Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression

Technology@lemmy.world – 161 points – 1 years ago

Violent video games linked to verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression::Violent video games are linked to higher levels of verbal aggression and hostility but not physical aggression, with narcissistic traits also correlating with aggressive behaviors, according to a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. The research emphasizes that personality traits and game choice independently contribute to aggressive tendencies, but neither is proven as a causal factor. ...

Replace "violent video" with "competitive" and you'll find the same result.

10 more...

Is it the violence or is it the extreme competitiveness and pre existing toxicity that links verbal aggression. You can find people throwing slurs and insults at others in competitive roblox or minecraft game modes.

Put anyone under pressure or in a stressful situation and it’s a potential, it’s just the nature of the hobby. It can happen in any hobby with certain conditions. It’s human nature basically.

How is it human nature when not every human acts like this?

I'm not one privy to throwing out slurs or being verbally abusive in stressful situations. And neither are most of my friends.

It’s human nature to eat, some people fast. It’s never black/white like you’re thinking.

Shades here again, even calling your best friend a bastard out of friendship would be viewed as verbally abusive to outsiders. And if you think you or your friends have never done that…. You’re only lying to yourself or aren’t looking at it as abuse, but it really is.

I think you and I have a very different definition of verbally abusive

So you admit to insulting your friends during competitions? Why would it being with your friends change anything…?

..this isn't even a good argument to use against me, because I, quite literally, never say mean things to or about my friends because of pressure or competitions or whatever. Hell, I don't think I ever even talked mean about someone behind their back, even if they may deserve it for doing something bad. I probably am more deliberate and gentle with my words than I ought to sometimes.

And my point was responding to your hypothetical, calling your friend mean things as a joke and the other person understands that doesn't count as abuse.. because it's not meant to be taken seriously. And was not meant seriously in the moment either. You literally said "..out of friendship".

..not something I ever do, either. Seriously. I don't even get how being verbally abusive is human nature.

That’s great that you think that, you think the study cares?

It’s also not mean, it’s in jest, but that’s not the point of this study. It’s the words used.

Go read the paper and tell us if they looked into that.

They must've sampled League of Legends players for this study. It's not called League of Cancer and League of Salt for nothing you know...

Also what's left of overwatch players, it's just an abusive relationship at this point.

It's "Overwatch 2: Aggressively Exploitative Monetization" now.

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

Seriously though, OW was my favorite fps in a long time, and I dislike what Blizzard has done for it

The really annoying part of this is the author says:

“The crucial finding is that the number of violent video games you’re exposed to has an influence on your verbal aggression and hostility,”

Only to go on and say:

“It’s very important to stress that our findings are not causal,”

More than that, the study doesn't even measure their "exposure" to violent games, it requests their three favorite games and then checks their PEGI rating.

Whew. Okay, so reading the actual research article here, and, this article is kind of trash. First off, the study group was recruited from ads posted on Reddit and Discord, notably from r/samplesize, r/narcissism and r/truegaming and Cluster B Circus, r/NPD Official and NPD Recovery 2.0 respectively. One is a place for polls, one is a gaming subreddit, and the rest are all communities for people with narcissism. So they're skewing their sample population explicitly towards how people with narcissism that play violent games respond. Which, I think was the original intent of the study, and they bolted on the additional conclusions for a spicier publication, since the only way these numbers are meaningful is with a control group of people with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) that do not play violent games, and even then, it only provides a correlation between people with NPD who play violent video games and increased verbal aggression (one of which was arguing if people disagree with you).

I'm beginning to feel regret for putting way too much effort into a comment, because this is a long ass article, but further in, the study states that respondents had "healthy" levels of narcissism, which goes unremarked despite their primary sample sourcing being targeted at narcissism instead of a population of gamers. I'm calling it a wrap here, but essentially this is a remarkably unreliable study to write that headline off of.

Playing competitive games is also apparently linked to fucking my mom.

Dad isn't complaining, so I'm happy for her, get you some!

I mean... I swore a whole lot more playing real sports than I do playing esports.

at the end of the day it has nothing to do with video games. its competition, remember in the late 80s people would fight each other if they lost a game of cards or game of marbles.

I mean they should do the same study on soccer fans. I wouldn't be surprised if they had similar results.

It’s almost like competition addiction is an issue that has never really been studied let alone recognized while it’s glaring everyone in the face since the first game was invented. But sure. Let’s have another reality tv competition show /gym shredding routine/football game and query where this random aggression comes from like it only exists when video games are in play .