The risk of someone effectively training themself to drive more dangerously seems much more direct than the "priming aggressive thoughts" stuff.
If not, why would you think video game racers are likely to make bad drivers?
Personally, I would expect faster reactions and improved machine control to both be correlated with superior driving ability (by whatever metric you choose to measure it).
The kind of game that I think is most likely to cause problems isn't the one that's simulating Formula-1 style racing or rally driving. I saw a game once (I don't know what it was called, but I expect it's a whole genre) where the players were choosing normal-people cars and racing through normal-people streets, with an emphasis on realism.
That's when I thought « If the people complaining about video games damaging people's brains were serious, they should be concerned about this much more than pretend warfare. ».
Anecdata: I'll admit to having the experience of, after playing Burnout: Revenge for many hours, continuing to view streets and traffic on my way to work through the lens of traffic-checking and drifting for extra points/boost. I hasten to add that I never felt the urge to -act- on that view; so much of driving is subconscious and/or automatic that I suspect we have something of a built-in buffer working in favor of normalcy here. But it was pretty surreal.
Maybe they make for better drivers in their prime, but as they age they would tend to have the negatives outweigh the positives. Maybe my assumptions are all wrong.
Do you know of any studies on this issue? It really does seem intriguing...
Consider, the normal case with driving is nothing bad happens until you get desensitized. Regularly losing control in a video game makes that possibility far more visceral. I don't play racing games much, but I found my reaction was to both pay more attention and drive slower after the fact.
When I say I think it would be valuable to research this I really do mean it. The results might be interesting. More interesting than this priming stuff anyway.
In game, I'm the only one on the road, I'm pushing the car to its handling limits, and I'm taking risks because I know I won't actually get hurt.
In real life, I'm not pushing the car anywhere near its handling limits, and my main concern is keeping track of everything I share the road with: pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, traffic lights, road signs, and most of all other cars.
Maybe if I'm driving through snow and have traction problems, the in-game reflexes I've built up around counter-steering and shifting the car's weight might kick in? But that's such a corner case.
This of course ignores the fact that 98% of cars made after the early 2000s have electric throttles and other controls, and often non-direct responses to control inputs
I'm worried about people training themselves, in marginal cases, to accelerate rather than brake to avoid possible conflict, or to go round corners a bit too fast.
Within certain sets of circumstances I can see hammering down and nope-ing out of there being a good default response.
If you're hydroplaning, or if your car is sliding on ice or snow, the last thing you want to do is hit the brakes. The only real course of action is to try and ride it out, especially in a rear wheel drive vehicle.