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Games That Make Players Act Like Psychopaths
An article at Wired takes a look at two multiplayer survival games, DayZ and Rust, and at the behavior of players when their actions are freed from a civilized moral code. 'Violence wouldn't bother a psychopath, [Dr. Adam Perkins] says, but they might have another incentive to avoid violence: the consequences of getting caught. Most psychopaths are logical people, he says, and understand that actions bring consequences. The threat of repercussions — say, for example, prison — might keep them from acting out. Such disincentives do not exist in virtual worlds. Absent a sense of empathy, you're free to rob and kill at will. What we do with this reveals something about us.
Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, says imagining ourselves doing something horrible is a way to see ourselves in a new light. "One of the ways we keep ourselves moral is to imagine the terrible things we could do, but then don't do," Ronson says. "You stand on a train platform and think, 'I could push that person in front of the train.' That thought pops into your head, and it doesn't make you a lunatic. It makes you a good person, because what you're actually saying is, 'Oh my god, I’m capable of doing a terrible thing, but I would never actually do it.'" ... But we're still left with the big question: Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?'
Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, says imagining ourselves doing something horrible is a way to see ourselves in a new light. "One of the ways we keep ourselves moral is to imagine the terrible things we could do, but then don't do," Ronson says. "You stand on a train platform and think, 'I could push that person in front of the train.' That thought pops into your head, and it doesn't make you a lunatic. It makes you a good person, because what you're actually saying is, 'Oh my god, I’m capable of doing a terrible thing, but I would never actually do it.'" ... But we're still left with the big question: Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?'
As long as you keep the gators fed.
Why We Crave Horror Movies
-AlPhAbEt
You need only look at the comments on Slashdot to prove this. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But that wouldn't be very interesting of help to fear monger, would it.
Lemmings makes players act like psychopaths.
Because that is their job you know. Kill. KILL. KILL!!
Duhhh.... that's what games as a form of escape means.
I had finally made it to the airfield, gotten an M-16 with a M-203 grenade launcher (ammo for the gun but no grenades) in one of the barracks, when I see someone running outside. It was twilight, so I laid down in the hallway and waited. I see a silhouette and flashlight in the door. I say "friendly" but get no response, so I open fire. I can't tell if my first burst hit him, but I see movement again and keep shooting. Next thing I know zombies are all over me and I died. I must have killed him with my first burst but the shooting attracted zombies. After that I stopped playing, because it took forever to get that far. But really it was a fun game, and the only time I've ever been more afraid of other players than "real" enemies like the zombies.
But thinking about it, that's probably how I would react in real life. I had just managed to get a good weapon, I had supplies, and I saw someone that could be a potential threat to me. When you have to work hard to get something, you want to keep it. I couldn't discern their intentions, so I killed them. My first,and really only, priority was my survival. There were also times where I killed people that weren't immediate threats, that never knew I was there, but knew if they saw me they would probably kill me as well.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
In a world without consequences, I think most people would be pretty fucking vicious.
However, I don't think these games are a mirror to your real nature because of the other differences the game world creates. Most importantly, you're immortal and can go do something else whenever you want. Death is ultimately trivial compared to real life. Sure you lose your stuff, which sucks, but you don't cease to exist. The reverse is true for those you 'kill' in game.
Lots of people care about virtual persons beyond what would be purely rational. Just as someone may cry because of what happens in a novel, someone might get upset for losing a player in his virtual sports team and someone else might not do a certain quest because they'd feel bad about what happens to the virtual NPC.
I've always believed that those who behave as beasts while protected by the anonymity of the internet, or of a game, are actually just showing their true nature.
However, I see it as a sign of civilization to have the worse among us trolling online or being sadist psychopaths in video games, instead of torturing animals, or people.
I believe there will always be evil people, and the best we can do is what we're doing. Giving then a medium to express their rotten nature, that does the least possible amount of harm.
