That's truly fascinating to me. I get excited about anyone willing to play Halo 3 with me, cuz I'm the one who sticks grenades to themselves and chases other players. I always figured that classified me as a bad player, but maybe "dipshit" is a different category.
Nah that's pretty funny
The actual study.
Selected excerpts:
According to social constructionist theory, men behave in a sexist manner towards women in order to remove them from male-dominated spaces, regardless of social status. In contrast, evolutionary theory suggests that sexist behavior is in response to a threat to a male’s position in a social hierarchy, which could reduce access to potential mates.
The disruption of a male hierarchy by a woman could incite hostile behavior from poorly performing men who stand to lose more status.
...
The authors argue that these results support an evolutionary explanation of female-directed aggression, where low-status males are more easily threatened by a female competitor whereas high-status males are not threatened, instead behaving in a supportive and potentially a mate attraction role.
The entire Findings section
Findings
Lower-skilled male players were more hostile towards a female-voiced experimental teammate, especially when the female-voiced player was performing poorly. This same effect was not seen towards male-voiced experimental teammates.
147 teammates spoke to the experimental player across 102 games (82 to female-voiced teammate, 85 to male-voiced teammate), and all speakers were male.
A player’s skill level was correlated with the number of positive comments made to a female-voiced experimental teammate – i.e. a highly skilled player was more likely to behave positively towards a female teammate. However, players made the same number of positive comments towards a male-voiced experimental teammate, regardless of the player’s skill level.
Overall, female-voiced experimental characters experienced more negative comments than male-voiced characters (2.66 vs. 1.90 negative comments on average per game).
As the female-voiced experimental character’s skills increased, their teammates made less negative statements to them. However, there was no difference based for male-voiced experimental characters’ skill level.
When a player’s skill was low, they made more negative statements toward a female-voiced experimental character, and when their skill was high, they made fewer negative statements. However, there was no difference in the statements they made to male-voiced experimental characters.
In games with the female-voiced experimental character, only 13% of teammates uttered hostile sexist statements. These sexist statements appear to be unrelated to absolute or relative levels of skill in the game.
The authors argue that these results support an evolutionary explanation of female-directed aggression, where low-status males are more easily threatened by a female competitor whereas high-status males are not threatened, instead behaving in a supportive and potentially a mate attraction role.
To attempt to summarize:
Only 13% of males uttered any sexist statements.
Lower skilled males are more likely to verbally harass lower skilled females.
~~Females overall were 40% more likely to experience any kind of negative comments than males.~~
EDIT: ( I think a more accurate way to say it would be: )
Females experienced 40% more negative comments of any kind, than males.
Only a single 'experimental' female was allowed to speak in any game in the set of test games.
...
I agree with the authors that lower skilled males are essentially overcompensating, being assholes toward women, because they can't allow themselves to be seen by other males as 'worse than a girl', in terms of competetive skill.
They're trying to maintain their tenuous position in the male hierarchy, by bullying women, and focused more on specifically poorly performing women.
But I really do think it is worth highlighting that only 13% of males did this, and they did it vociferously, with 13% of them accounting for a 40% differential in the amount of harrasment of any kind directed at female players, as compared to harrasment directed at male players.
EDIT: (rephrased the above sentence to be more accurate)
So quite literally, it was not all men. It was a low tier subset of extremely odious shitlords. But the resulting effect is experienced broadly, and massively, by women. And, these shitlords were less likely to give any kind of praise comments, to anyone, regardless of gender.
I also think it is worth noting that only a single 'experimental' female was allowed to speak, along with any male, despite approximately half the actual set of test players being female.
I strongly suspect that different dynamics would have emerged if just... all the actual female players were allowed to speak, during say, another test run, parrallel to the ones conducted.
::: spoiler My own further thoughts based on my own anecdotal experiences
Anecdotally... I have been in different voice comm situations and communities where... there is a notable different dynamic when female presence itself is simply normalized.
In my experience, either those shitlord males tend to have their sexist comments be policed by other males and females ... or, the entire community adopts the sexist standard as normal.
Basically there are roughly those two semi-stable equilibrium states, when broad female vocal presence is normalized.
These dynamics are different to when only a single, or a small proportion of vocal females are present; males tend less toward either broadly policing or broadly promoting sexist attitudes toward women, when only one or a few women/girls are present.
People still playing Halo 3?
A 2015 study
Unfortunately without links such as to the original tweet or better yet, to the study, we will never if this is made up or if even the study is done properly.
Does align with my gaming experience
"Insights into sexism: Male status and performance moderates female-directed hostile and amicable behaviour" — Kasumovic & Kuznekoff, PLOS ONE, 2015 Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behaviour
I think you guys misunderstand my critique here.
