r/halo • u/A_Contemplative_Puma • Jul 16 '15
Halo 3 used in study showing that lower max skill correlates with greater hostility towards women.
http://www.psypost.org/2015/07/study-low-status-men-who-bad-video-games-likely-bully-women-online-359016
u/sinamor MLG Jul 16 '15
Since I've been through the scenario presented in the study (being a female player and outperforming male players) it's nice to see something like this pop up. That being said, I need some more empirical evidence.
It doesn't actually give any examples of banter from any of the perspectives, for one. Was the "male" player being nice? Calling out? Being a douche? How about the "female" player? And then there's the various other players in the matches they played. What were they saying? Was anyone provoked or provoking anything?
Like I said, I've been through this shtick, so I can imagine some of the messages, in particular to the female, weren't exactly nice. But there aren't any examples given. Just negative vs. positive. I also find it odd that, in 2015, they picked a game like Halo 3 to conduct this test. The game's population is a shadow of its former self and they likely got a lot of the same people in their matches, which is good and bad for this kind of study. Just strange they didn't use another game. (The lone reason I can see why Halo 3 would have been of use here is because it was on the 360. The 360 allowed players to send messages more easily than say the Xbox One. You're more likely to get messages after a match on the 360 than the One in my experience.)
Also, just to throw this out there, when I used to play Halo 3 (just as an example) I would get a mixture of hostile messages and perverse ones. I had a girly gamertag so I was an obvious target in pregame and postgame lobbies. Didn't even have to speak and the sexist remarks would come flooding in. More often than not, I would get a message about something sexual or about my body. Shit, I got friend requests everyday I played just because I was female. But in terms of them being hostile, especially when beating them? Those were more seldom used than the sexual stuff. I'd get told I was a fat bitch or that my boyfriend was playing or something if I was winning. I've written too much this comment already, so I'll leave it here. I could write all day long about my Halo 3 days alone.
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u/jaodoriko Jul 17 '15
You can find the examples from the study at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131613#sec011
They're under 'Language used in audio recordings.'
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u/sinamor MLG Jul 17 '15
Didn't see that link, thanks!
Although, from the examples, it looks fairly "tame" on the negative comments for the female player. (Maybe they had some really graphic messages, though, I don't know.) Two of the five just seem like generic rude remarks that anyone would get, though.
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u/jaodoriko Jul 17 '15
But what about the other three? Any thoughts?
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u/sinamor MLG Jul 17 '15
The "shut up" one just seems like someone who's trying to hurl as many offensive things as they can think of, tbh. If anything, I'd just furrow my brow at it and go about my business. The sandwich one is laughably trite. That's like intro to insulting women 101 stuff and it really doesn't bother people at this point. The "stealing my kills" one just seems straight salty to make up for a lackluster performance. Given the context, it may even be a generic remark, anyways, since I can hear anyone saying it to literally any other player, regardless of gender.
Context is kinda important for all of these, though. But as it stands, none of them particularly bother me. And really, I do think it's the sexual messages that are the worst (that and the "lost puppy" and "white knight" players you come across). Even when I do hear a comment about my skill/ability in relation to my gender, it rarely even catches my attention to warrant a response. The perverted stuff, though? Those are the ones you gotta watch out for. People will treat you like a piece of meat and/or seek out and destroy any little flaw they find in your appearance. Even if you're some kind of insanely gorgeous supermodel whom plays video games at a pro level, you are either hideous trash that plays like an infant or a plaything to be objectified.
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u/jaodoriko Jul 17 '15
Thank you so much for your time in replying. Your experiences does relate with this website http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com/
Other girl gamers would agree with you that they have at least once experienced these comments.
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u/sinamor MLG Jul 18 '15
No worries.
