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Comments: 227 +- Games: Gamers Are More Aggressive To Strangers on Wednesday September 30, @04:20AM
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by
Soulskill
on Wednesday September 30, @04:20AM
from the xbox-live-proved-this-years-ago dept.
from the xbox-live-proved-this-years-ago dept.
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science
TheClockworkSoul writes "According to NewScientist, victorious gamers enjoy a surge of testosterone — but only if their vanquished foe is a stranger. Interestingly, when male gamers beat friends in a shoot-em-up video game, their levels of the hormone plummeted. This suggests that multiplayer video games tap into the same mechanisms as warfare, where testosterone's effect on aggression is advantageous. Against a group of strangers — be it an opposing football team or an opposing army – there is little reason to hold back, so testosterone's effects on aggression offer an advantage. 'In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you're better for it,' says David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, who led the study. However, when competing against friends or relatives to establish social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. 'You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them,' he says."
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So, does Slashdot count as a "game"? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:So, does Slashdot count as a "game"? (Score:5, Funny)
THATS IT!
If you start fucking with me, you get what you deserve. My SimCity 2000 server is up, join it bitch and I'll crush you!
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Anthropogists the world over (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Anthropogists the world over (Score:5, Funny)
I play with my co-workers at lunchtime. I can tell you I get no satisfaction from killing them... none at all *looks shiftilly around*
*STAB STAB STAB STAB*
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it's just news because it finds some way to make video games seem tied to bad behavior.
Anthropological endocrinology? (Score:5, Insightful)
And psychologists and endocrinologists are responding to that by saying, "If you knew this, then show us the data you have correlating testosterone response to a near identical stimulus in varying social situations."
I wasn't aware that there were people out there studying anthropological endocrinology. Feel free to link to the studies upon which they base their knowledge. Because otherwise, this "common knowledge" had not yet been established as data, and history shows many examples of common knowledge failing in light of actual empirical observation.
Even if this particular study isn't complete or perfect (I haven't read the actual paper, but only the abstract, so I cannot say), it is a start at establishing data and helping us gain an empirical understanding of how we function.
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I suspect that while no one has studied gamers for this reason before there have likely been studies showing that among many mammals (including humans) these responses exist in similar situations, just not when playing WoW/Quake/CS/Whatever, and I believe this is what's making everyone "How is this news?".
/Mikael
Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:4, Funny)
I find that I feel bad if I kill someone on my own team by accident.
Then I feel better when I teabag them anyway. Laughter is definitely the best medicine.
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First real LOL of the day. How can I ever thank you, BAG ?
Re:Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
I think I'd make just as bad a soldier as you.
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Re:Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, ever notice how such a big deal is made over "civilian" casualties, but soldiers, they almost don't even count. Oh well, 10k soldiers died, but HOLY MOLY! You killed a CIVILIAN!!!
I think I'd make just as bad a soldier as you.
Actually, I'm cool with the differences between civilian and military deaths. Thing is that there are certain people who have consented by Geneva Convention to risk their life in military conflicts. It's the same as boxing. I don't get sad when two boxers fight, and one of them gets beat up. I don't get upset when a football player gets tackled in a football match in a fair play.
I do get upset when a boxer chews another's ear off, because that's not what the other person consented to, and I do get upset if a football player is injured outside of the rules of play.
The whole issue here is consent to harm. A soldier has consented to harm and death, while a civilian has made no such choice. That's why it's reasonable for us to treat their deaths in combat differently. Now, say a group of soldiers step over the line and kill five prisoners of war for no reason at all... the POWs vacated their consent to be killed indiscriminately by laying down arms... they are thus "protected".
It's a sad thing when any human dies, period... however, some people take explicit consent to involve themselves in dangerous activities that may result in their death. If that choice is made willingly, then such be their choice... free-will and self-determination to me is more important than any presumed "sanctity of life".
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Re:Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:5, Insightful)
>A soldier has consented to harm and death, while a civilian has made no such choice.