"Psychopath" is a *romantic* diagnosis. But it's been so misdefined and redefined and taught by movie archetypes that it's become a meaningless morass For example, the idea from the movies that a psychopath can cleverly plot out lengthy, sophisticated rituals of "SAW" like moral complexity is nonsensical. The people I've known with that diagnosis just don't plot, even if they have clearly high intelligence in terms of memory and awareness.
Psychologists who try do make conclusions or tests are almost inevitably wound up with some archetypal ideal of a "psychopath" that has only accidental connection to any definition of the term by any other psychologist. It's a travesty of science and of linguistics, fostered by authors who like to sell books with exciting titles and by court psychologists who mangle language to get the court to rule in the interests of their client.
How is it possible to be a psychopath in a game? This and other research are based on the premise that video games contain real violence. No game has ever contained true violence in this sense, which is why violent video gaming behavior doesn't lead to the harm that real psychopaths cause in society.
The only way to act psychopathic--doing actual harm to another human being with true apathy--in a video game would seem to be through communications between players inside the game, where feelings could be hurt. It would be hard of course to separate psychopathic communicative behavior from other common factors like immaturity, inebriation, gaming cultures, etc. That should probably be the real focus of these kinds of studies. Another interesting study might be to study actual psychopaths, pulled from corporate environments or the like, and seeing if/how they play games differently from non-psychos.
Ever played the Game of Thrones board game? A major component of the game is resolving disputes between other players, with the only guiding principle being "which outcome would better suit me?"
The design of the game forces you to be a backstabbing psychopath...and that is precisely what makes the game fun and interesting.
First post, first psychopath. Many of us refrain from "uncivilized behaviour" because we think it's wrong, not because some law says we will be punished. Many forms of "uncivilized behaviour" are not illegal, and yet most of us will not do them. Some of us will disobey laws, because we think the law is wrong.
Spoken like a true psychopath.
Games That Make Players Act Like Psychopaths ... Oh, you mean politics.
Has been down that road before it was cool.
How fondly I remember the sheer horror of seeing a player name in red text on the edge of my screen while my miner was full of ore and ingots on his bag. How people with gray names were essentially free loot to be gang banged by the blues. Summon a Daemon in the middle of a though dungeon battle to kill your "allies" so you could rob them blind without incurring the dreaded red status.
That game was so broken and so much fun.
David Lightman: [typing] Is this a game... or is it real?
Joshua: What's the difference?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Look at the behaviour of young children (like 2-3 years old) in a group. They hit each other. They push each other. They steal each other's toys. They pull each other's hair.
Kids are nasty, selfish creatures before they're socialized.
I believe that without proper socialization, human society would rapidly degrade into a "natural" winner-takes-all slugfest of brutality. Cooperation and communication is not "natural" -- it's taught. The same is true in the animal kingdom for the more social species -- they learn the benefits of cooperation and social structure.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Doesn't this just assume that people (read psychopaths) don't do things because there is only a disincentive to do it? How is this different than claiming that morality has to come from an external agency? Perhaps psychopaths don't do things because they simply do not want to do them. Occasionally this lack of interest sticks tightly to societal norms. Perhaps more than occasionally because generally fulfilling activities aren't likely to ever be declared amoral, and when/where they are you'll likely find more psychopathic behavior.
What I find most disturbing about this recent obsession on behavior trends is that it ignores the fact that our society has been evolving in its structures since before humanity was a species. Psychopaths have been with us the entire time, our social structures adapted to their presence before we even had the idea to categorize their behavior as 'odd,' so whatever 'normal' we define already likely has a lot of psychopathic ideas integrated into it.
The threat of repercussions â" say, for example, prison â" might keep them from acting out. Such disincentives do not exist in virtual worlds. Absent a sense of empathy, you're free to rob and kill at will. What we do with this reveals something about us.
Or, it doesn't reveal jack squat because the people know they are playing a video game and thus behave a lot differently than they would if this was real life.