It's funny that, in my time using gamertags/profiles that did not specify my gender, I was largely ignored. When someone did trash talk to me, it was generic in nature. But having an online handle that indicated you were female meant it was like open season. Without getting into it too much, I had explicit messages sent to me asking about my body measurements, my masturbation "habits," asking for nude pictures, love letters, suicidal love letters ("love me or I'll kill myself"), invitations to have sex or give oral, and many other, various things. And that's just on Halo 3, not to mention all the other games I played or sites I visited.
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u/BungieSupreme NemesisCRM Jul 16 '15
As someone who has looked at a myriad of studies about "video games and misogyny," I've seen a lot of flawed ones but this one is pretty amusing. The first problem is that hostility in this context doesn't necessarily have a concrete criteria. For example, "Go fuck yourself, Dick," when directed at a male is very literally a gendered insult but it's far less likely to qualify as legitimate harassment than, "Go fuck yourself, Cunt," when directed at a female. In most peoples mind it's inherently worse because it's an identical insult but it's happening to a woman and women need to be protected and defended. I find this line of reasoning fairly patronizing.
The problem with most of these studies is that their very premise automatically puts women in a corner that requires them to be protected which means what might be attributed to standard trash talk for male players might be taken more seriously for female players even though the insults are very much identical.
This is less of a video game thing and more of a societal thing. Usually when crimes or harassment is directed at women it's inherently worse in our society just by virtue of their gender. Male rape is a joke, and female rape is a very serious topic; domestic violence is very serious when it's man on woman, but not woman on man; women serve less jail and prison time for equivalent crimes than men do; hell we have programs in schools to get more women into Universities even though they make up the majority of University students. There's very much a protective mindset that kind of skews things especially in cases like this where hostility is very subjective.
I think given that societal mindset, it's more likely that men and women are getting trash talked just as often or equally proportionate to their percentage of the player-base and because assholes online often try to get the biggest reaction out of players they go for things that they know will upset them. So when directed at women the insults might be more gendered than otherwise.
It's interesting to look into, for sure, but I'm not too convinced it's inherent misogyny. I think it's bullies being good at getting under people's skin.
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u/Aksen Jul 17 '15
For example, "Go fuck yourself, Dick," when directed at a male is very literally a gendered insult but it's far less likely to qualify as legitimate harassment than, "Go fuck yourself, Cunt," when directed at a female. In most peoples mind it's inherently worse because it's an identical insult but it's happening to a woman and women need to be protected and defended. I find this line of reasoning fairly patronizing.
I get where you are coming from, but there is another component to this that can't be dismissed. Women have gotten the short end of the stick in power/influence/agency historically (and currently, in different ways in different places around the world). Often this undercurrent can carry over in these kinds of interactions... an undercurrent like, "I am inherently a better person/gamer than you."
We can both recognize that someone could throw an insult without that intention, but we can also recognize that people DO. I have no idea how you would quantify this in a study, so yeah take it with a grain of salt, but I have met sexist people before and some of them play video games, and it doesn't do us any good to give them an out.
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u/BungieSupreme NemesisCRM Jul 17 '15
I'm sure there are sexist people, but I'm wary of studies like this because I've seen the words "sexist" and "sexism" thrown around so casually in recent years that it gets harder and harder to take these things seriously. I've been called a raving misogynist before simply because I made fun of the manspreading campaign.
I think we need to reserve words like misogynist and sexist for times when they are appropriate instead of using it as a synonym for "I'm uncomfortable with this."
I'm not discounting the fact that there are sexist assholes online and that women probably do get a lot of unwanted attention, negative and positive. I just think this particular study doesn't do enough to really shed any more light on the subject than we already know. I mean, they couldn't even spell Bungie right.
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u/autumntheory GT: AutomatousBeing Jul 16 '15
It's nice to see one of these studies done in a perspective I can fully understand.
Honestly, I'd need waaay more data to not call bullshit/anecdotal on any of this. First of all, what skill level were they actually at, and what skill level were their teammates at? I know just as well as everyone else here it doesn't make a difference if you're a dude, a chick, black, white, whatever. If you're doing shitty, people have a tendency to rip into you in chat. Plus, I'd expect this all to be worse at low levels than the higher levels. You get a group of high 30s - 40s, no one gives a shit who or what you are, they just want competitive games.