Historically, soldiers are draftees who server under the penalty of treason, which is traditionally punishable by death. The US's professional military is the exception, not the rule. So when youre shooting Nazis in any of the hundreds of WWII games, you're killing the virtual equivalent of some kid who was drafted by leadership and forced to fight under the penalty of death.
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Re:Bad feelings about killing teammates (Score:5, Interesting)
Killing soldiers is considered fair game because they are (or should be) prepared to die. We call those that attack civilians "terrorists": see 9/11. I don't value soldiers' lives less, it's just a different level of wrong.
You do realise that not so long ago that it was considered normal for soldiers to rape and pillage in conquered lands? Indeed, some have suggested that the coalition's failure to carry out reprisals (e.g. decimation) on civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan suspected of sheltering guerillas is one of the reasons why the insurgents continue to receive popular support there.
I don't agree with them -- I'm pretty certain there are viable alternatives -- but it makes you wonder.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of military training is to counter people's natural tendency toward empathy. It's no good asking someone to kill another human being when they view them as the same or similar to themselves. Dehumanisation of the enemy is a fundemental requirement when training an army.
It always make me wonder, when I hear people here (in the UK) saying all these ferral youths and ASBO kids would be better human beings if they were subject to National Service, what exactly they think military training is really all abo
Fist-Pumping competition? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not to mention, how many of them are passing themselves off as "Researchers" doing interesting research on those "Gamers".
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I think you mean that there are too many nerd gamers fantasising about being violent jocks.
Re:Fist-Pumping competition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowadays, there too many jocks passing themselves off as "Gamers"
Huh? Aren't games based on pro sports among the most popular/best-selling video game categories? Would it not stand to reason that the more detailed and realistic these games become, the more interest they will hold for people who play the games in real life?
And come on, let's face it... what does it take, really, to "pass oneself off as a gamer"? Videogames -- and especially casual video games -- have become a multi-billion dollar industry. It's not like it's 1978 and you're meeting in your friend's basement to toss around 20-sided dice; entire Hollywood movie franchises are being built around videogame characters. Face it -- it ain't geekery anymore, it's mainstream... just like pro sports.
But a nerd trying to pass himself off as a jock... Now, That's Entertainment!
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Re:Fist-Pumping competition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would it not stand to reason that the more detailed and realistic these games become, the more interest they will hold for people who play the games in real life?
No. It's at least as reasonable to expect an uncanny valley effect whereby the more realistic the game becomes, the more its unrealistic aspects jar for people who are familiar with it in real life.
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Sample Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why... (Score:4, Funny)
If every soldier got to personally know their enemy, there would be no war.
The lack of communication, and the alienation and dehumanization of the foe are what justifies violent recourse. If only saddam hussein hadn't denied Bush's friend request on facebook...
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Re:That is why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but that's just utter BS. History is filled with examples of people who knew each other going to war against each other. The US Civil War is one good example, as is almost every other Civil War in history. The American Revolution is another. Knowing someone doesn't mean you won't kill them if you are given the chance and situation to do so.
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How are civil wars an example for this? Do you know everyone in your country? I certainly don't. I could fight in a war against the next town and never meet an enemy soldier I knew, let alone a war against different parts of the country hundreds of miles away.
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I find it highly unlikely that every soldier in the Confederate Army knew every Union soldier personally.
Obviously, people kill close relatives and loved ones all the time, so familiarity is not sufficient to prevent killing; but it's psychologically a lot more difficult. I've heard (though anecdotally) that in still-existing hunter-gatherer societies, when people encounter strangers, they sit down and try to figure out whether or not they're related and in what way, to decide if they're going to kill each
Re:That is why... (Score:5, Funny)
Knowing someone doesn't mean you won't kill them if you are given the chance and situation to do so.
