Science Says Sexism in Gaming Might Come from Crappiness at Gaming

Read: Video Games Are Finally, Finally Including More Female Heroes

You know how about a year ago, there was this whole big thing where part of the hardcore gaming community lashed out against some women, and everyone was like "Whoa, what's going on there? Stop it!" And those particular gamers were like "No, you don't understand! We're mad at journalists!" And then most of the internet was like, "Wha?"

Well, science still doesn't know what went down there, but a new study available on Plos One demonstrates that sexist behavior and crappiness at video games might actually be correlated, and there might be a simple evolutionary explanation.

The study by Dr. Michael Kasumovic of the University of New South Wales, and Dr. Jeffrey H. Kuznekoff of Miami University is called "Insights into Sexism: Male Status and Performance Moderates Female-Directed Hostile and Amicable Behavior." Drs. Kuznekoff and Kasumovic used team-based Halo 3 online as a place to study the behavior of anonymous gamers in their natural environment—yes, non-consenting gamers—while they interacted with a female-voiced player.

The scientists dared to wedge a lady-person into a situation where an otherwise male-dominated hierarchy had taken shape on the team, and then measure competence. Then they stacked those numbers up against "positive, negative and neutral statements by a player," about the female in their midst. As a control, results were also measured for a male player in their midst. The comments themselves were analyzed to determine whether they counted as hostile sexism.

The conclusion? It's not exactly "Sexist gamers suck," but that's not far off. Essentially, the data showed that crappy players were more likely to be hostile toward a woman, particularly when they were losing, and that in a similar situation with the male control player, they'd be "submissive."

Skilled gamers, meanwhile, were typically nice to the female player. The study suggests that since the high status of good players is not in jeopardy either way, good players have nothing to gain by being dicks, while poor players are being dicks in order to preserve their status.

Now, it's worth pointing out that it's too soon to call these results totally conclusive when Halo 3 is the only gaming ecosystem that's been tested. Also, the experiment didn't record any data on the gamers' ages, marital statuses, and other demographic information that might be relevant.

It also centered on impulsive utterances, which are one of the faces of sexism, to be sure, but it's not clear what that has to do with the other, more insidious, systematic forms of sexism that may or may not be floating around in the gaming world.

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