Conditioned To Kill?

[Kevin_Lowe]

I'd just like to say that Earthborn got it right in my opinion.

I don't find it credible that training people to mouse over a target and click, or auto-target something and hit the fire button, will make it psychologically easier for them to fire a real weapon at a real human.

I do find it credible that training people to rapidly pick off moving, humanoid targets using a life-size plastic gun with (token) recoil could do so though.

I believe I also heard about the case Krazychemist mentioned, where a school shooter shot eight students in the head with a handgun in rapid succession. To the best of my knowledge, that's not how anyone is trained to shoot a handgun either for target practise or for killing people. It is how you maximise your score in Time Crisis though. Whether or not Time Crisis or a similar game helped that shooter overcome their inhibitions against killing, I suspect it helped them hone their accuracy to a lethal level.

(I was a bit good at Time Crisis back in the day, I could finish it most of the time on a single credit. It was a great game. I'd like to think it's just harmless fun, but I'm honestly not sure).

 

[krazyKemist]

Explain?

The dehumanisation thing appears to play a part, but doesn't appear to be fundamental. The enemy were dehumanised in Napoleonic Wars. It didn't work. The enemy were dehumanised in World War Two, it didn't work.

-Gumboot

I'm beginning to see your point a little better (I will read the book... When I get time, that is. It looks very interesting). I guess it's not fundamental for warrior societies, but it may play a much greater role for people like us whom have been raised "peacefully".

Dehumanization is probably easier to obtain when the ennemy is of a different culture, for obvious reasons (is this examined in the book ?). It may also fail utterly, because the monster you're creating may not be believable. It's very difficult to know the extent to which the allied soldiers (or those of the napoleonic wars) subscribed to the image of the ennemy thrust upon them (at least some of it is propaganda) or tried to build for themselves. Just how much dehumanization can you obtain when the ennemy has too much in common with you ?

the Kemist

 

[krazyKemist]

I like what Bikewater said.

The thing I had in mind about social conditionning against killing had to do with how our culture holds every human life sacred, while some others don't. Killing another human is thus taboo, as is incest, because it produces unfit babies. Other societies, mostly in the past (I'm thinking about some royal dynasties here, my history's a little foggy) didn't have that incest taboo, or as strong an intimation not to kill. A child born handicapped was summarily killed. In our society, killing children is the worst possible murder you can commit.

But then it could also be that way: a biological mechanism against us killing each other may vary in strenght from person to person.

We live in a society where killing is punished severely (because of the value we give to a human life), and not required of most people. What would be the reproductive success then of the "bloodthirsthy" type in peaceful society ?

the Kemist

 

[Gurdur]

The point is not that they kill animals of another species. The point is that they don't kill animals of the same species. Thus the reason for primarily citing predators - because it's already established that there is a strong killer instinct. I'm not sure how looking at animals already predisposed to not killing would be helpful.

Gumboot, before saying that, you might like to read the book by Robert O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression. Looking at fighting herbivores as compared to carnivores has far more relevance to types of human warfare (and the underlying biological tendencies too) than you suppose.

O'Connell's book is necessary to round out Grossman, and is an excellent book in its own right (as well as giving you lists of other sources to look up), and O'Connell's other books are good value too.
____________________

Doesn't this seem to be a western cultural trait?

In view of the fact that sheer casualty rates give Western lands the prize of doing the most killing over the last 150 years, that is an extremely dubious assumption. There is a great deal of other evidence too to show your assertion wrong.

All it took to defeat a biological resistence to killing were a few radio shows...

That is simply not true, and indicates an ignorance of Rwandan conditions leading up to the genocide there.

How can such a mass hysteria, turning neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, gather such momentum if there is an actual biological inhibition against killing your own species ?

Try:
competing, opposed evolutionarily-inbuilt tendencies
& differing reactions to differing conditions.
They exist.

 

[gumboot]

Random thought, did the author also research conditioning to die? I know this was one of the biggest shocks to the US forces encountering the Japanese in the Pacific Arena during WWII.

What do you mean?

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

As mentioned, there are cases of individuals who even in the extremis of personal combat found it difficult or impossible to engage the enemy.
(I wonder how much of this might be attributed to simple psychological shutdown rather than a disinclination to kill?)

I think you missed the significance of the research. It wasn't "cases of individuals" it was a case of the vast overwhelming majority of people. Psychological shut down - call it "shell shock", "PTSD", "Combat fatigue", whatever, is CAUSED by the resistance to killing.

Still, as I maintain, we have a long history of a goodly percentage of soldiers rather lustily engaging in slaughter.

Except the entire point of the research is that we don't. That's a myth. I hope now you appreciate the significance of the argument (whether right or wrong).