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So basically same as sports (Score:3, Insightful)
Partly useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, very often the thing about good science is that what they discover may seem obvious in retrospect; in this case the notion that in social situations or warfare men treat enemies or strangers differently than friends and family is directly correlated to testosterone levels. Certainly the concept of social cooperation and distinctions are made between different groups of people is not new. However, coming up with data to show a cause for why this is so can be very useful, it can provide a model for making predictions, and can perhaps be applied to other areas of research. I think it's interesting that the video gamer's social interactions through the digital medium were just as 'real' to their bodies as it would have been to someone in a physical setting.
China knows this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hold on a second... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a major point hidden in there... we've seen for years politicians arguing that games cause violence and aggression.
Why aren't we seeing those same politicians complaining against sports ? Especially the particularly violent kinds like boxing, wrestling and ice-hockey ?
I mean, if watching a violent movie or playing a violent game is going to turn you into a killer... how is actually beating somebody unconscious better ?
But I guess we haven't seen a lot of convicted killers trying to palm off the responsibility for their crimes on Don King, it's just easier to blame EA maybe ?
Our society actively encourages children, particularly boys, to engage in one form of aggressive, violent and competitive behavior against their peers, and if they think about it at all, believes it a harmless way to burn off rage with fairly little risk of real harm (odd, last I checked you got a lot more sports-field injuries than gaming, and RSI is a much less damaging injury than a broken knee). While another form of harmless acted-out aggression is deemed to somehow worsen those same hormonal and societal stresses ?
Isn't this perhaps the single best argument yet against censoring games ? If we are going to censor them for potentially leading to violence, we must surely ban anybody under 18 from doing wrestling or boxing (or watching matches on TV), and probably American Football, ice-hockey and in fact
any other contact sport while we're at it...
There is no argument about the one that doesn't apply to the other (sports are *more* immersive than games, you are actually DOING it, not just pretending) - so since the very procensorship crowd is the same people who lament that some of us just don't LIKE sports and never did - well it does sort of leave them without a leg to stand on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember hearing that burning off aggression with physical exertion was widely advocated. Then it was found that it formed a habit of channeling aggression into physical expression.
Instead they advocated suppressing the aggression. Instead of building up a hidden repository of repressed anger as was expected by many, some psychologists showed their subjects were learning to eliminate their aggression instead of storing it up for later.
But I am not a psychologist. I cannot reference the studies. I'm just p
Hold on there... (Score:2)
Why do so many people...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can I be the first to say:!*(&^$*&^@!(&*)%&*)%&*1!@&
For the love of DEITY$ when will researchers stop doing stupid research!
Am I the only one that hopes you are also the last to say that? You know, for a "News for Nerds" site, there seem to be quite a few people who pop up for stories like this that seem to be against research for the sake of research. You'd think such a thing would be valued on this site. These are people trying to figure out what makes human beings tick, and this research seems to be showing a correlation between the intensity of an unconscious physiological response (hormonal, in this case) to nearly identical behavior (i.e. the game) in differing social situations. That may not be a big deal to you, and in the long run it may turn out to be a very small thing in our understanding, but it still helps to expand our body of knowledge and possibly provide directions to be looking in future research. How can you call such a thing "stupid"?
And here I thought nerds were the type of people who would support the seeking of knowledge and the establishment of data. :-/
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Re:Why do so many people...? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that the OP simply thought this should be bleeding obvious to everyone, even without actually doing any research. The alternative/inverse would be that we are as likely to do harm to our beloved/friends as to a complete stranger, and that you "bond" tighter with friends than with strangers.
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
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Homosexual Lovers Make Better Warriors (Score:5, Interesting)
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
See also the Sacred Band of Thebes [wikipedia.org] --
"Plutarch records that the Sacred Band was made up of male couples, the rationale being that lovers could fight more fiercely and cohesively than strangers with no ardent bonds .... The Sacred Band originally was formed of picked men in couples, each lover and beloved selected from the ranks of the existing Theban citizen-army. The pairs consisted of the older heniochoi, or charioteers, and the younger paraibatai, or companions, who were all housed and trained at the city's expense."
