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Study of MMOG Proves Human Interaction Theory
An anonymous reader writes "A new study analyzing interactions among 300,000+ players in an online game universe, called Pardus, has for the first time provided large-scale evidence to prove an 80-year-old psychological theory called Structural Balance Theory. The research, published in PNAS, shows that individuals tend to avoid stress-causing relationships when they develop a society, resulting in more stable social networks."
I'd describe it more as a "social group" and then it is obvious that, given the option, people will gravitate towards groups that cause them the least social stress / most social support.
For those wanting to read the complete study you can get it here
Aren't the statistics inherently biased by being comprised of people who would be inclined to play an MMO? Just off the top of my head, maybe people could be gravitating away from stressful relationships in an MMO because they have so many stressful relationships in real life that they could be trying to "escape from" by creating an online persona.
The only problem with that approach is that it doesn't prove that the theory holds for a general population. It's very possible that the theory holds true for those groups of people, but it doesn't really prove anything useful. We can't tell if membership of these groups results in the behavior or if the behavior results in people becoming members of these groups.
At first glance this seems obvious, but if you think about it enough you'll probably be able to remember a few successful relationships you've had with various people who did not share your beliefs at all. Anecdotal evidence of course, but perhaps some humans seek a certain amount of disruption in their lives. The real question is whether people who play online games are a good representation of the general population.
It's nice that the obvious is sometimes confirmed by science.
-- Cheers!
I can only pronounce it one way.
And i seem to recall most people absolutely loving drama and being controlled by irrational desires. This sounds stressful to me.
I scanned through it quickly & my understanding is that this is more specifically studying the avoidance of friendships with friends of enemies. That's a little more complicated & interesting than simply 'avoiding stressful relationships'. It is a little obvious, but it says a lot about the formation of social groups & how they become divided.
This study no more proves the theory than the decades or hundreds of years of observation that led to the coining of that cliche. I'm glad MY tax dollars weren't wasted on this... I attached a note to the IRS asking them not to put it in that kitty, and I'm sure they heeded my request.
Title Proves a misunderstanding of scientific method.
"I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
So what is distinctive about Group A that is not the same in Group B in that MMO?
Other than the name and colours they choose, they are exactly the same as almost every other grouping in those MMO's.
So what makes them "distinctive"?
I took the person to whom you responded as saying that it held for the general population, who therefore avoid political extremists.
They are purple we are green.
Setting the study results aside, I'm dubious at the idea that avoiding stress at the interpersonal level results in a more stable social network. I'd argue that it simply pushes the conflict up the social scale, making large-scale conflict more likely.
For instance, suppose I'm a liberal Democrat. I find it stressful to live in areas where I'm surrounded by conservative Republicans, so I tend to live in neighborhoods full of like-minded people. If everyone behaves this way, eventually the country polarizes into homogeneous districts, and I never have to get into lengthy bitter arguments about abortion or global warming or whatever.
Is this a recipe for a stable social network? No, it's a recipe for civil war!
We can take a useful analogy from materials science. Small-scale stress in materials is relieved by the formation of microfractures. These cracks tend to propagate, relieving more and more stress on the small scale, but eventually leading to total large-scale failure of the material. In contrast, if we heat the material up, forcing the molecules to interact with one another to recrystallize and eliminate small-scale dislocations, the material as a whole becomes annealed, and tends to bend rather than break.
When I look at the online population, I see a lot of 18 year old bi-sexual nymphomaniac miss-universe winners. I would believe a very much higher percentage then you would expect when looking at the general real world population.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If it's red, it's dead.
Yes, they are 'biased' in the sense that they ask a 'within population' rather than 'whole population' question. There seems to be this idea percolating around /. that 'perfect studies' are possible (demanding TOTAL explanation of the variance). They are not. This study, analyzes the sample: Players of the game "Pardus" on "Artemis" who have interacted with at least one other player during the first 445 days of the game's existence. They make no claim about the general population, but merely remark upon the social interactions measurable within the population of their data set. The specious speculation you provide is outside of the purview of the study.
