The headline needs a task attached to it
The phrase “gamers make better decisions” is broader than the experiment.
Jordan and Dhamala studied one sensorimotor decision task in 47 college-age participants. Regular gamers performed that task faster and slightly more accurately than non-gamers, and the groups showed differences in task-related brain activity. That is worth reporting. It is not evidence that gamers make better financial, interpersonal, medical, or strategic decisions in general.
What participants actually did
The sample contained 28 regular video game players and 19 non-players. While lying in an fMRI scanner, each participant viewed moving dots. They pressed a left or right button to report the direction of motion, or withheld a response when the display had no directional movement.
The task varied in difficulty and speed. Researchers recorded accuracy, response time, regional fMRI signal changes, and directed activity between selected brain regions.
This design tests rapid visual classification and response selection. It does not reproduce the open-ended, social, and strategic choices that occur during a League match.
The measured differences
Across conditions, the gaming group:
- responded about 190 milliseconds faster on average;
- was 2.24 percentage points more accurate overall;
- showed greater task-related signal changes in the right lingual gyrus, right supplementary motor area, and left thalamus;
- showed increased directed network activity toward the right supplementary motor area and left thalamus.
Across all participants, some regional and network activity measures were negatively correlated with response time. In plain language, stronger activity on those measures was associated with faster responses in this task.
What the design cannot answer
Selection or training
Participants were grouped by existing gaming habits. They were not randomly assigned to a training programme. Faster visual responders may be more likely to play games, gaming may contribute to the difference, or both may reflect other factors.
General decision quality
The moving-dot task has clear correct answers and short response windows. Most real decisions involve uncertain goals, incomplete information, delayed feedback, and tradeoffs. Results do not automatically transfer.
Genre or League specificity
The gamer group was not a controlled sample of League players trained for a fixed period. The paper does not show that any particular champion, role, match statistic, or rank causes the observed effects.
Population breadth
Forty-seven participants are enough to motivate further research, not to define a universal gamer profile. Age, gaming history, recruitment, and task design all limit generalisation.
The open article provides the task details and numerical results.
Why the brain images do not make it a personality test
An fMRI group difference is not a score for an individual. It is also not a diagnosis, a personality trait, or proof of a permanent brain change. The study measured blood oxygen level dependent signals while participants completed this specific task.
Saiki does not collect fMRI data or run the moving-dot task. It uses self-report answers and recent match statistics. Nothing in this paper validates mapping match statistics to HEXACO domains.
A better way to use this research
The study gives researchers a precise hypothesis to test: frequent gaming may be associated with faster sensorimotor decisions and different task-related network activity. A stronger next step would use larger samples, preregistered outcomes, genre-specific exposure, random assignment where feasible, and measures of whether improvement transfers beyond the trained task.
For a player, the paper is an invitation to be curious about task design, not a certificate that gaming improves every decision.