If you are a normal person, the first time you play Rust will go like this: you collect a few resources and craft better and better weapons. If you see someone, you say "hi" to them and you guys become friends. You build yourself a little house next to the road & you help people who spawned later than you by giving them some stuff. Those new people build a house near yours and also become your friends.
The last game of Rust you play will go like this: you collect enough resources to build a gun and a sleeping bag. You hide your sleeping bag in the middle of the mountains at night. You run around completely naked with a hidden pistol and shoot the first person you see in the back of the head while they are gathering wood. You take all their stuff & possibly take over their house. Any person you see you shoot to kill, especially if they haven't seen you first. You spend your entire existence in the game making sure everyone who is a potential threat is dead. There are no friends or neighbors, only potential thieves and killers.
The game forces you to become a monster even if you don't want to. And the insidious thing is that it doesn't actually *force* you to be a monster, but it makes you realize that is the best rational choice given the gameplay mechanics. I hated the game for what it made me do to other people so I quit. There are really only two types of people in any given Rust game: suckers and psychopaths. The suckers turn into psychopaths or quit. I'm so glad I stopped playing that toxic game.
Humans are animals, beasts if you will.
Missing the obligatory postscript "between the sheets".
Have gnu, will travel.
Most things in us have evolved for survival. One of those things is a plastic mind that can adapt to a changing environment. As such, we can modify our sense of what is moral or to the needs of the moment. This is to say that being a psychopath or just a sane person is as much a function of how "well" our brains work as of our environment. In a videogame about rage and destruction the rational thing is to kill and destroy, this is the objective of the game and the way to stay alive in it.
Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?'
Neither. One plays by the rules of the environment in which one's in.
Pretty sure LambdaMOO went down that road before Ultima Online, with the Mr. Bungle affair. Read "A Rape In Cyberspace" or the book-form "My Tiny Life" by Julian Dibbell for more.
now I'm going to push a person in front of a train. Why did you have to give me that idea?!?!?!
"The screen flickered back on. I was reborn, standing naked in an empty field, holding only a rock. Not far away I saw a man gathering wood, his back to me. I crept toward him through the grass. He didn’t hear me slinking closer.
I thought of the words of John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, who once said that the true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.
I raised my rock above my head."
The tendency for people to act sadistically is not just from those who derive pleasure from it.
In a culture where it's common (like one of these videogames, some forums, or in online chat) to treat people like shit from behind your pseudonymity, the behavior becomes normalized to where you are socially penalized for not taking advantage of others when the opportunity arises, or rewarded when you do.
It's a big jump to say everyone who tries to "fit in" in this way is a psychopath or sadist.
I mean, nothing beats violently wasting on the digital avatars of my fellow players AND MAKING THEM DIE VIOLENTLY in order to relieve some stress after a frustrating day.
Healthy release or psychopathic tendencies? The media driven Psychoanalytic Jury is still out, but our sources say that they are leaning to full blown psychosis, more at 11.
If you ever go into academia and become a professor. (Steal from your grad students then knife'em in the back if they say boo, blow off your undergrad students since let's be honest you're reputation is your research, etc. Why yes, I am cynical.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Sloth is an animal.
'Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?'
This isn't the larger concern right now.
The larger concern is the fact that empathy and human emotion still exist on the actual battlefield today, and we are looking to remove that from warfare as we look into the future of automation. Where we have a soldier making those face-to-face decisions to pull or NOT pull a trigger today will be replaced by a robot wired to a PS4 controller thousands of miles away, being driven by a "soldier" who may not even know they are engaged in actual warfare as they "play" the "game".
These things are coming. And ironically as you call this future inhuman and disastrous for mankind, it is the tears of crying mothers that help justify this, because these "solutions" will be sold as the answer to bringing our boys back home every time.
There's also the actual value of life to consider. You can't exactly use behavior in games like Day-Z as indications of anything beyond Day-Z's gameplay behavior trends. It's a virtual world. If I kill your toon, that's all I did. It's 1's and 0's and nothing more than an extensive puzzle to solve. Seriously, should we start psychotherapy on everyone who plays chess?