Indeed, but until we get a decent picture of the correlations, we can't create a robust procedure to tease out more elusive, possibly causal issues...
..shows that individuals tend to avoid stress-causing relationships..
You see, this is the real reason why slashdoters don't have wives and girl friends. It's natural to avoid stress causing relationships. :)
When the country polarises in such an extent, perhaps it's time two new countries are formed consisting of the polarised groups.
Oh wait, I forgot your constitution precludes that...
Or if people behave differently online... or when playing games. One might even think that people actually play games to relax and get away from the usual problems they are facing, and therefore try to avoid stressful situations when gaming. Hard to believe, I know.
This isn't an issue of something written on paper. The problem is that despite polarisation, these two faction would be living all across the country side by side. Geographical division is impossible in those circumstances, hence it results in civil war where sides battle for supremacy. In the end, it may end with victory of one side and unification (i.e. US, Russia), or it can end up in two-sided ethnic cleansing and division into two countries (i.e. Cyprus).
E Pluribus Echo
4chan's existence completely invalidates this study.
~The roAm
But they hardly needed to study games to figure this out. Go talk to people who are politically extreme and the validity of this theory will be obvious (Marxists and neo-cons, for example).
They aren't looking at extremely polar relationships like between a rabbi and a Nazi. It looks like it's more of a "once removed" relationship -- for example, "the friend of my enemy is my enemy". It is these kinds of relationships that have long been expected to be more stable when you consider a large social system. As they say in TFA:
Structural Balance Theory is an 80 year old psychological theory that suggests some networks of relationships are more stable than others in a society. Specifically, the theory deals with positive and negative links between three individuals, where 'the friend of my enemy is my enemy' is more stable (and therefore more common) than 'the friend of my friend is my enemy'
They have an interesting picture as well but I wonder what a much larger picture showing various groups would look like. I'd almost expect it to be a kind of fractal with small groups linking to other groups by only a relatively few links, and then the superset of those groups linking to other supersets...
It makes sense, but it's always nice to see some evidence, even for "common sense" things. I suppose that's at least one good thing that's come from MMOs -- they consist of huge social networks which exist in a medium which allows for easy analysis of player inter-relationships and anything else of statistical interest.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Pardus is an entertaining game. One could play for long stretches avoiding most other players.
If one joined a strong faction, one could stay within their territory, working for the "man" and have a good time. Unfortunately, it is a game with a limited number of "moves" per day.
Anyone else get all excited to see games they used to play in scientific papers? If I had known I could have published on it, I would have played more during grad school.
20 characters max for the password? How will I use my favorite poems as passwords?
Regarding the American Civil War, IIRC there were two groups of states (North & South) battling it out with the original reason being slavery abolishment. Couldn't they have divided into two federations?
In Russia's case I'm not sure what you're referring to; the Czars had already "unified" it long before.
As for Cyprus, Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots had very friendly relations after the country was formed. There had been some cases of hostility between individuals in some cases (which I think were to be expected in a newly formed country) and Turkey used that as an excuse to invade and "protect" the Turkish-Cypriots.
so really this is more rehashed game theory... which is more rehashed logic and statistics... it boils down to hypocritical conundrums in games of the human equation, such as poker... after the theory is taught and applied, the theory is no longer valid as it changes the population of players in an exploitable way, sometimes suggesting the original theory was couldn't possibly be correct.
that IS the human equation. people picking sides and why.
Or perhaps we should just accept our limitations as a human race. We started out as hunter-gatherers and quickly learned that by working together, we as a whole can accomplish far more than the sum of its people. Unfortunately, there are limitations as to how well social interaction scales. Eventually, we start to segment each other into groups. It's not because we actively seek it, but because it's a path of least resistance when running up against this social barrier of expandability. Take for example the following path as to how we organize. Individual --> Family --> Neighborhoods --> Towns --> Cities --> Counties --> States --> Nations --> Earth.
