Neither written nor verbal consent to participate in this study was collected by the authors specifically because all individuals that participated in the study were anonymous (as players use pseudonyms) and had already agreed to the terms of Xbox Live (which state that conversations can be recorded).
Video Game Used
In multiplayer first-person shooters like Halo 3, teams cooperate to kill members of the opposing team outside of a dedicated storyline such as that seen in a single player campaign within the game. As a result, the multiplayer games can be argued to be direct competitions outside of any sexualized storyline or content as they are only associated with the goal of eliminating opponents. Killing opponents results in a positive outcome for the team, while dying results in a negative outcome. In addition, improved performance within a game allows players to attain higher ranks and improve their skill rating, a long-term measurement of player status (i.e. dominance) that is publicly exhibited. We examine how individuals behave toward a male or female-voiced teammate as a function of positive (number of kills) and negative (number of deaths) player performance, as well as player status (maximum skill achieved).
A secondary benefit of using Halo 3 is that players are covered head-to-toe with armor and identified by armor color, rather than facial features or body type. Additionally, player controlled avatars are not the hypersexualized males normally seen in many other video games, hopefully decreasing the overt sexism seen in most online competitive games and minimizing the effect of the game environment.
Results
We played a total of 163 games of Halo 3 in the two manipulations. We stopped at 163 as this is a substantial time effort. Data could not be analyzed during the experiment as the transcripts needed to be transcribed. Of the 163 games, 82 were in the female manipulation and 81were in the male manipulation and players only spoke within 102 of the games. A total of 189 players spoke in these 102 games; all of them were male. This is not to say that women did not play, just that they did not speak.
...
Since there were a greater number of negative statements within the female manipulation, we examined whether these statements could be considered hostile sexism [32]. Of the 82 players in the female manipulation playing on the same team as the experimental player, only 11 individuals (13%) uttered hostile sexist statements. As a result of this small sample size, we only examined whether the presence of hostile sexist statements was affected by individual performance relative to the experimental player. We found that the presence of sexist statements was not determined by differences in maximum skill achieved (χ2 = 1.70, p = 0.19), the number of deaths (χ2 = 0.57, p = 0.45) or the number of kills (χ2 = 2.25, p = 0.13) relative to the experimental player.
These people are very bad at science and care way too much about their Halo 3 player skill ratings and it's beautiful.
Apart from restructuring the hierarchy, a high status female poses a secondary threat to relatively lower status males: as women are attracted to dominance [13], a high-status female is less likely to find lower-status males attractive. We argue that a secondary benefit of increased female-directed hostility is that it simultaneously decreases a female’s confidence and perception of her self-worth (i.e. negging) while simultaneously increasing the perception of him being a dominant (i.e. socially valuable) mate.
:wtf-am-i-reading:
Although there is no direct evidence in the literature that negative behaviour towards females increases a male’s mating opportunity, our results provide an interesting testable hypothesis requiring further investigation.
the multiplayer games can be argued to be direct competitions outside of any sexualized storyline or content as they are only associated with the goal of eliminating opponents
How can you simultaneously argue that g*mers harassing women is evolutionarily significant, but that there are no sexual undertones to multiplayer? Like, is every little thing significant, or it just games bruh?
The paper has some gems 😂
These people are very bad at science and care way too much about their Halo 3 player skill ratings and it's beautiful.
:wtf-am-i-reading:
Wtf is this paper?
Those are rookie numbers, pay me 5 dollars and hour and I'll get you a bigger sample size.
How can you simultaneously argue that g*mers harassing women is evolutionarily significant, but that there are no sexual undertones to multiplayer? Like, is every little thing significant, or it just games bruh?