won a round of the competition, she was allowed to press a button that delivered a "punitive sound burst" to their opponent.

When all was said and done, researchers found that the breast-feeding mothers inflicted the loudest and longest punitive sound bursts on the research assistant than the other two groups. Mothers who breast-fed their infants were almost twice as aggressive as formula-feeding women and non-mothers, according to researchers. Formula-using moms and non-mothers were equal in their levels of aggression - which wasn't all that high, apparently. Oddly enough, researchers also found that while breast-feeding moms were highly aggressive as they played and won their compeititos, their blood pressure remained normal.

This actually doesn't surprise me, considering how common this sort of thing is in nature, but I guess the juxtaposition of breast-feeding mothers and dishing out pain in video games is a bit unusual. I think the _____ing Mama series needs to get on this.