This partitioning spans all levels of human through in multiple social dimensions. I'm not sure you can force change to prevent unrest. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen.
Life is not for the lazy.
Group A prefers the company of individuals with high standards for gameplay output, and take their game very seriously, possibly more so than their actual paying occupations; they are obsessive, not only regarding gear, but also in quality of strategy and tactics, right down to the sequence in which they deploy their special attacks. Being with each other, they can feel superior to others in the game. Group B, on the other hand, prefers a much more casual game experience, and though they are a bit rag-tag, they nevertheless help each other out here and there, but gravitate to each other mostly for the company. Group B understands that real people have real jobs, real families, and real life obligations. Group B just wants a group of friends that they can talk to while they grind, and maybe even do a little bit of RPing, and regard Group A as a bunch of fascist nut jobs.
In short, the difference between Group A and Group B is priorities. Both groups seek to enjoy the game, but neither group has the same concept of how the game should be enjoyed. One group is elitist, the other is very casual. There are likely several other groups between Group A and Group B, as well as groups that vary on completely different axises. A member of Group B would never be welcome in Group A, because he is not interested in maximizing the potential of his character. Meanwhile, a member of Group A would never be satisfied with the level of organization of group activities in Group B.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
I guess it began back in the Walmart when I was much younger...a sale was on: 'Hand-exercising kits' and weights of 0.5, 1, and 2.5 kilos were all extremely low priced as if Arnie Schwarz had had a yard sale in which Sam Walton's ghost had apparated and instantaniously snapped up most of the stuff. So I got back in my parent's Corolla with my thin, wimpy arms straining to carry roughly 15kg in squeezy torsion handles and weights. I wasn't unattractive, infact later in life I became pretty popular with the la...that's another story.
It was around that time that a now-old MMOG was out - I remember sitting on the lawn listening to that cool English band Oasis on my Walkman with those raspily melodic vocals as electric in my ear canal when a large shape eclipsed the sunlight, causing me to instinctivly look up. It was Brandon, an extremely obese but affable and eccentric nerd who lived two doors down from us in our leafy suburban middle-class mediocrity-filled neighbourhood. 'Peter' he began, his face lighting up with a proud smile 'I have PK'ed eight people in Fel today and I plan on reaching a dozen by midnight...coffee permitting.'
Back then I was naive to it all...it could have meant anything. Being a guy who didn't miss much Brendon cut off my predictable question with: "PK is player killing - you chase down some guy and ice him and then take all his stuff! I have 56k and they're all on 28.8k so the connection to the UO server is so, so much better dude. Evisceration with my indy/fort double axe!"
I still didn't comprehend, but I knew it was a long haul explanatory time so my hand flicked instinctively to the Walkman, turning it off. It was then that Brandon and I went into his home, where his PC with its new fangled Pentium and Win 95 with Weezer playing Buddy Holly on the CD. That was special then...Buddy Holly; I could pull that up on youtube in seconds now, but seeing that cheesy vid was such a novelty then - yet I digress.
I learnt UO, and fast became a PK master with Brandon and I training intensely - it was here that the weights and hand-exercise came in. For awhile my fitness in real life and my avatar UO life balanced out so well. My arms became more toned with time, and this actually helped with reflexes as I zipped around those pixelated trees on the Brit path hunting down people. It was merciless because you could destroy hours of work in a few swings of an axe plus deft lootage...yet bizarrely I felt no regret over it all. This academic theory has to be hopeless when it comes to UO; which was toned down bit by bit until people could stay in a 'safe' realm and a 'danger' realm where murder was possible. The nostalgia that haunted me for nearly a decade after I quit in late 1998 was the worst; you wanted to recapture these 'good old days', but it was just frigid within an hour of play when you tried to.
Brandon went to some new-fangled MMOG called 'Everquest' - and I never saw him after that...except for one time in 2004 at a Taco Bell. He was at the counter anxiously enquiring about freezing the products - he sounded different, on edge, and I actually thought I heard him say he wanted 100 tacos and a burrito 'for the road'. Gone was his whimsy and charm and his breathing was heavier...I quietly slinked out of the place to avoid talking to him and soon after moved to Europe.