In the present case of US forces, we are looking at a volunteer army. I have no opinion on the overall motivations for young men joining the Army, but I'm inclined to think that the vast majority of individuals entering the military during a time of war must think that there's a good chance they will be involved in combat. Might these individuals (as opposed to WWI-II conscripts) tend to come more from the "kill" end of the bell-curve?

Most current American soldiers seem to join because they "didn't have many options". Some certainly join specifically because they want to "make a kill" but I would imagine these would be a tiny fraction, and they tend to congregate in special forces units and as snipers. Apparantly.

What's more important is the Army's specific conditioning techniques worked to turn ANYONE into a killer. WW2 was a conscript army, and most people would not fire - even when their own survival depended on it.

Vietnam was also a conscript army, but a conditioned one, and virtually all soldiers would fire at the enemy.

Our ancestors were fairly successful at perpetrating violence and killing; I don't think this can be denied.

I really wish people would stop lumping violence and killing in together. The entire premise of the book is the anti-killing mechanism is quite distinct to killing only. Not violence. Violence can be attributed to the posture-submit response. Intentional killing cannot. That's flight-fight. Two entirely different response mechanisms.

And the research in the book does provide a legitimate argument for denying that our ancestors were successful at killing.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

I'm beginning to see your point a little better (I will read the book... When I get time, that is. It looks very interesting). I guess it's not fundamental for warrior societies, but it may play a much greater role for people like us whom have been raised "peacefully".

Yes, I would tend to argue that our society has developed a culture that emphasises the shared humanity of others. I think dehumanisation of "others" is probably the default status.

Once you're sharing the same culture, same religion, same values, fight the same way, and your soldiers are equipped with very similar weapons and uniforms, it's much easier for the soldier to empathise with their enemy.

At the beginning of the book Grossman also talks about the way denial of death may have an influence, and relates it to sex.

Throughout medieval society, family and community groups were very transparent. Close communities and communal living ensured that everyone knew what was happening in each other's house. As a result, serious sexual depravation was quite rare. If a villager molested his daughter, the other villagers knew about it. Hiding such activity was very difficult. Likewise, children, from an early age, were exposed to their parents have sex because everyone slept in the same room.

With increased urbanisation, families moved into private houses and children had private rooms. Everything became much easier to hide. Cases of sexual deviancy sky-rocketed, especially child-related. The notion of "what a man does in his own house is his business" arose. We're dealing with that now, because we have got over our notion that sex is a private thing you don't discuss.

The same pattern follows with killing. Death was a part of every day life. If you needed meat, you had to kill an animal yourself. Rituals developed around this, in which the life of the animal was respected. Children were exposed to proper treatment of killing and death from an early age.

But now, we deny it. Even funerals are a clean septic affair. Many people never actually see someone die (or even a dead body) until well into adulthood (or never!). Death is not talked about. Our meat is pre-packaged in the supermarket. Society tries to protect children from the reality that killing plays a fundamental part in our society. We're essentially denying that killing and death are both fundamental parts of society, just as our recent ancestors tried to deny sex was a fundamental part of society. Killing has become our dirty little secret. We send soldiers to fight wars to protect us, and when we come back we don't want to hear what they did. Better not to talk about it.

[derail] As an aside, as a child my father took me each year to ANZAC Day ceremonies, and I had the good fortune of meeting several WWI veterans before they all died. Being the wide-eyed little tyke I was, I innocently asked them about fighting and war and killing. They were all too happy to recount their experiences to an eight year old. Thus I was a little shocked when I grew up and started studied such topics, to learn that the socially accepted norm was that these soldiers didn't want to talk about it, and everyone had kept quiet about it when the soldiers returned.

The reality is, not only did they want to talk about it, they needed to. And us civilians wouldn't let them. We sacrificed their psychological well being for our own peace of mind.[/derail]

Dehumanization is probably easier to obtain when the ennemy is of a different culture, for obvious reasons (is this examined in the book ?). It may also fail utterly, because the monster you're creating may not be believable.

Dehumanisation is a powerful tool for temporarily overcoming the resistance to killing. But it has consequences. Soldiers who continue to fight until very close range, and then surrender have less than a 50/50 chance of being spared. In order to accept a surrender, you have to go from totally dehumanising your enemy and trying to kill them, to suddenly recognising their shared humanity with you, and protecting them. That's an enormous change to make in a split second, in the heat of battle, with your dead comrads around you.

And indeed, the laws and values of war reinforce this notion that killing people who surrender at the last moment is acceptable and right. That's the military trying the rationalise their actions of killing a fellow human after the fact.

At long range, of course, as you make the attack, the enemy is easy to dehumanise. Once you get up close the rage at your fallen comrades, the intensity of the charge, and the dehumanisation of the enemy are strong enough for you to kill your opponent as he throws down his weapons and surrenders. But then after the fact the humanity of your victim is undeniable, and the psychological impact is harsh. you're quite suddenly confronted with the clear fact that your dehumanisation of the enemy is a lie.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

Gumboot, before saying that, you might like to read the book by Robert O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression.

