CHAPTER 6
. . . Have Violent Ends: Violent Games and Enhanced Aggression
Martin Lloyd
“We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.”
—author Tom Bissell1
“Winning doesn’t mean anything unless someone else loses, which means you’re here to be the loser.”
—The Man in Black2
Change over the course of life can be driven by many things. One such engine of change is the subject of the first season of Westworld when two of the stories appear to be told about different men who visit the park, one in a black hat and one in white. One story tells of the Man in Black, ruthless, brutal, and with little compunction about violence to either host or human. The other tells of William, squeamish, morally upright, and a romantic. But these are not two stories. Rather, the Man in Black is an older William, with very different attitudes. A growing body of psychological research may shed some light on how the setting of Westworld itself may have contributed to this stark transformation.
Zero to (Anti-)Hero
William’s journey to become the Man in Black is marked by more than just a moral change. He also seems to become increasingly competent at playing the game that Westworld offers. He begins as a novice, seemingly uncomfortable with the game’s violent activities. Apparently rather quickly, he rises to become a master gamer, easily dismembering an entire force of Confederados in the course of a night and even overpowering his human future brother-in-law, not subject to the same limitations as the hosts.4 How does someone who has not obviously displayed any special talent for the game suddenly become a master player? His impressive improvement in skill may actually have the same root cause as his mounting insensitivity to violence.
A study of German, male college students found that, among novice gamers, playing a more violent version of a game was associated with better performance.5 Essentially, those playing a nonviolent version of a game showed statistically worse performance than those playing violent versions, as measured by correctly clicking on tar–gets and not clicking on non-targets. According to the study’s author, violent acts appeared to enhance enjoyment of the game, leading to an increase in performance.
With this in mind, it is not necessarily unsurprising that William’s performance in Westworld would improve substantially once he embraced the violent aspects of the game. Those who enjoy the violence lose inhibitions against aggression and ultimately become better gamers.
Numerous studies have examined a phenomenon called desensitization to violence and its correlate effects on aggression. Desensitization, simply, is a loss of emotional reaction,3 the expectation being that individuals exposed to excessive violence will eventually lose their natural emotional reactions to violence. This can have a number of effects, possibly including increased aggression. These phenomena have traditionally been studied in terms of exposure to television and other media violence. More recently, however, a growing body of literature has examined the effects of something not dissimilar to the various delights offered at Westworld: violent video games. This body of research can help explain both the mechanisms by which Westworld changes its guests, as well as the ultimate effects of walking Westworld’s maze.
What Drives Change?
The idea that exposure to simulated violence can increase aggression or lead to desensitization to real-world violence is hardly a new one. Researchers have studied the effects of television violence for decades. The findings of these studies have generally indicated exposure to violent television, at least among males, leads to decreased emotional reactions to real-world violence.6 Of course, the experience of being a guest at Westworld is substantially different than watching television. The guests do not just observe violence, they participate in it. While there are few, if any, real-world experiences that can match the immersiveness, realism, and ability to participate in supposedly consequence-free violence that Westworld offers, the park does have a number of parallels to modern video games. The guest and gamer both have control of their actions, can choose to act violently (and may even be rewarded for it), and can see the effects of their violence on its simulated recipients. Studies have generally found an association between violent gaming and various aspects of real-world violence. This can most readily be demonstrated by meta-analyses, studies that combine multiple, preexisting studies in order to greatly increase sample size and, thus, statistical power. Notably, one such meta-analysis, combining studies from North America, Europe, and Asia, found exposure to violent games to be significantly associated with increases in aggressive thought and behavior, as well as decreased empathy and prosocial behavior (i.e., behavior that helps others). Gender did not appear to influence susceptibility to these effects, and individuals from Western cultures were only slightly more susceptible than those from Eastern cultures.7 The American Psychological Association’s (APA) Task Force on Media Violence conducted an updated meta-analysis, resulting in similar findings, indicating these are stable effects.8 The Westworld experience is undeniably a violent game, which may be expected to have similar effects to modern violent video games. There are certain features of the park, however, that make these effects even more likely.
All violent games are not equal. Some games have features that increase the games’ aggression-enhancing effects. While the Westworld experience is, in many ways, not the equal of a modern video game, it does share many of these features. One of the major factors that has been found to increase the violent effects of gaming is realism. In general, the more realistic the experience, the more likely there are to be violent results, and the realism at Westworld is so far beyond modern video games that guests cannot always tell what is real and what is produced for their entertainment. As one host even asks William, in response to his uncertainty, “If you can’t tell the difference, does it matter if I’m real or not?”9 In video games, realism can mean many things. For example, realism has been examined as a function of screen size, with larger screens thought to increase the gamer’s attention to visual detail and subjective sense of realism. This in turn leads to greater feelings of physical aggression. Gamers playing a violent game on a 42-inch screen reported significantly greater feelings of physical aggression than those playing the same game on a 27-inch screen.10 The participants at Westworld obviously do not need screens, but the entirety of their environment essentially functions as one massive screen.
