Empathy Inhibits Violent Online Role-Play, Psychopathy Facilitates It

Virtual games, real feelings

Research on video games has found that computer-generated virtual characters evoke social feelings and empathy, and some people actually experience guilt over killing characters that they know are not real (Hartmann et al., 2010). On the other hand, some games, such as World of Warcraft, allow people the option of engaging in virtual combat in which players attempt to kill each other’s characters. Individual differences in empathy may explain why some people find violent actions in virtual games disturbing while others actively enjoy and seek out such experiences.

Many players of violent video games argue, quite reasonably, that the characters and events in the game are not real, so there is no actual harm done in committing “violent” virtual acts. Despite this, even avid gamers have reported feeling uncomfortable with extreme virtual acts that violate social taboos, such as torture, shooting children, and killing innocent bystanders, and may argue that some actions are inappropriate even in a game. A number of studies suggest that even when people know something is just a game, the feelings they experience while playing may be affected by their own levels of empathy (Hartmann et al., 2010). For example, one study assessed the relationship between participants’ disposition to feel empathy for others and how much guilt they experienced after playing a video game in which they were instructed to shoot virtual characters, and how this was affected by moral justification. In one experiment, participants were told either that they were rescuing innocent people from a torture camp and had to shoot terrorists defending it, or that they were the ones defending the camp and had to shoot those who were trying to liberate it. Participants high in empathy felt more guilt about the virtual killing, especially when there was a lack of justification for the violence (e.g., defending the torture camp) than when they were justified by rescuing innocent people. On the other hand, people low in empathy did not feel guilty either way.

Source: Thomas Budach/ Pixabay

In-game preferences reflect one’s personality

People with psychopathic traits, such as callousness, manipulative, recklessness, and impulsivity, are noted for their lack of empathic concern for others and even for sadistic enjoyment of inflicting suffering. Hence, they seem more likely to enjoy virtual violence rather than feeling remorse for it. A study on players of a popular multi-player online role-playing game suggests that this is indeed the case (Worth and Book, 2014). As I noted in a previous post, a study on World of Warcraft players found that the activities they engaged in most frequently reflected their personality traits (Yee et al., 2011). That study assessed traits from the well-known Big Five model of personality but did not assess psychopathy as such.

Another study on players of this same game (Worth and Book, 2014) assessed players’ traits using the HEXACO, an alternative model that proposes six major factors of personality traits: honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. Additionally, they assessed psychopathy using a scale that includes four specific factors of interpersonal manipulation, callous affect, erratic lifestyle, and criminal tendencies. Players were asked about their preferences for a range of activities that can be performed in the game, which they classified into six categories of player vs. player (players attack and attempt to kill each other’s characters), social player-versus-environment (working with other players to progress through the game and to socialize), working (focus on achieving goals, improving your character’s reputation, making things, etc.), helping (assisting others, healing, giving advice), immersion (focus on role-playing and developing character history and personality), and core content (leveling up, fighting monsters, questing).

Psychopaths at play

Source: Artie_Navarre/ Pixabay

Much like in the previous study (Yee et al. 2011) I examined, Worth and Book’s study generally found that the types of activities players preferred were ones that reflected their personalities. For example, extraverted and agreeable players generally preferred social player-versus-environment, conscientious players tended to focus particularly on working, while players high in openness to experience were particularly interested in the immersion aspect. Particularly striking was that preference for player vs. player action was positively associated with all four of the psychopathy traits and negatively associated with honesty-humility, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

It is worth noting that the items assessing player vs. player included not only more socially accepted aspects of play such as fighting players of opposite factions and competing in battlegrounds, which conceivably could be regarded as more “justifiable” forms of combat – but also tactics that, while allowed, are considered dishonourable, such as ganging up on players of lower levels who are therefore unable to defend themselves, “corpse camping” (waiting for a player character who has been killed to respawn so that you can immediately kill them again, depriving them of the chance to play), and stealing kills (and the associated rewards) from other players.

This suggests that players who enjoy these activities tend to be dishonest, callous, manipulative, reckless, impulsive, and even have criminal tendencies. (Although to be fair, this would not apply to all such players.) Conversely, players who were high in callous affect (which is particularly associated with lack of empathy, remorse, or guilt) tended to be less interested in other aspects of the game, as this trait was the only one to be negatively associated with all five of the other categories of game-play (i.e. other than player vs. player) assessed in this study. This suggests that players with callous traits are mainly focused on slaughtering other player characters and much less interested in such things as role-playing, exploring the virtual world, or completing quests.

This accords with previous findings that players who are high in traits associated with morality, such as agreeableness and conscientiousness, tend to be less interested in violent combat and focus more on non-combat achievements and character development (Yee et al. 2011). Furthermore, it also accords with a suggestion by Hartmann et al. (2010) that high empathy may inhibit “violent” virtual behaviour, especially if it is seen as unjustified, while lack of empathy facilitates it, even when unjustifiable.

However, player vs. player action differs in an important way from shooting computer-controlled characters (as in the study by Hartmann et al.), in that the characters who are killed are controlled by real people. Hence, people with psychopathic traits might take particularly sadistic enjoyment in such actions, knowing that they affect real people. Conversely, people high in prosocial traits such as honesty-humility, agreeableness, and conscientiousness might find this aspect particularly aversive because of empathy for other players. It would therefore be interesting for future studies to compare whether engaging in “violent” virtual activities against characters controlled by people elicits a stronger visceral response than computer-generated characters who could be considered less “real.”