GAmes and politics — in a different way

Here’s a nice way for games to poke a hornet’s nest! MyBrainTrainer is a web-based version of the popular “brain training” style games that have crossed from Japan, notably on the Nintendo DS. The web version offers a wide array of tests, ongoing tracking, age bracketing and other benefits that come from having a large database to make comparisons against.

Now, in the election season, it’s comparing the cognitive function of Republicans and Democrats.

Right now, Democrats are winning. Looks like as of this writing, less than a thousand people have done the tests, though. The actual ranking breaks down as Democratic males with the highest scores, then Republican females, Republican males, and lastly, Democratic females.

This isn’t the only sort of test like this they have run. There was a statistical dead heat between believers in global warming and skeptics, sports fans and non-fans, and between those who were geeks and cool kids (though who trusts self-reporting about one’s high-school years?).

In fact, almost all the tests — whether the criterion is intelligent design or approving of Bush’s performance, optimists and pessimists or people who like to tan — show a dead heat. Instead, the gaps show up on gender splits, with men hugely outperforming women during the 30-39 years, but losing ground after age 60.