Another aspect of realism involves the accuracy of the controller. Gamers using a replica gun reported a higher state of physical aggression than those using a mouse.11 Among players using replica guns, the degree of naturalness, or how much using the controller reminds the gamer of using a real gun, also has an effect. Specifically, gamers using more natural controllers later showed a greater tendency toward violent thoughts, as measured by generating more violent words on a word completion task.12 At Westworld, the guests use the most natural controllers of all, actual guns. The use of these real guns should feel completely natural to the guests, and the real guns will contribute another layer of realism: When shot, the hosts bleed. Even the guests can experience mirror consequences from the guns; as Logan notes, “It wouldn’t be much of a game if they can’t shoot back.”13 In video games, there is a notable difference between seeing blood and not seeing blood as a consequence of violence. Gamers who see blood during a game become more verbally aggressive than those who do not, especially among those with a preexisting tendency to be hostile.14 Here, the sight of blood actually seems to be rewarding in some way, thus increasing the aggressive behavior.
Realism is not the only factor that has been found to increase aggression among gamers. Another variable linked to these outcomes is immersiveness, or one’s sense of involvement in a game (i.e., the degree to which the gamer feels he or she is “in” the game15). Currently, the most immersive gaming experiences are those known as Immersive Virtual Environments (IVE) or “virtual reality,” platforms in which the gamer views a 360 degree environment through a head-mounted display, while the gamer’s body movements are used to control character movements. Given the newness and still limited availability of these platforms, studies on IVEs remain relatively rare. Nonetheless, existing studies have found those playing violent games in an IVE report greater levels of aggressive feelings than those playing similarly violent games on traditional platforms (e.g., with a gaming system and television).16 In addition to their self-reported aggression, players on IVEs also showed greater physiological markers (e.g., increased heart rate) of a sense of threat during their gaming sessions.17
The mechanism by which immersiveness leads to greater aggressive feelings has been thought to involve media schema, or the sense that what one is experiencing is not reality. The better the simulation in a game, the less likely the player is to use a media schema, and IVEs tend to better simulate reality.18 The experience at Westworld is not an IVE. Notably, it does not require a headset, and the guest experiences the park using all five sensory modalities, instead of just vision and hearing. It is, therefore, a far more immersive simulation than any IVE available today, even appealing to Logan, who finds himself bored with conventional virtual reality.19 It thus stands to reason that the aggressive effects found in today’s IVEs would be magnified by the park. Indeed, an early meta-analysis on violent gaming found that one factor that significantly added to aggressive effects was the newness of the game, as newer games represented more advanced technology.20 Westworld, of course, is a technology far beyond today’s video games or IVEs.
The experience at the park is as much a story as it is a game, much like many modern video games. The Man in Black even notes, “This whole world is a story.”21 With narrative complexity comes identification with character. When gamers identify with their violent characters in games, that is, when they wish to be more like the character, they tend to behave more aggressively. This aggression carries over into the real world, as such a gamer is more likely to carry out potentially harmful acts of retaliation.22 This effect, incidentally, is magnified when the games are more realistic and immersive. Thus, William sending his future brother-in-law off into the desert, bound and naked, is arguably predictable in light of the research.23 Additionally, many of the actions carried out by Westworld’s guests would hardly be considered moral. When video game characters engage in immoral actions, their gamers do show an increase in aggressive behaviors, though they also show increased feelings of guilt.24
Ultimately, that William and the other Westworld guests would become more violent the longer they participate in the park’s narrative is unsurprising in light of the research literature. Westworld perfectly embodies all of the features that seem to lead modern video games to enhance aggression and violence. It is realistic and immersive. Guests use realistic guns, resulting in realistic blood. The narrative, and the nature of the experience, itself, is designed to allow the guests to identify with their characters. In the end, the park is a perfect storm for enhancing aggressive and violent thoughts and feelings, to say nothing of violent behaviors.
The Consequences of Violent Gaming
While the guests’ experiences at Westworld may share many of the elements that lead violent video games to enhance aggression, this alone does not say what, if any, lasting effects the guests will take from their experiences. Even with violent video games, there is relatively little evidence of long-term effects on aggression. While the increased aggression is a well-documented and reliable finding, there is some evidence to suggest this outcome actually lasts only a few minutes. At least one study has found that aggressive thoughts and feelings last less than four minutes after a gaming session, while increased heart rate and actual aggressive behavior (e.g., making someone else consume an uncomfortable amount of hot sauce) last perhaps twice that long.25 Thus, it is possible that, while the guests may briefly become more violent, they may not leave the park particularly changed.