I'm not talking about any article (your provided link from 2015, probably the one the tweet is talking about? But we don't know which study they are referencing) or personal experiences (as in the other replies to me), but about the study not linked that is been talked in the screenshot. The problem I have is, to present a narrative, then screenshot it, share without any links. We don't know if the study they talk about in the screenshot is real or any good. There is no transparency here.
Edit: Okay, so it seems like this article might be the origin of the tweet context. Looks like this article is cited often in the web, I searched it a bit. Wish these links were provided when sharing. Thanks for finding it. Also interesting the alternative theories in the same article:
There are two alternative social explanations for our results. First, players could be responding to the novelty of having a female voiced teammate in a male-dominated environment. Indeed, a female speaking while playing first-person shooter games is rare as none of the 189 players recorded were female. However, novelty is not the driver of the differences in behaviour as performance and skill mediated the number of positive and negative statements. Second, individuals may simply be responding more aggressively towards individuals with a higher pitched voice (a female in this case), as dominance is predictable by voice pitch [38]. Although we cannot rule out this possibility, it’s still in line with our finding that individuals feel more threatened by lower-status individuals.
Absolutely, but it does match my own observations over 25 years of online play.
Anecdotal evidence of course.
I have confirming experiences too.
Sure some guys get weird about gender, but I DEFinitely think it’s a high skill vs low skill issue. Low skill players can be more emotional, overreactive, negative. They’re insecure about their play and might resort to talking shit. High skill players tend to be calm, cool, collected. They don’t have to talk shit bc their play backs them up. In team games, they’d recognize the importance of keeping the harmony in order to win.
To add onto this, skilled players tend to recognize that the mental / emotional game has a direct impact on their performance, and may actually try to de-escalate their team when they go on tilt
In some events, talking trash to the other team can be a technique to put them off balance. Although it's getting rarer to find a game that allows you to talk to the other team during a match, and personally I find it unsporting.
I never understood why people blow up at their teammates. If winning is so important to them, they should try harder to work together with their team. Anecdotally, it's always the first person to complain about a teammate that's the biggest contributor to their team's failure.
The only time it's acceptable to be abusive to a teammate is to shut down their toxic behaviour. At that point you've probably already lost, so I'll do my best to make sure they feel bad for being a bully
Bingo bingo bingo!
The study does actually note that highly skilled male players... realize they can try to become actual friends with, or even basically compliment / encoruage / hit on female players.
Because some things have more value than just winning this particular match.
But yes as you say, actual leadership looks like 'clear comms' or 'cut the chatter', in many situations. A toxic comm channel full of useless bickering cannot actually help to orient team based tactics.
It is ... basically just competency at being a person, lol.
The deeply insecure people... tend to be the bullies. Competent people realize that bullying is actually a detriment to enacting tactics.
On that note, may I suggest to you SQUAD?
It by no means has a perfect community, but broadly... the entire game is built in such a way that effective team communication is generally required to perform well, both individually, and as a team.
Thus... the community tends to be friendlier, you can actually find people who simply love running 'noobie squads' as a squad leader, for greenhorns.
Its almost like if you build a system that rewards good communication and coordination, and punishes the lack of it... well that shapes the community! Like the environment shapes behavior!
I want to know how they measure submissivenes towards the dominant players.
Were they saying "thank you, daddy" when they got an assist kill?
No different then to macaques who have small balls howl the loudest. Insecurity is a bitch. Thankfully I learned early in life not to give in to insecurity, and you lose if you do..
You don't just lose, it poisons your entire life. You can't have functional relationships. Eventually you turn into a fascist.
Kinda curious does the same principle apply in other aspects of life?
Like in career when women gets to some higher position than a dude or when lifting weights and a women lifts more than some guy.
Wondering because i could expand the "skill issue" into so many new fields and just piss off quite a few guys.
See: "Hegseth, Pete"
I can bet he would be furious when he hears it, which would be hilarious.
Probably applies to men who value "(competitive)performance" or whatever way too much, thus increasing their insecurity and feelings of inadequacy or something
Kinda curious does the same principle apply in other aspects of life?
I honestly doubt the study was done properly. It sounds like made up of people hating woman, just to create friction. Maybe there is a study, made by woman in example (doesn't have to) who felt attacked often. Yes, there are hostilities towards woman, but also towards men in general. There are many reasons. Sure some of them act like this for the described reasons in the tweet, but we don't know how many. I've seen lot of stupid studies before.
You seem awful defensive of a study that wasn't aimed at you specifically.
This is not personal.
Got it, you're just sexist.
Only 13% of males in the study acted with hostility.
It was flawed in that only one of the female gamers were allowed to speak, though.
Yeah fair, nut still "git gud" and "skill issue" are nice terms which should be used more often in real life as well.
Add "RTFM" to the list.
Oh my dog this so much at work!
I love women and will gladly embrace a matriarchal society.
Its not like they could do any worse then men have done. In fact they would have to try real hard to fuck things up quite as much as dudes have.
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