Gamers Are More Aggressive To Strangers 227
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."
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!
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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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
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Call it useless all you want, but science thrives on testing every possible angle so as to extract the maximum amount of truth from reality. There have been
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It seems you're assuming that I'm one of those "stop wasting money on pointless research" nutjobs, I'm not.
All I'm saying is that this isn't really news, and it sure isn't "news for nerds" just because the research involved video games. I'm actually fairly certain that, just like with lots of other seemingly boring and uninteresting research projects, these results will be very useful to a small set of researchers but it just isn't very newsworthy (there are tons of studies like this where the results are b
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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)
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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Eh. I agree to some extent, but there is a clear difference. First of all, the soldiers have some expectation that they're going to die. Secondly, the civilians aren't shooting at you. It's the same with police. If the police shoot someone who's aiming a gun at them - no big deal. They're just doing their job. Hell they might even be called a hero and/or given a medal in some situations. But if the police shoot someone who's entirely unarmed, it's fairly big news. They might lose their job over that one.
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Possibly, that's because the *aim* is to kill the soldiers. If they don't want to be killed they can surrender or just not show up.
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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".
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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The whole issue here is consent to harm. A soldier has consented to harm and death, while a civilian has made no such choice.
While your general point is sound, and I even agree, you forgot to take into account that the majority of the soldiers that are in the position to kill or be killed are drafted and also have no choice.
I am from the US, so we are fortunate in that there hasn't been a draft since Vietnam in the 60's, so at least for our soldiers since then you are correct.
Each country goes about drafting differently. A lot of the countries with dictators in control, almost never put their 'higher up' officers in harms way, o
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To all the captains obvious replying... Yes I knew that typing the reply. That is my whole point! No, we shouldn't value the lives of soldiers less because they're "expecting to die". No it's not acceptable just because we've been conditioned to believe it is. The human loss stays just as real, no matter how you prefer to rationalize it.
Ever think think that maybe, had we not put such a low threshold on the value of a soldiers' life, as compared to us normal civilians, that maybe wars wouldn't be fought as
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You don't see a difference between killing someone who is trying to kill you in return, and killing someone who is trying not to get involved?
The big problem with modern war is, the killers come home. If the soldiers who went off to war never came back, we'd be much better off, I think...
It's all "part of the plan"... (Score:2)
Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying!
If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan."
But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
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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You do realise that not so long ago that it was considered normal for soldiers to rape and pillage in conquered lands?
Still happens all over the place, even in the soldiers own lands (see Darfur, Guinea, Sri Lanka, etc.)
And the "civilized" morals change all the time. Not too long ago, it was OK to fire bomb and nuke cities. At some point, slavery was considered just peachy as well.
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The French tried that in Spain during the Peninsular Campaign, and look how well that turned out. Once someone has lost his crops, home, and family, he hasn't got much left to care about, and killing a few of the people that did that to him is going to seem pretty appealing.
The Afghan hill country is ideal for an insurgency, as everyone who has tried to occupy it has discovered. As it is, there is some support for the government and a moderate amount of apathy. If the population was united against the occup
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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
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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.
Do you have anything to back up that claim, other than it's plausibility?
Kill for yourself, you're a psycho, a murderer, a blight on society. Kill for your government and you're "our brave boys and girls" and a "hero".
That's a bit of an oversimplification, isn't it? If you take "killing is wrong" as an absolute, then yes, most governments are hypocritical. But I don't think it's unreasonable to think that killing in self defense is justified. War is arguably self-defense on a large scale. I have never been in the military, so I wouldn't know if dehumanization is part of the training. Somehow I don't think it would be necessary. I'm a pretty pe
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You could tell from the pilots voice he was shaken, he said "my God, what have I done". My first thought was how could he not feel the same way when attacking Iraqui troops too.
My first thought was that he was a big Talking Heads fan.
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recent wars are unjustified.
There's never any justification for slaughtering your brethren or destroying property. There is no victory in war, only degrees of defeat.
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Enemy soldiers want to kill you back, and that makes all the difference in the world. No so with civilians or allies.
What is tragic is not that these instincts are natural, they are quite rational when understood in their proper context, but they are exploited by politicians to wage immoral and unnecessary wars. The enemy is the enemy is the enemy, never mind the fact that until some demagogue gave the marching orders, the enemy was just another guy who loves his country and wants to protect his family. Our
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That doesn't sound "un-human" to me. Sounds exactly how I would expect an animal that spent most of its history in tribal (and family) groups to behave.
The ones who do what they are told by the elite will survive better than those that do not, since even if the decisions aren't optimal the group focusing on on a suboptimal goal will do better than a group pulling in all different directions.
And of course those that kill their own group tend not to have a group that succeeds and multiplies whereas those that
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I find that I feel bad if I kill someone on my own team by accident.
In counter-strike, I used to feel bad if someone killed me and used my old gun to kill my teammates.
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I play DOD:S often as a machine gunner. Anytime my position gets overrun and they take my MG and turn it on my teammates... i feel like i'm somehow responsible for friendly deaths. Should have fought harder!
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.
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I was thinking 11-15 year olds living their revenge fantasies.
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!
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.
Sample Bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
They weren't on-line gamers before (Score:2)
From the article, it doesn't sound like they specifically recruited guys who were already playing online games. They recruited students, and then assigned them to play a multiplayer videogame. And each team sat together within earshot of their opposition.
So I see no reason to dismiss the effect as a selection bias.
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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Not just the American Civil War.
World War I, too [wikipedia.org].