I guess there's something spurious about taking an interaction study and using it with games where anonymity and cartoonish avatars are the 'interactable' things rather than flesh, flab, blood and bone humans. But when you think about it...the greatest 'interactors' in MMOGs can also be the poorest interactors in life. It's in life where you are a human not an avatar, so this theory is kind of stupid since I could go at pains to achieve 'human stress' that leads to community in a videogame...but be a complete flat-out stunted 'human' nowhere near the theory's assertions in life - I mean getting to the point where you live on welfare and try to get three full bags of Taco Bell? That is too far.
US: there were plenty of supporters of southern regime in the north and vice versa. These were suppressed, often violently, especially in the south.
Russia: White vs Red civil war that started in 1917. It was the pinnacle of WW1 in many regards, as it forced GB and France to adapt as Russia pulled out of war, and it was one of the nastiest civil wars in the world - we're looking at huge death toll and classic "brother vs brother" action where even families would end up split and go against each other. This was caused by the fact that there were more then two sides to the conflict, all with different (often foreign) benefactors.
Cyrpus: I'm not sure what relations you're talking about, I've been to the place (Greek side), and there is very little friendliness towards Turks who are viewed as conquerors. Greeks also voted against reunification. Perhaps you're referring to sentiments in Turkish part, which is much poorer and would love a reunion to raise the quality of life. Greeks don't want that, and this is confirmed by a vote on reunification which largely killed any attempt of Turkish side to be able to become an EU member.
All in all, modern reactions don't really matter, as we're talking about wartime, not peacetime after the tension has boiled out. Cyprus is a textbook case scenario of ethnic cleansing in relation to civil war - Greek side has been ethnically cleansed of Turks, and Turkish part ethnically cleansed of Greeks. After this occurred, the refugee Turks from Greek side were housed in housing that used to belong to Greeks that lived on Turkish side and vice versa. As it stand now, there are almost no Turks living on Greek side and almost no Greeks living on Turk side.
When the country polarises in such an extent, perhaps it's time two new countries are formed consisting of the polarised groups.
You're just passing the problem one more step up the social ladder. You've averted a civil war, but created two hostile countries with nothing in common but resource conflicts and a huge hostile border, setting yourself up for a possible continental-scale international war. It's an India/Pakistan situation, but with more nukes.
Learning to deal with people you disagree with one-on-one rather than avoiding them really is the best option.
Bad example, most people don't care what their neighbours believe (within reason - I don't suppose a Jewish family would move in next door to a house decorated in swastikas).
It's more like at work, unless you are pretty fanatical, you don't go around having intense political discussions with your colleagues, you tend to gloss over any differences, talk about the weather or football or something.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
When I look at the online population, I see a lot of people claiming to be 18 year old bi-sexual nymphomaniac miss-universe winners.
FTFY
Some of these guys will be traders, others will be pirates, possibly bounty hunters and so on. It seems rather obvious the regular traders would not be trading, making alliances with or having positive interactions and communication with pirates, though pirates probably have some of their own traders who sell stolen goods back to the real market, if the game mechanics are that advanced.
But really all the conclusions they drew here shouldn't surprise anyone. Not that such tests are not worth conducting in case they show any interesting deviations from your expectations, but I think that a few more tests need to be carried out in less extreme environments - like a workplace or a marketplace where killing and outright stealing are frowned upon - to actually draw any useful conclusions.
which is totally what she said
He wasn't talking about personality types, he was asking what really makes any one group/clan/whatever different from another in any of these games. I think his point was that many of them may dislike each other simply because they are in a different group, when really they are all the same.
However in space games like this there will be groups and valid reasons to like or dislike them depending on your style of play. Everyone but pirates will hate pirates, whereas not many people will have an issue with guys who just trade for a living or work as mercenaries for hire.
which is totally what she said
Credit to Emo Phillips:
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
In regards to polarization..
http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/22519-most-profound-thing-ive-ever-read.html
How we know is more important than what we know.