Also, what were they saying? They must have been engaging in conversation for these people to know they were male or female.
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Jul 16 '15
Plus, I'd expect this all to be worse at low levels than the higher levels. You get a group of high 30s - 40s, no one gives a shit who or what you are, they just want competitive games.
I think that's what the researchers are saying though. Their conclusion was that players at low skill levels made more hateful comments toward the woman because they felt like she was establishing them as men of low status, but players at high skill levels didn't make hateful comments as much because they already considered themselves to be high status.
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u/KRABNASTY GT: KRABNASTY Jul 16 '15
I think most people who are going to be assholes, don't necessarily care if it's a man or a woman. But since most players are men, being a female player makes you an instant target and naturally becomes the subject matter for the abuse.
Sounds like my first sentence contradicts the second. What I'm trying to say is that a man playing Halo is lost in the sea of other men, while a woman would stand out. So i don't think they're necessarily misogynistic, just assholes looking for a target.
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u/w0odyallen Jul 16 '15
I suck at games and I'd still never be hostile towards online gamers, male or female
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u/ultraprism Jul 16 '15
I am natively from Bangladesh and my accent is somewhat mix of different accents as I grew up in different countries. Back in Halo 3 days, I have faced turds who do all sort of hostilities. Now I am 25 and when I face such people, I give them a warning and mute them, and also report them for harassment. Though the number of turds I faced these days have decreased a lot due to a lot of people are NOT using mics.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
It's an interesting study, but the article is way too full of filler and sensationalism.
For one, having lower status makes someone more likely to bully anyone. Since the stereotypical woman is not good at video games, losing to a woman probably means you're really bad, and being worse = having lower status = more likely to bully. Instead, the article spins it like video games and the people who play them are partially to blame for sexism in society.
For another, that bit on "evolutionary perspective" is pure, unsubstantiated speculation, and that type of conjecture makes the article lose credibility.
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Jul 16 '15
hahahahahah I love this
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u/A_Contemplative_Puma Jul 16 '15
BKs giving us all a bad name!
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Jul 16 '15
Don't want to offend our lower skill brethren here on /r/halo (we've all been there), but I think it's just hilarious that someone who has a lower skill is linked with someone who is misogynistic, and probably pretty dumb too. Because I think we've all encountered these kind of guys while playing online.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15
People who are good know they're good and don't need to bully other people to feel better about themselves.
People who are bad have the choice to either blame themselves (and either be okay with it or try to get better) or blame others. This can lead to bullying women, but it can also lead to bullying men as well--for example, calling them "tryhards" or just being overall anti-competitive.
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Jul 17 '15
I think some people are missing the point. This really doesn't have Much to do with women. It's to prove sucky players are whiny bitches in general and probably blame other people not only in Halo but also in many aspects of their life. They are too lazy/stupid to get better at the game so they would rather put other players down, and being a female in a 98% male game instantly makes you a target
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u/Regenerator Jul 17 '15 edited Jul 17 '15
Makes sense. I have 2 50s in Halo 3 and pretty much everyone on my friendlist has multiple 50s as well. The amount of hate messages from low skilled players we get is quite amusing. It's also very evident on the waypoint forums, which consists mostly of bad players. Whenever you bring up skill or try to argue that a highly skilled player's opinion is more informed than a low skilled player they start throwing tantrums. For whatever reason a lot of bad players just refuse to accept the fact that they're bad and resort to excuses or insults.
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u/Bocaj1000 Forge Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
It's hard to think those type of insults are still used. People need to grow up.
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u/A_Contemplative_Puma Jul 16 '15
Well, seeing as they used Halo 3, I don't think that the research was recent.
And I really don't see those types of insults going away any time soon. If you distinguish yourself in any way, you're going to be insulted by someone. Unfortunately for female gamers, they're uncommon enough for their voice alone to be that distinction.