I feel bad when I run over a pedestrian in GTAV, but not as bad as when I run into a lightpost.
In the real world, it would be the other way around. I've never run into either, but I like to think I'd steer for the lightpost given only those choices.
Using video games as a guide to how people would behave in the real world is misguided at best.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This has been proven by psychologists repeatedly. Just because someone does something in fantasy doesn't mean they would do it in reality or even see it the same way as they would in reality.
We understand it is pretend. When you kill someone in a game there is no moral feeling of guilt because they're not people. Its as real as a 6 year old playing war with plastic soldiers and then randomly knocking a few of them down as dead.
It has no impact on our psychology. Its play.
Any so called psychologist that doesn't grasp that is a hack.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Then again, the behavior we call psychopathy in our polite safe benign situation might be survival-optimal choices when actually confronted with a situation where the results aren't academic, but materially affect our chances of living through today.
I'm not entirely sure that the mural yardstick we use in measuring ourselves is worth anything more than firewood when "shit gets real". As a soldier friend if mine explained, that was one if the challenges in integrating back to civilian life, it's an entirely different context.
-Styopa
When i last played rust, i joined a sort of "gated community" We all helped each other out and lived in the same general area. We would also protect our community by ganging up and forcing anyone who wasn't one of us off our "lawn". It worked quite well actually, aside from the occasional bandit raid.
Society should serve law-abiding citizens and mentally fit people. What people like the author here want, is to design a society that caters to psychopaths and the mentally ill. All you end up with is more psychopaths and mentally ill people, since society is designed for them (and not healthy-fit people) they will thrive and their population will grow.
Whenever I play a game, I let the Nazis win and give terrorists what they ask for. The sooner they have what they want, the sooner the violence will stop. Good.
Eliminate consequences for some while encouraging imposition of consequences on others.
The blurb mentions a sky friend. What are the chances of that?
I hate to do this, 'cause I'm normally annoyed by the swiss-cheese nature of Star Trek philosophy (hint1: it's full of holes) but there was a reasonably fun classic episode (hint2: it involves beards) that used a basic truth of human nature as a plot point:
It's relatively easy for a civilized man to pretend to be uncivilized, but it's relatively difficult for an uncivilized person to pretend to be civilized.
Relative to current events: the most-recent psychopath killer tried to pretend to be civilized, and failed; Clearly the females he encountered were not fooled no matter ho much his car and clothes cost and no matter how "magnificent" he proclaimed himself. He also tried (on youtube) to play the part of an in-control arch-villain but, not being an "in-control person", ended-up looking like he was reading a bad script with [insert super-villain laugh here] notes at various points.
Relative to video games: It's easy for a civilized person to safely play a baddie in a computer game and have it play NO PART in his real world life - but an uncivilized person will likely find no joy playing a civilized character, and will also likely be unable to avoid blurring the lines between an uncivilized game persona and his uncivilized reality.
The problem is NOT the games or any other "things"; the problem is the un-civilized individual. If you know somebody who is an uncivilized barbarian or narcissist, stay on your toes. I cannot believe that anybody who knew this twerpy little monster did NOT know with a certainty just how self-absorbed and self-focused he was; it takes a real amazing specimen to get THAT angry at lottery winners (because they got YOUR money) and kissing couples (because the guy is getting YOUR girl) and girls (because they don't see how obviously "magnificent" you are) etc. Oh, and don't try drawing too many lessons from Trek [grin]
what you're actually saying is, 'Oh my god, I’m capable of doing a terrible thing, but I would never actually do it.
you lost me
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
One sentence that totally nullifies this entire "concern":
It's a video game not real life, get a grip.
When we 'act' violently in a virtual environment we don't feel empathy because there is no one affected by our actions, it's just data in a hard drive; not actual living beings. The same reason we don't feel bad when we break a stick in half, we see the stick as an object not a life. Empathy is not about consequences or punishment, it's about recognizing that others have feelings and identifying with them.