But as we know there are undecided people, there are some which dislike both reps and dems, and thee are people which find good stuff in both. Those people will be the glue between those polarized zone. It takes much more than what you cited to have a civil war.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is a sociological theory.
Yes, because it's important to make sure the joke is lost by spelling it out.
They are purple we are green.
Hulk is both! Green man, purple pants! Hulk lead you to new way. Hulk Messiah! HULK SMASH!
Yes because country v country wars are much better than civil wars.
And the constitution is irrelevant since almost the entire problem goes away if it was followed in the first place. It reserves an amazing amount of power for the States, which has been gobbled up by the Federal Government.
If the Federal Government would stop expanding and let the States do what they want with respect to pollution, carbon taxes, abortion, etc, etc. Then the conflict would be reduced.
The pro-abortion folk can move to states in which abortion is a mandated by state law and every woman has to have at least one state funded abortion per 2 children they do have.
The pro-pollution folk can move to states in which an acre of old growth forest is part of the requirements to get a driving license and there's a carbon rebate for industry's service in stocking up CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Everyone can be happy in their little States, and the rest of us will actually get to see what works and what doesn't as the crazies try everything out.
Here's the kicker: Most people don't do hardcore raiding, participate in a FPS team, or play RTS as pros.
So, as long as you're studying social interactions online, can you prove or disprove the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Pardus is a bit of a niche MMO, but it is a pretty well established one. It has a similar player base to games like CCP's EVE. Quite a few people I have known over the years have cycled though it.
Lolwut? He actually gave a contextually valid, well-thought explanation of what would legitimately differentiate 2 groups of players in the same MMOG, to which your response was some BS about game mechanics.
Maybe people don't like the pirates because their way of enjoying the game is attacking and annoying other players (AKA griefing). Group A hates Group C because they are a distraction from their progress toward perfection, and Group B hates Group C because "seriously dude, leave me alone, what's your problem, just let me play the game!"
People from Group A or Group B might enjoy themselves in Group C, depending on how that group operates internally.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
avoiding stress might mean killing the source of stress, I think it is rather presumptive to say stable societies are the only possible result of stress avoidance.
They are purple we are green.
He who has green sash is green leader.
You can't take the sky from me
News flash for kdawson: in science (not counting math), positives cannot be proven. Evidence for them can be provided, they can be "illustrated", "supported",... but not proven, only disproven. That's why even the most respected "laws of physics" formally have the status of "theory" (Note the difference between "theory" and "hypothesis" here: a hypothesis becomes a theory after it has been extensively tested and widely accepted by the scientific community.)
It is ironic that a majority of science stories on slashdot are posted by someone who has an incomplete understanding of science. Though it does explain why the average quality of science-related posts is so low.
Actually, he was talking about this.
which is totally what she said
What happens when one state works really hard an eliminates all pollution only to have all the neighboring state's pollution blow over onto them?
They didn't have to study games to figure this out. Even the summary mentions that the theory is 80 years old. As another poster points out, one of the problems with testing the theory has to do with determining if people are members of a perticular group because they behave and think a certain way or if they behave and think a certain way because they are a member of a pericular group.
This study sheds interesting new light on the thery because membership in virtual world groups (especially in MMOGs) is much less dependent on external factors than real world groups.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Actually, the root of the problem you are talking about ("liberal" Democrat vs "conservative" Republican...I am using the quotes because the terms are really less than ideal to sum up the differences) is that the disagreements have already been pushed too far up the social scale. That is, many of the problems are caused by making decisions at the state level that should be made at the local level and making decisions at the federal level that should be made at the state or local level. Both of your examples are decisions that should be made at the state level. Both abortion and global warming are issues that should be resolved at the state level rather than the federal level.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
This study also makes true the statement that global peace lies in trade agreements. As per the study, people hardly ever take hostile actions after they have made a trade.
