We've written a lot about video games and aggression here on CogDaily, and typically there has been heated discussion about the results. Why, commenters ask, aren't you talking about aggression in football players, or road rage, or in any of a thousand other situations? The most important reason is simply that we have a teenage son who loves video games, so we want to know if there's a negative impact of playing these games all the time.
But our commenters do have a point: a larger understanding of aggressive behavior and violence clearly goes beyond simply playing video games. There was violence in the world long before there was Carmageddon II. For example, researchers have identified a personality trait that makes some individuals much more likely to behave aggressively than others: egotism. Irrational belief in one's own qualities and talents, also known as narcissism, has been associated with aggression, especially following a threat to that belief.
Note that we're not talking about self esteem; narcissism is different from self esteem because narcissistic individuals typically have a highly inflated view of their personal qualities like intelligence and status; not communal qualities such as caring and empathy.
So if threats to narcissistic individuals can lead to aggression and violence, then what can be done to temper this behavior? After all, won't reassuring narcissists that they're more intelligent and attractive than everyone else only exacerbate the problem when they do inevitably receive criticism? The reverse tact, trying to diminish the narcissist's inflated beliefs, might actually incite aggression.
But several divergent lines of research have suggested that increasing connections between individuals decreases aggression. These connections can be as superficial as sharing a birthday. In one study, participants even thought more favorably about the notorious Rasputin after learning they shared a birthday with him. A team led by Sara Konrath decided to see if telling a narcissist they had the same birthday as their critic would lead to less aggressive behavior.
They told 270 college students who had completed an online survey measuring their self-esteem and sense of narcissistic entitlement that they would be participating in a study on "first impressions," and would be working with a partner to assess their impressions of each other. In fact, the "partner" didn't exist. After filling out a brief form indicating their name, gender, ethnicity, and, of course, birth date, they were given the form of their partner. Half those forms indicated that their partner had the same birthday as they themselves.
Next (as in the Carmageddon study), they were asked to spend five minutes writing an essay expressing their personal views on abortion. Then, they were asked to rate their partners' essay while their partner rated theirs on several numerical scales, as well as writing a brief comment. Finally, their own essay was returned to them. All the essays, regardless of quality, were rated negatively, and included the handwritten comment "this is one of the worst essays I have read!" But half the participants were told that their partners were running behind and their own essay had been rated by the experimenter instead.
Finally, to test aggression, each participant competed in a simple "reaction time competition" with their "partner." Each time the participant "lost" a round, they were blasted with a painful sound through headphones. If the participant "won," they got to set the level of the blast their partner would receive. By any definition, setting the blast at a loud setting is an aggressive act, intended to cause pain, so this procedure can directly measure aggression.
None of the participants behaved aggressively toward their partner when they were told their essay was graded by the experimenter. But when their partner had graded the essay, the results were quite different:
For participants with low narcissism, there was no difference in aggression, whether their partner had the same or a different birthday (indeed, you can see no bars at all for this group -- it's not an error; the aggression level was zero for both the same birthday and different birthday cases). But highly narcissistic people were significantly more aggressive when their partners had different birthdays compared to when they believed their partner had the same birthday.
So is it only similar birthdays that help to reduce aggressive behavior when narcissists are threatened? In a second study, Konrath's team replicated the first procedure, but used fingerprints instead of birthdays. When participants were told that they shared a rare fingerprint type with their partner, the same relationship between aggression and a shared trait was found. Even when the fingerprint type was "common," found in 80 percent of individuals, narcissists were still less aggressive to these people than to a control group where no fingerprint commonality was indicated.
Konrath's team says that their research may have practical applications for helping to diminish real-world violence. For example, in a school, shared school identity might be invoked, or ties to the surrounding community could be emphasized.
I can even imagine a violent video game that built aggression management into its interface by emphasizing the shared humanity of the "good" characters in a game, while showing how inhuman the villains were. We've seen from the Carmageddon study that games which punish unjustified violence do in fact reduce aggression, and Konrath et al.'s research seems to show us why this may work.
Konrath, S., Bushman, B.J., & Campbell, W.K. (2006). Psychological Science, 17(11), 995-1001.
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Interesting. I wonder what would happen if they included a condition where they were explicitly told that they were different from the partner. For example, tell them they were not born within 2 months of the partner (or something). Would they be even more aggressive?