Although the most obvious increases in aggression may be short-lived following violent gaming, this is not to say there are not more subtle changes, which could be longer lasting. For example, there do seem to be some more lasting changes in gamers’ ability to recognize certain emotions. College students who spent at least two hours a day playing video games with at least some violent content could recognize facial cues for fear both more quickly and accurately than others, but they were less likely to recognize cues for disgust.26 Additionally, young adults who habitually played violent games showed notably different usage of emotional brain regions than nonviolent gamers, as seen by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In fMRI, strong magnetic fields are used to first map the brain’s structure and then to track the use of oxygen from the blood, which serves as an indicator for activity in specific parts of the brain.27 Specifically, the nonviolent gamers showed significantly greater activation of areas of the brain associated with emotion (e.g., amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex) when playing a violent game than did the violent gamers. In fact, violent gamers showed active suppression of a response in these regions, suggesting long-term desensitization to violent stimuli.28 While violent gamers may show reductions in certain aspects of emotional processing, their memory for emotional events appears to be unaffected.29 Thus, William’s ongoing fixation on his feelings of loss and, presumably, betrayal brought on by Dolores’s rebooting, while he becomes colder and more callous is hardly surprising.
These arguably subtle changes in emotional processing can have fairly substantial effects in the real world. One area in which violent gamers show a specific loss of emotional reactivity is in response to victims of violence. People generally show an involuntary pupil dilation in response to emotional stimuli. Among individuals who have been playing violent games, this pupillary response is significantly decreased when viewing images of victims of violence, especially when shown in a negative context.30 This lack of emotional response to victims is more than just a subtle biological quirk; it can lead to fairly significant real-world consequences. Notably, individuals who have been playing violent games are actually less responsive to people in pain. They take longer to help those in need, rate the experiences of those in need as less serious, and are more likely to ignore cues that others are in distress.31 In short, while the aggressive behaviors that accompany violent gaming may be short lived, there is a more pervasive lack of empathy these gamers develop. The Man in Black demonstrates this indifference to the suffering of others. When informed of a park employee’s real death, he is barely interested, ultimately asking not to be disturbed again while partaking in his vacation.32
Morality and the Man in Black
The older William is a morally complex character. On the one hand, he is willing to torment, perhaps even rape, Dolores,33 someone he once seemingly loved, to say nothing of his treatment of the other hosts. On the other hand, he is also a well-known philanthropist, someone who has apparently done a great deal of good outside the park.34 His role in Westworld’s violent delights may partially explain this dichotomy.
Violent video games can result in changes in moral reasoning. Individuals who played violent video games showed decreased interest in maintaining social norms (e.g., existing social roles and the basic structure of society).35 This does not necessarily seem to describe William well, unless one looks at his search for immortality as disregard for the laws of nature, but it does show games can change moral reasoning.
Changes in moral reasoning wrought by violent games do not appear to be linear, but cyclical, possibly explaining William’s two, very different sides. Gamers who act in a way they perceive as immoral in the game will behave more morally on a subsequent task. After a delay, however, they will revert to more immoral behavior. The opposite is also true.36 Thus, it is not unrealistic for William to have a rebound return to morality when he returns to the real world, followed by later immoral behavior.
Leaving the Park
The Westworld park is, in many ways, a perfect storm of aggression-enhancing factors. All of the elements that make today’s violent video games more likely to foster aggression—immersiveness, realism, and a narrative that facilitates identification with immoral characters—are present in the park and are magnified well beyond anything available in modern video games. These features in modern video games would be likely to lead to increases in aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, at least in the short term. Thus, it is unsurprising that Westworld’s guests would find themselves more and more prone to violence over the course of their stay. That propensity for violence may not be a long-term change, but what does remain is a chilling lack of empathy. They may not become perpetrators of violence when they return to the real world, but the guests at Westworld may well ultimately come to find themselves far emptier than their hosts.
Notes
1. Bissell (2010).
2. Episode 1–2, “Chestnut” (October 9, 2016).
3. Thomas et al. (1977).
4. Episode 1–9, “The Well-Tempered Clavier” (November 27, 2016).
5. Bosche (2009).
6. Thomas et al. (1977).
7. Anderson et al. (2010).
8. Calvert et al. (2017).
9. Episode 1–2, “Chestnut” (October 9, 2016).
10. Kim & Sundar (2013).
11. Kim & Sundar (2013).
12. McGloin et al. (2015).
13. Episode 1–3, “The Stray” (October 16, 2016).
14. Krcmar & Farrar (2009).
15. McGloin et al. (2015).
16. Persky & Blascovich (2007).
17. Persky & Blascovich (2007).
18. IJsselsteijn (2002, cited in Persky & Blascovich, 2007).
19. Episode 2–2, “Reunion” (April 29, 2018).
20. Sherry (2001).
21. Episode 1–4, “Dissonance Theory” (October 23, 2016).
22. Konijn et al. (2007).
23. Episode 1–10, “The Bicameral Mind” (December 4, 2016).
24. Mahood & Hanus (2017).
25. Barlett et al. (2009).
26. Diaz et al. (2016).
27. Buxton (2002).
28. Gentile et al. (2016).
29. Bowen & Spaniol (2011).
30. Arriaga et al. (2015).
31. Bushman & Anderson (2009).
32. Episode 1–9, “The Well-Tempered Clavier” (November 27, 2016).
33. Episode 1–3, “The Stray” (October 16, 2016).
34. Episode 1–8, “Trace Decay” (November 21, 2016).
35. King & Goodfriend (2013).
36. Ellithorpe et al. (2015).