IMO Dwarf Fortress is a better test case because psychopathic behavior is sort of encouraged. For example, if you are going to mass kill all of the useless babies you need to make sure that the bodies are never found to prevent the trauma of their death from slowing down/stopping your productive workers... and while there is a vocal component of the player base that are complete psychos most people play with some degree of empathy for their dwarves.
Seriously? You'd prefer the consequence of manslaughter IRL?
There are always consequences, and when we fail to appreciate them, we make stupid choices.
Captcha: reelect
Not very good with the reading comprehension, are you?
I wonder if EVE qualifies.
All rites reversed 2010
So.... What does that make you?
You're entirely on the right track.
Common behavior in games like DayZ fairly accurately mirrors behavior that is appropriate in a situation where the rule of law has entirely disappeared.
Just look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and it should become far more clear. Morality, at least as we generally conceive it, is something that doesn't really come up until pretty much every other need is fulfilled. In a situation without the rule of law, individuals are generally forced to spend much of their time working in the bottom two levels of the pyramid.
Thus, the logical reaction to new persons revolves around our needs and the available resources. Since there is little benefit to be gained (at least in DayZ) from working with strangers, and a huge amount of risk, there are really only two options: Kill them, or avoid them. Since avoiding other people is often so difficult, and they have little to offer you other than your death, this leads to people defaulting to the other option.
As the benefits of cooperation increase, and the penalty for dying goes down (read: when you can securely cache excess equipment for use with future characters), I suspect that we'll see less KOS, more avoidance, and more cooperation.
Why was the above post marked troll when it's, indisputably, "one, correct way to look at thing". Some people may not agree with it, but I've seen the same opinion expressed many times.
Maybe it was marked 'troll', because of how close it hits to the truth?
(Seriously!) In a game, there are no consequences like dead bodies -- no need to feel remorse over such! It's completely artificial. A game is played to optimize its outcome and then it ends and you know the outcome. When "RL" ends, you won't care much about the outcome because you won't be around to think about it.
The fact that you think that manipulating a bunch of pixels around a screen can make someone a psychopath says a lot about the warped state of your own mind. Again, get a grip.
This behavior isn't new, it's what first caused many video game players to avoid MMOs for life.
Then there's the role playing aspect. Just did Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines twice in a row. First time I always tried to do the right thing everywhere, including sneaking past easy guards. Second time I played someone insane (malkavian) at which point my character (not me) starting thinking "why not?" when stealing the charity box and so forth.
I think not caring how other people might feel makes someone a psychopath... People play games to have fun... and people who deliberately seek to spoil that fun for people they might not even know as a means of furthering their own enjoyment show a profound lack of empathy in their actions.
Remind me not to stand in front of the poster on a train platform...
"Lots of people care about virtual persons beyond what would be purely rational. Just as someone may cry because of what happens in a novel, someone might get upset for losing a player in his virtual sports team and someone else might not do a certain quest because they'd feel bad about what happens to the virtual NPC."
These are the people who have a problem(or the game design has a problem). They are playing a wrong type of game if getting so emotionally distressed is possible. They should really find a different type of game. There are plenty of people who play competitive games out there. Those people don't feel back because their character died, they might feel a bit bad because they lost. But the character was just a game piece, like in chess. Or the whole thing was like the opposing team scroring against you in football. We don't call the ones who purposefully score goals in sports psychopaths, do we? Why would we cal lthem psychopaths in a game? We could tell the one who scored goals to stop doing so because the opposing team doesn't like it, but we don't. We tell the losers to be good sports, they lost, fair and square. Better luck next time.
Best games I have seen are the ones where the game doesn't enforce all the rules, but allows people to pick who they play with. If you want to play, you have to follow some rules. Some rules that you just could break, but breaking them means you are out of the game. Most games try to force all rules, and force people to play with anyone. Then everything is allowed, leading to huge "abuse" of every game design flaw.