I believe I pointed out that the difference is priorities. When you have disassociated collections of people with various priorities, those whose priorities are compatible will eventually group together. This may result in some arbitrary competitiveness between two similar groups, and this is also an aspect of human nature, and the precise thing which makes professional sports so popular. This is the entire point of the study. That people will group together according to priorities.
Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
Rules predate contact with other races. Rules changes... caught up in committee...
There's truly not enough B5 on slashdot anymore. /sigh
As has been variously alluded to, a serious fly in the soup here is that the people playing a given MMO have self-selected for certain models of interaction. I suspect that if the same methodology were to be applied to data extracted from different MMOs the conclusions reached might well be different.
What would EVE Online look like? (a hard-core, Ayn Rand gone wild take on open PVP in which material losses in combat can represent days to weeks of work)
What would a PVP server on World of Warcraft look like? (in which factions are preallocated, and in which there is no real "loss" to getting pwned)
What would a non-PVP game such as Lord of the Rings Online look like ?(in which there is significant pre-selection based upon appreciation of the source material, resulting in a significantly older demographic)
What would Runescape look like? (free to play microtransaction based, with a younger demographic)
What would Second Life look like? (no institutionalized combat systems, almost pure social interaction with self-image modification, less of a game more of a 3D chat room)
What would non-Western MMOs look like?
This doesn't mean the conclusion is wrong, but it does mean that many different games with many different rulesets and demographics would have to be examined, and the effects of preselection taken into account. Nice start, more work to be done before anybody can draw conclusions based upon this sort of study.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
It's worse than that. If you split a country, some people won't want to move to "their side". You end up with ethnic cleansing, and legitimate causes for the two halves to go to war with each other (if the minority that didn't move are mistreated... as they always are... the majority in the other country will feel fully justified in rolling the tanks and brutalizing the minority). Even among those who do choose to move, the resentment will be deep and last for centuries.
Drawing lines and saying "you lot must leave and go form A to B, and you lot must leave and go from B to A, screw your property and relationships and history" is a sure formula for generations of the nastiest kinds of war.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Learning to deal with people you disagree with one-on-one rather than avoiding them really is the best option.
Sure, I'd agree with that in most cases. The problem exists when one side is willing to compromise, but the other is not. Nothing short of complete acquiesence will suit some people, and no amount of tolerance, rationality or charisma will change that. Enduring a relationship like that is to be avoided if at all possible, as it will have harmful long-term effects. Surprisingly, my anecdotal evidence suggests that both cyber- and meatspace have about the same proportion of complete asshats. At least you can logout of cyberspace.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
That's what militias are for.
Why would that matter? Those that like sodomy or like the concept of freedom can move to another state without such a ban - assuming they don't have the numbers to elect politicians to overturn it.
The trouble with many uses of MMORPGs to supply evidence for social science theories is that the MMORPGs are designed, manipulated, and controlled to conform to those theories. I get particularly tired of the crowing about MMORPGs demonstrating the validity of economic theories, when the developers regularly tweak the game world so that it will conform to their understanding of economics.
Of course in MMORPGs people avoid social networks of enemies. This is encouraged by game design, when not outright mandated. MMORPGs often include mechanics for detecting those social networks, to allow for avoiding them or engaging them in combat. In games in general, violent conflict is exaggerated, and in MMORPGs, in the past you would often see complaints from players about game mechanics allowing cooperation between members of groups defined within the game as enemies. Nowadays, MMORPGs are designed to limit or prohibit that.
In the real world, when you're walking around, you don't see friends of friends labeled in blue, or friends of enemies labeled in red. Yet that's a standard practice in MMORPGs.
There are doubtlessly some social science observations worth making about MMORPG player interactions. But observations about designed and constrained behavior isn't really valid.
If that's the secret of a stable society, it explains why we have so much trouble. The perfect stable society would be a group of atheists who practice free love. Only... what would they do about hormonal teen aged children?