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

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨L4s@lemmy.world [bot]⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.psypost.org/2023/09/violent-video-games-linked-to-verbal-aggression-and-hostility-but-not-physical-aggression-212948

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. …

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Chefdano3@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Replace “violent video” with “competitive” and you’ll find the same result.

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- lol@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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  - DrGunjah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Pretty much every sports game does not involve violence and people still rage like there’s no tomorrow. I’m pretty sure people will throw slurs at you over a game of yahtzee or something, as long as it’s online and there’s a ladder/ranks
    
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  - schmidtster@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Would rocket league count as having violence?
    
    Sports aren’t “violent”, so why would rocket league be? Demolitions would be a tackle in football or a check in hockey.
    
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  - Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    That’s part of this whole debate that I’d love to see much more focus on. Why are so many video games built around violence? Like, violence in video games may not be bad, but what makes it so popular?
    
    Obviously, there’s some folks who love blood splatter effects and some (horror) games cater to that. But then you’ve got RPGs where people report having their immersion broken from how much genocide their hero has to commit. Or even child-friendly/cutesy games sometimes struggling to make it make sense (Pokémon don’t die, they just faint, and they totally want to fight, yep).
    
    It just feels like the demand for violence is significantly lower than the supply and I’ve never seen comprehensive research into why that is.
    
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  - Chefdano3@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I said to replace “violent video” not just violent. Any competitive game leads leads to increased verbal aggression and hostility. Just look at people who play sports, same type of behavior. It’s not exclusive to videos games.
    
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  - thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    maybe the point is more that many violent video games aren’t competitive.
    
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lath@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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…

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- MrBusiness@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Also what’s left of overwatch players, it’s just an abusive relationship at this point.
  
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  - superduperenigma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It’s “Overwatch 2: Aggressively Exploitative Monetization” now.
    
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  - Hoomod@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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
    
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Ryantific_theory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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eestileib@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Playing competitive games is also apparently linked to fucking my mom.

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

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Tankaus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I mean… I swore a whole lot more playing real sports than I do playing esports.

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Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I mean they should do the same study on soccer fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had similar results.
  
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Smoogs@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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 and query where this random aggression comes from.

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- TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Fuck you!!!
  
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Cabrio@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Somebody never played on a Wii.

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- Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  They even called half of the controller a nunchuck, which is exactly how they would be used after a heated session of Smash.
  
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