Grand Theft Auto?
true enough, if they were single player games. but time is money and money is time, even in a virtual setting.
trolling and griefing, stealing and looting. these are all things that do reflect back on the empathy of the player.
trolls wouldn't troll unless they took amusement out of ruining the fun of others, and that speaks to a very specific mindset.
maybe games can't reveal psychopaths, but i'm not willing discount their value in that regards, and they certainly do a hell of a job of revealing assholes.
Move along son. Notbing to see here.
Dont feed the trolls young buck
Uhhh no. The _only_ reason _WE_ act civilized is because we are a eusocial species.
We've have always depended on each other to survive. The myth of the single man subduing the world is a myth.
Daniel Boone could not build a musket and powder all by himself from rocks and trees.
Same with any of Ayn Rand's characters. You think the government is a pain in the ass, well take your great idea and build it in Somalia and see if you can make any money. We build on each other.
The reason we get along in general and specifically far more often than we don't is because we are eusocial. The tribe is a single thang, just like an anthill is.
It's a game, it's not intended to be any serious or have any genuine impact on a person's life. When I play games, I don't care what other people are doing, I still have fun playing or I wouldn't play. Again, it's a video game. It's not real, it's not serious, it's all meant to be allow people to pretend to do things that they cannot and/or will not do in real life. If you are getting frustrated by one, then perhaps that isn't the game for you. If you can't tell the difference from fake pixel land and real life, perhaps you shouldn't be playing games at all
Man, you really need to see a psychiatrist. You've got some deep seated mental issues. Get a fucking grip.
Are you mad? Have you ever tried playing an MMO? If every player in an MMO thought oh noos, if I attack this other random player to gain resources or xp or what have you, I might hurt their feelings, you'd be left with nothing but a facebookesque social network where people interact using 3d avatars instead of an MMO. The OBJECTIVE of MMOs is to build your character/base so you can annihilate your opponents ie other players...maybe you should go look for something with unicorns and rainbows instead of an actual MMO?
Thats the point really. An act could be classified as terrible because of the consequences to others, not just consequenses to yourself. There are no consequences to anyone due to games, so you can't commit terrible actions in them. You can only commit actions that would be terrible in the real world.
Some of us refrain from "uncivilized behavior" because the experience of feeling guilt is unpleasant.
It isn't necessary logical or rational, but these mechanisms evolved in proto-human apes long before our facility for language and reason. These mechanisms exist for a good reason. It is how we survived, and I think, the only thing that will ultimately save our species from ourselves.
The behavioral science people are actually starting to answer the ancient question raised by Aristotle, is viewed (stage) violence cathartic or stimulative? That is, does viewing stage violence (as in plays, video games, movies) cathartic (relieving inner tension to be violent (lowering the probability of actually being violent)) or is it stimulative (increasing the probability of being violent). As a statistician I have to tell you that (at least in clinical studies) the issue of causal vs correlation is very well understood to be extremely difficult to tease out of data. But I have read studies that indicate that viewing violence reduces the thresholds that hold us back by making the behavior seem more prevalent and therefore less wrong. Myself, I think error on the side of caution is wise, a position that puts me at odds with my otherwise science-loving causitive-denier libertarian friends, who, to a person, will argue that THEY aren't affected (gotta love those sample sizes of n=1). This sort of "I'm exceptional" is pretty well understood, and seems to be a factor in the poor risky decision making processes of most males through at least 25yrs life experience.
Maybe if we used electrical shock to punish people who make poor choices in video games we could train them out of it, oh, wait, that's the science in "Terminal Man".
Lots of science says "don't let kids play video games" and lots of kids deny the effect. Which do you trust?
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
That goes for all games. Take chess for example. Who plays chess with regards to sparing their opponent's feeling? "Oh no, I shouldn't take his queen because it might hurt his feelings!" Or poker. "I have this royal flush, but I'm going to fold because I don't want anyone to cry!"
GP is an overly sensitive psychopath who lacks a grasp on reality.