The main effect of narcissim is also pretty incredible. You rarely see a personality trait predict the complete presence vs. absense of an effect. And what a strange graph. Why even bother having a colour representing the low narcissists? :)
My father i guess you could say is classified as a narcissist. Problem is his whole life has pretty much reaffirmed his believe that he is better than many other people on an intellectual and physical basis. On an ironic note however is the fact that when ever he found himself to be less than par during competition with others, he would no longer attempt to compete at all. Unless he feels he has an immediate advantage over someone, he will not compete. But during college, he was the type who always broke the curve in the hard science courses. Not everybody can get 2 Hard Science degree's in 3 years from a Catholic University. Anyways.. long story short, he's the type who gets aggressive during driving, but it's usually only when he's in a pissed mood, he's not one to talk about his problems.
"a violent video game that built aggression management into its interface by emphasizing the shared humanity of the "good" characters in a game, while showing how inhuman the villains were"
Kind of sounds like the Left Behind videogame, in which the "righteous" players either convert or kill the other inhabitants of Earth after the Rapture.
I'm a freshman to your Cognitive Daily. This article attracted me so much.
How should apply cognitive finding to product? I'm engaged in interface design, experience design. Emotion effect people so much, so I'm finding that cognitive knowledge which relative with design.
Dear Dave, thank you for writting so great blog. I will reading more articles in Cognitive Daily, and give my comments and questions.
Story time!
I play World of Warcraft, a big online game. You act through your "character", a persona that stays with you in the persistant world for months or even years. Part of the appeal is the attachment you gain to your online persona.
The game is split into two factions. The factions generally share the same goals in the main gameworld, but they can only talk to their own faction: they can't communicate with the other faction - except through simple "emotes" (wave, beg, cry, dance, laugh, etc). Players are not permitted to attack members of their own faction, but are free to attack members of the opposing one.
Importantly, though, there is no reward to killing an opposing faction member in the main gameworld. Similarly, there is no punishment to being killed apart from a short loss of time - you have to stay "dead" for a minute or two. Where this can become a real issue, though, is when a vastly superior opponent kills you over and over again, thus preventing you from playing. There is frequently enough of a difference in the characters' powers that one will have absolutely no chance against the other.
For a small but significant segment of the population, this un-rewarded anti-social behaviour is their favourite part of the game. More players do this to the other side "because the other side does it to us". Naturally, they must do it to players at a disadvantage, so *not* the players who actually "did it to us". They frequently express the opinion that the players in the other faction are actually worse than "ours", and deserve the punishment in a way ours do not.
Note, too, that both players are, in effect, suffering the same punishment. The attacker is wasting his time, and basically doing nothing but fighting the opponent and then waiting for them to return to "life". The defeated opponent suffers the same - wasted time. Attackers are *choosing* to (in effect) receive a punishment for the "satisfaction" of inflicting that punishment on another player.
This is especially clear with players at a similar level. You advance in the game - become more powerful compared to other characters, and unlock more content - by completing quests and defeating computer-controlled enemies in the gameworld. Again, fighting other players achieves nothing, and wastes time. But when a player sees another engaged in combat with the computer-controlled enemies, that player is at a significant advantage - the one fighting the computer-controlled enemy will almost certanly lose if the other chooses to attack. A lot of players will not take this opportunity, simply because the opposing player will almost certainly want revenge, and will hit the attacker when the attacker is engaged with a computer controlled opponent of their own. Thus attacking will not just slow you down while you fight, but will almost certainly result in getting killed yourself later on, wasting even more time.
Yet a very significant proportion of the game's population will do just that.
I'd love to see a breakdown of the types of players who routinely engage in this behaviour, especially with a test for narcissism.
Oh, and just to help your opinion of the human race, there are also players who actively seek out these anti-social players to prevent them from continuing their actvities - though they are rewarded in some way due to the gratitude of their community. There are also a large number of players who actively aid members of the opposing faction as a gesture of good will (remember, they can't speak to each other) - though, again, they are rewarded through a lower chance of being attacked.
The term narcissism is derived from the greek myth of Nacissus (the guy who fell in love with his own reflection). Is it any wonder that narcissists identify with others who they think share similar characteristics as themselves? All that this sort of experiment shows is that narcissists are incapable of seeing outside of themselves, putting themselves in another's shoes, and of displaying true empathy. What they are really doing is simply viewing the confederate's experience (similarity in birthday or some other trait) as an extension of the self. Everything else they choose to destroy or to manipulate. Sad that some people are so broken that they have to be cajoled into non-violence in this manner. Even sadder that the experimenters can't tell the difference between true compassion and concern versus pathological self love.
jerry, it's even sadder that you can't tell the difference between a news report and an actual journal article. if you would read the actual article you would see that the authors themselves make this point.
from the article: "this capitalizes on narcissists' weakness: self-love. narcissists love themselves, and if someone
else is like them, how can they hurt the other person?"
read the actual article and you will also find examples of this 'same birthday' reminder working on non-narcissists. identification is healthy and most social relationships are built on similarities to self.