Even with a degree of shared cultural heritage (such as a common religious holiday), soldiers will eventually resume trying to slaughter each other, because that's the primary* way out of the hell of war, win or lose.
*Yeah, "primary", not "only", regardless of what The Brass says. You could desert, but that's pretty traumatic. You could kill yourself, by your own hand or by "suicide by enemy action", but self-destruction is extreme. You could surrender, but
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World War One as well. The events of Christmas 1914 are something everyone should read about, if you'd like to know more about the nature of humans and war.
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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
The north new the south? (Score:2)
Do you live in the US? The US is a huge mix of people, who all don't really spend time mixing. Going from state to state, to a US citizen, it's often like venturing to a whole new world. Going from the suburbs to the inner cities is night and day. I live in Pennsylvania, and we have an old joke that PA is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between... it's 100% true! Socially and physically central PA is very "country." And to top it all off, we have violent and deep oppositions politically be
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.
So basically same as sports (Score:3, Insightful)
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Oversensitive much? The article explains that researchers wanted to study the testosterone effect from sports. But physical activity itself raises testosterone, so they needed a sedentary form of competition and turned to videogames. The research doesn't remotely say that playing videogames makes you mean to people. It says that humans are mean to strangers and show restraint against non-strangers.
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.
so if i sympathize with the zombies (Score:2)
it won't be as satisfying when i blow them to pieces?
dead uncle chester is going to regret leaving me that 12 gauge
Blogging as well (Score:2)
My guess is that this is true of everybody here, if they think about it.
Family Kill Fest (Score:2, Interesting)
I find this to be quite different. I've watched my husband, nephews, step-sons and brother-inlaws attempt to annihilate each other just for the shits and giggles of it all. Of course the best deaths are the most funny. But they are brutal to one another.
I guess I can chalk it up to that fact that they are a close knit set of men in one family and they are all talking on the XBox head sets when they play together. Interestingly enough though, if you watch the teenage boys who are rather skilled, the gene
China knows this... (Score:3, Interesting)
A DROP in testosterone? (Score:2)
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.
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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
Ah, the physiological basis (Score:2)
of ganking.
I knew that gankers were compensating.
More Evidence for the GIFT Conjecture (Score:2)
This goes to prove the importance of 'anonymity' in the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com]
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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.
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 ....
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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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.
The working into our knowledge is intuitive and obvious... however the actual physiological effect is much more interesting. Explaining WHY and HOW we avoid killing our kinfolk is way cooler than simply knowing that we don't... we've know about that ever since Glug got his first testosterone rush from defending his tribe from Grib.
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>
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.
Gays in the military is sounding like a good idea. Retreat!? We can't abandon Fernando!! I LOOOVES him!
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Gays in the military is sounding like a good idea. Retreat!? We can't abandon Fernando!! I LOOOVES him!
You don't know how right you are. Except romantic love relationships often end badly. From the divorce rate I'd surmise they end that way more often than not.
The modern military instead instills other kinds of love: brotherhood, patriotism, and pride.
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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...
Excellent thought that gets ignored... (Score:2)
And there are no responses to this. How sad...
You do make a good point - we as nerds/geeks/freaks/spazoids/trolls/what-in-gawds-name-is-THAT! should be interested in social engineering and organizational theory because we as humans do form uber-organisms (corporations, cliques, fan clubs, etc) and the biology of such gestalt entities is just as fascinating as biology is. However I suspect that underlying currents of materialist-influenced misogyny still pervade the mostly boy-dominated domain of Geekdom,
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
You do realize that if you were right ... (Score:2)
we would all be machines. Same mindset, same rationale, same everything. And you would be completely right in your statement, "I have seen no reason to believe that any of those professions have made any progress whatsoever towards rigor and objectiveness". However, you are wrong. You are displaying sentimental bias towards established sciences with over a century of accumulated data, studies, established rigor, processes, and controls.
The truth is, humans are complicated creatures and consciousness is d
Re:AArgh (Score:4, Interesting)
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I coach youth wrestling and see something similar. There are some kids who just cannot take practice against a teammate seriously - they joke around, their attention wanders, and the ADD kids become downright dangerous. But in a match, against a stranger, it's like their doppelganger stepped onto the mat - very focused, executing moved with speed and precision they never showed elsewhere. And the ADD kids change to - now they hyper-focus, which isn't very good from a coaches standpoint.
But then there are
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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 sp
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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A lot of science articles do seem to make that mistake, but this isn't one of them. As has been brought up many times before, correlation doesn't necessarily suggest causation, but strong correlation does often suggest an interaction between two variables. It's through analyzing such correlations that researchers can determine what the exact interaction is. And in this case, they have a logical explanation for the correlation, which happens to be related to evolutionary psychology. This explanation also tak
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This could be a problem.
Exactly what tile filled future have all these Scrabble games been practice for?
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You are joking , offcourse , but i'm pretty sure that , for people who take scrabble serious enough , the same mechanism applies. I mean , even in such games , i'm sure you get the testosterone boost , when beating a stranger.
However , it's also true that if you play it with family or close friends, that feeling is a lot less . It's much more about having fun , and less about winning then. Well , at least for me.
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Trolling explained (Score:2)
It's called trolling. The troll usually does not believe or care about anything it says. What it cares about is the little thrill of power it feels when it 'makes' someone respond. Its goal was to gain control of someone else, even briefly, to cover up the utter lack of control the troll feels in its own life. It made you angry enough to admit that you are angry.
Your feelings are troll food. YHBT. YHL. HAND.
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