And let's not forget that it was the death of his "bosom friend" Patroklus [wikipedia.org] that send the sulking Achilles into a murderous vengeful rage ....
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Re:Why do so many people...? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Swedish king Karl XI has this figured out already in the 17th century when he organised his forces so that people would fight side-by-side with brothers, cousins and people from the same region as you are from. This improved morale and made people less likely to flee the battlefield as you knew you could depend on, and wanted to support loved ones.
That's interesting because the British did a similar thing in World War one and it proved to be a disaster. Men from the same communities were encouraged to join up together, in the same regiments, called "The Pals" I believe. The problem was that they were posted to the same parts of the front line. While they got to spend time with their close friends, they all went over the top together and thus an entire village could lose all of its men between the ages of 17-40 in the space of one minute.
This I guess is illustrative of something else that had changed in warfare by 1914.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can imagine it's something that's hard-wired into us as living animals, think of it like this:
If you take advantage of someone you know (and will see again), it is likely that it will come back to bite you in the future.
While if you take advantage of someone you will never see again, there will probably be no consequences in the future.
An infinitely better explanation can be seen by Richard Hawkins in 'Nice Guys Finish First': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6rgWzYRXiI [youtube.com]
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And here I thought nerds were the type of people who would support the seeking of knowledge and the establishment of data. :-/
Knowledge, yes. Data, no. Data is something you'll lose if you don't have backup. Knowledge is information you can use to obtain more knowledge or useful things. We don't need research to tell us what we already know, we need research to tell us new things.
Re:Why do so many people...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowledge, yes. Data, no. Data is something you'll lose if you don't have backup. Knowledge is information you can use to obtain more knowledge or useful things. We don't need research to tell us what we already know, we need research to tell us new things.
You cannot do science without data, and by data, I very specifically mean empirical observation. Anecdote has never been and will never be the singular of data. Common knowledge should never be mistaken for data unless it has empirical backing.
As for not needing research to tell us what we already know, I'm sure people said the same thing when Galileo took a heavy object and a ligher object up the tower of Pisa to drop them: "Look, Galileo. This is obvious. We know this. A heavier thing will fall faster than a lighter thing. Why are you wasting your time?" The history of science is filled with people seeking data to show empirically what we "already know" and then finding that what we "knew" was wrong.
I'm sorry if it bothers you or if you think it slows our progress or wastes our time, but we simply cannot draw scientific conclusions or increase scientific knowledge without DATA. Even for things that are "obvious" or things that we "already know".
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Re:Why do so many people...? (Score:4, Interesting)
I read an interesting piece somewhere about how a truly skeptical physicist should always be looking up when dropping something, because if the object falls down, then it's boring meaningless data, but if the ball falls up... then that's important.
Like you said... we're full of experiments that prove the nonobvious against the obvious. But even more so... we knew that genetic material was passed from parent to offspring for a long time, but when we found DNA, we learned the mechanism.
This research points out the MECHANISM by which something that we know to be obvious works. I find it as fascinating as DNA.
Of course, now I may just be a girl, and thus interested in the mechanics of social interaction... but I can't believe that boy geeks and nerds have been so abjectly turned off to social mechanics that they don't want to learn about how it works. Here we are, a subculture of people who love to pull things apart and see how they work... but we don't want to pull apart the ephemeral and latch it into concrete physiological responses?
That seems anathema to me...
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Re:Why do so many people...? (Score:4, Interesting)
We do, but this study is neither.
This is a pop/junk science questionnaire with only the filmiest pretense of rigor. Remember, people in the soft "sciences" cannot simply make claims and dress them up with rhetorical argument anymore. They have to be "scientific". This means that they dress up in white coats, conduct "studies" and present a few graphs, equations and/or statistics(Once again see . Apparently, this is enough to convince some that they are in fact contributing usefully to human knowledge. However, in almost all cases, you will find that these studies are politically or ideologically motivated and funded, with the intent to push or "prove" a point of view.