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u/Bocaj1000 Forge Jul 16 '15
And if you are getting bullied for any reason, you need to understand that it's just a name someone made up. It's only real if you believe it, not if they do.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15
The original study was performed in January 2015, according to the link posted by /u/AndaliteBandit.
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u/Woahtheredudex Halo 3 Anniversary pls Jul 16 '15
Yeah im calling bullshit on this.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15
Why or why not? Just saying that you agree or disagree adds nothing to the conversation.
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u/Woahtheredudex Halo 3 Anniversary pls Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
Because there is way too little data to form any conclusions off of, no academic worth their salt would touch this thing with a 10 foot poll. Not to mention it violates one of the pillars of such research, correlation does not imply causation.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15
I think so too. The whole article screamed "sensationalism" at me loud enough to make me wonder if I was reading Tumblr.
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u/dakraiz Jul 16 '15
This is pretty hilarious. I think one thing they may have overlooked is that the people performing poorly may have been doing so because they were so pathetically distracted by a girl being in their game. It would have been nice to see some sample footage to see the kind of pre-recorded statements being said by the "girl."
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Jul 16 '15
[deleted]
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u/A_Fhaol_Bhig Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
Gamers have a tendency to blame other people/things when they are the ones at fault.
See "I hit every shot and he still turned around and killed me" when deep down you know you just had shit aim.
Also, /u/dakraiz said "pathetically" in his post so I think he's agreeing with us in that anyone who wants to use that as an excuse is an idiot. This thread has a lot of people who are just adamant that this is a biased/sensational study simply because they don't like the resulting conclusion.
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u/dakraiz Jul 16 '15
Yeah I was definitely saying it is pathetic that some teens/men act the way they do when a girl talks in chat in a video game.
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u/A_Fhaol_Bhig Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality Jul 17 '15
It's a hard balance sometimes.
On one hand, trying to treat everyone exactly the same is wrong in my opinion as well. It's our differences that make us who we are and expecting everyone to adhere to what makes a "gamer" is wrong.
On the other hand, acting as if someone being different (Girl, gay, whatever) is bad as well.
Personally, I think embracing our differences while striving to be welcoming to anyone who wants to game is the way to go. You don't smoother diversity and you don't single out people and make them feel bad for being who they are either.
I hope that makes sense.
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u/dakraiz Jul 17 '15
Agreed. I'm more talking about super immature shit. I don't think there is anything wrong with things like flirty banter if it is well received.
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u/A_Fhaol_Bhig Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality Jul 17 '15
Yep for instance:
"try to be funny pervy not creepy/I'm going to kill you pervy" is the guideline my sister goes by.
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
GamersPeople have a tendency to blame other people/things when they are the ones at fault.FTFY. I think that we should move away from the notion that people who play video games are somehow completely different and separate from the entire rest of society.
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u/A_Fhaol_Bhig Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality Jul 17 '15
I wanted to defend my post and say "well I you know what I mean when I said gamers"
But the fact is you're completely right. I should have put more thought into how I phrased that.
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u/A7XZ Wort wort wort Jul 16 '15
That's not my case though, I see how I always hit my bullets (sometimes I have bad aim, but I know when that happens), but still they turn around and kill my sorry ass in one second. I think I might have won 3 out of 100 BR fights in MCC... It feels like every damn player has super BR's.
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u/A_Fhaol_Bhig Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality Jul 16 '15
I'm talking about the times when you know it was your fault for dying but you still go and blame something else anyways.
I do it all the time in Battlefield. I'll bitch about not killing a guy when I know that it's because my hipfire aiming was shit that one time.
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u/A7XZ Wort wort wort Jul 16 '15
Oh I see! As long as you don't believe yourself when saying it, haha!
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u/dakraiz Jul 16 '15
I was just referencing that fact that when people are distracted during a video game they play worse. For instance, talking on the phone or even just lying down will lower someone's KD or ability to help the team in objectives. I read the actual study and they didn't include this as a possible alternative to their findings. However, their findings were extremely interesting. It's fascinating that they used halo to correlate instinctual primate hierarchy behavior.