This study has successfully managed to push the point of view that "gamers are aggressive to strangers". This is what is being reported on Slashdot and countless other sites. Do you imagine that the author's are ignorant of this? Do you imagine that they will seek to correct this "misconception". I doubt it. I imagine the entire purpose of the study, from its inception, was to denounce and mischaracterise people who play video games. See how anti-social they are? They are meaner to strangers. This was more than likely the ultimate aim of the study.
Look who conducted this study. And evolutionary psychologist. People who spend their time coming up with all manner of ridiculous rationalisations for how we have "evolved" our various cultural behaviors; a premise logically flawed from its very outset. They are among the worst kind of cargo-cultists, debasing and perverting scientific methods in an effort to gain legitimacy for a field of study on par with phrenology. Sometimes I think that if phrenology has been discovered today, it would likewise be an accepted "scientific" practice.
Granting legitimacy to these people simply because they throw out a smattering of statistics is no better than doing so because they wore a white lab coat. This isn't science. It's science theater. A pantomime whose aim is convince the onlooker that rigor is being applied to the study, not to obtain rigor itself. The lay public is smarter than they are given credit for and legitimizing these studies damages public support for science is the long term. If we ask people to accept junk as science, then we shouldn't be surprised when they conclude that all science is junk.
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Wow. Did we read the same article and same abstract? (I admit I have not read the full study because I don't have access to the full text of the paper -- if anyone has access and wants to email it to me, I'd appreciate it) Because you are drawing conclusions that I didn't see, aside from the crap opening paragraph of the article (and I hate how NewScientist often does that -- it's like they are catering to be posted on Fark or something). The talk of the research itself suggested no such thing as "Gamers ar
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I disagree. I have seen no reason to believe that any of those professions have made any progress whatsoever towards rigor and objectiveness. In fact, they've probably moved even farther into the depths of pseudoscience as time has gone by. Sloppy studies are still with us [slashdot.org], and the softer sciences have done little and less to deal with them
Re:AArgh (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:AArgh (Score:4, Interesting)
"I find your story interesting. The 'sociopathic kids', you mention that they're harder on their friends than in actual competition. Would it then be a fair assumption to say that they're in it to inflict pain on their friends rather than compete? And to complete the thought: would they be less interested in competing against strangers because their opponent is a stranger and thus the infliction of pain is less gratifying?
And what exactly do the parents convey that lead you to your assumption? Anything specific? I'm asking because this intrigues me and I'd like to know more about how you arrived at your conclusions."
The one particular kid I was thinking about would immobilize his opponent and then do something to cause pain to him, but not advance his position. One of his favorites was to lock a kid up and then grind his chin into the other kid's thoracic spine - it hurts a lot. I couldn't really figure out why all the kids complained about him until I watchd very closely. When I saw what was going on, I stopped it and pulled him aside, and asked:
"When wrestling, why do we inflict pain?"
"To hurt the other guy"
"Ok, why would we want to hurt them?"
"To make them freak out and give up."
When I explained that the proper use of pain was to "convince" your opponent to move the way you want him to move, i.e. toward his back, he looked genuinely dumbfounded. Since I know he didn't get his ideas from his coaches, I went to his dad and explained the situation and asked him to try and reinforce with his son that the point of wrestling is not to go out and hurt somebody. His father became immediately defensive, accusing me of telling my own son to go out and beat someone up - it was the tail end of a conversation about self defense with my son when he asked what to do about bullies when all other options fail (The main kid he was talking about was this guy's son!). His general attitude was - "My kid's not doing anything wrong."
The cosmic irony is that the kid was an awful wrestler who got pinned every single match in under 30 seconds. But after my talk with him he started winning - apparently he figured out that he wasn't going to be able to win by focusing on inflicting pain, so he tried a few moves. As a result, he and his father became much more enthusiastic and not only is the son back this year, his Dad has volunteered to coach. Serves me right for trying to help the little bastard.
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