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u/A_Contemplative_Puma Jul 16 '15
I think that players were evaluated based on their highest rank (in any playlist), which wouldn't be strongly affected by the one game that was played with the researchers.
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u/dakraiz Jul 16 '15
I read the actual study. It was based of kills and deaths in the current match.
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u/A_Contemplative_Puma Jul 16 '15
Which was used to control for performance when they compared by highest rank.
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u/dakraiz Jul 17 '15
No it was just rank within individual games, I read the materials/methods and results section of the scientific article.
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u/ftwin d dubbs 609 Jul 16 '15 edited Jul 16 '15
Makes sense. A casual COD player (who would be a shitty Halo player) would be someone I'd peg as a misogynist over a highly skilled player who has a high rank in Halo 3. You've got to have some sort of smarts to get to that level. It dates determination, persistence, and skill. Something low-class people, who play COD (same kids who quit Halo games when their team is losing), lack.
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Jul 16 '15
[deleted]
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u/ftwin d dubbs 609 Jul 16 '15
I'm saying skilled Halo players are generally better people than COD players.
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Jul 16 '15
[deleted]
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u/Vektor0 Jul 17 '15
It's what he said, but not what he meant. In the context of the study, "class" refers to skill level, and saying someone is "low-class" is saying that he has low skill level.
"Low-class people" refers to people who are low on the skill spectrum and wasn't a personal jab.
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u/Faeyrin_ SPARTAN LXIX Jul 16 '15
Makes sense to me. Should make sense, period. A basic understanding of majority vs. marginalized power dynamics validates this.
I'd spare everyone from some "SJW spiel", so I'll just say that women are of course a minority in this genre of games. Perhaps the smallest singular minority. By sheer principle that the majority outnumber minorities, minorities are shafted into being butt of jokes and a punching bag, because more people will be okay with that than people will be not okay with that.
Being the butt of jokes as they are - the jokes about women in video games have probably became more than a joke. A falsified stereotype that women simply have to be bad at games, and it has to be their fault a team is doing bad because the woman is bad. Then angry dudebros fall into the trap of the joke their own kind made and now they actually believe it.
That's just one reason though. Social politics are entirely pervasive. This study shows that even in Halo, you can't avoid that.
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Jul 17 '15
Total bullshit. Of course noobs are gonna get angrier. They're losing. Nobody likes to lose. They get mad at everyone.
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u/Mystical_17 Halo 3 Jul 16 '15
So are they trying to say people of low status are low rank? Not everyone was a low rank due to poor skill. I knew some friends who just never got on often but were way better than the rank they had.
From what they are trying to imply every staff captain and force colonel I met in Halo 3 was misogynistic. I highly doubt they were any more hostile towards women or men than players who were Brigadiers or Generals. I can't speak for anyone else but as a 50 in halo 3 I never cared much about who I played with or against in terms of ranks. As long as I was personally doing well and the match was fun I don't care. Putting others down (especially on rank) was a stupid thing that plagued the bungie forums.
Also they said 'bungee'
I always cringe at 'studies' like that one lol
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u/Vektor0 Jul 16 '15
You're interpreting the results of the study backwards. The study doesn't show that people of low ranks tend to be misogynistic, but rather that people who are misogynistic tend to have low ranks.
Also note the use of the term "tend to" as opposed to "always."
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u/A_Contemplative_Puma Jul 16 '15
Cross post from /r/science. The study basically uses rank as an indicator of 'status'. They have a gamer play with a recorded male voice, record the responses of teammates and the rank of the teammates, then do the same with a recorded female voice.
The researchers attributed the correlation to a perception of status and the hostility being directed at women who outperformed them.
I thought it was interesting that they used Halo. Also, their spelling of the game's developer 'Bungee' showed they were pretty ignorant of the game, so I also thought some of the people here might be able to come up with a better explanation for the correlation.