Thanks, I'll check that out.

-Gumboot

 

[Bikewer]

Just banged this out at work:


Early on in this thread, mention was made of the Army’s rifle-training method involving shooting at featureless silhouette targets which obediently fall down on being hit. This was cited as a desensitization tool, as I recall.

I entered the army back in 1964, when this then-new training method, dubbed “Trainfire”, was being implemented. Prior to this, the standard training method for rifle shooting was the time-honored shooting at paper bull’s-eye targets at fixed ranges. (Watch Sergeant York sometime for an accurate depiction of this method.)

At the time, even though I was of rather tender years, I was quite the firearms enthusiast and read extensively in the firearms press available at the time. I had joined the NRA, and subscribed to that organization’s official organ, The American Rifleman. This was considered to be a rather prestigious publication in the field at the time, and often had scholarly articles on military weapons, training, and so forth.
I had read articles in these various publications about “Trainfire”, and had some idea what to expect when I was actually issued a rifle….

In all the reading I had done prior to joining the army, no one had ever mentioned Trainfire as a desensitization tool. Instead, it was portrayed as a more realistic and efficient training device. The enemy, it was noted, often appeared as only a shadowy silhouette, and the trainee was taught to fire at “center-of-mass”. Ranges for the pop-up targets were unpredictable, again as might well occur in combat. The fact that the target fell over when hit simply meant that no extensive system of spotters was needed. It didn’t matter where you hit the target, as long as you hit it the thing would fall. A wounding hit was worth as much as a “killing” hit.
(the military often points out that it’s desirable to wound the enemy, who must expend resources to care for the wounded soldier)
In short, the idea was to expose the trainee to conditions more similar to what he might experience in combat. If this is intended to overcome a disinclination to kill, I never heard it mentioned.
True, in some shadowy back-room of the Pentagon, government psychologists may well have been whispering this claim into the ears of army generals, but I never heard any of the pundits mention it.

We also mentioned the notion of FPS-genre video games “training” individuals to do things like “shoot for the head”, which is often rewarded in such games.
However, the action of positioning a cursor on a particular group of pixels and left-clicking your mouse is about as analogous to actual shooting as it is to actually swinging a baseball bat or any other physical activity. In other words, not at all.
Mastering combat shooting is a difficult discipline, and requires the same sort of training and constant reinforcement as any other physical activity.

The deranged mass-murderers mentioned are not engaging in combat shooting; they are engaging in execution. The normal reaction displayed by the victims include hiding, cowering, or pleading; only very rarely do they actively resist the shooter. The mental state of these individuals (the shooters, that is) is a matter of speculation; they rarely survive.
Individuals involved in actual combat situations display a range of well-studied psychological phenomenon; including tunnel vision, auditory blockage, and other things which may either help or inhibit their activities.

 

[Corsair 115]

WW2 was a conscript army, and most people would not fire - even when their own survival depended on it.

The American army might have been a conscripted one, but the Canadian army in WWII wasn't. There was conscription, but you couldn't be sent to a combat zone unless you volunteered to do so (except for a very short period late in the war involving a few hundred conscripts).

Which leads me to my question: how much of Grossman's book deals with the American military experience as opposed to the military experiences of other countries? I'm wondering if the cultures and attitudes of different nations plays a role in what you're discussing.

 

[Hokulele]

Random thought, did the author also research conditioning to die? I know this was one of the biggest shocks to the US forces encountering the Japanese in the Pacific Arena during WWII.

What do you mean?

-Gumboot

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound cryptic, but your discussion of conditioning with the intent to kill made me start to think about the other side of the coin. I remember stories my grandmother told me about soldiers in WWII from the Japanese side (my mother is first generation Japanese).

If it is extremely difficult to kill someone at close quarters for innate reasons, would one of those reasons have to do with being aware of the odds of being killed in return? Would suppressing the fear of dying also help remove barriers to being willing to kill? If this is too much of derail, feel free to ignore it.

 

[gumboot]

In all the reading I had done prior to joining the army, no one had ever mentioned Trainfire as a desensitization tool. Instead, it was portrayed as a more realistic and efficient training device. The enemy, it was noted, often appeared as only a shadowy silhouette, and the trainee was taught to fire at “center-of-mass”. Ranges for the pop-up targets were unpredictable, again as might well occur in combat. The fact that the target fell over when hit simply meant that no extensive system of spotters was needed.

Were you aware that these methods were implemented in direct response to Marshall's findings in WW2 that most soldiers would not shoot at the enemy? Because they might not have told soldiers why this was being done, but that is why it was done.

One of the motivations for Grossman in writing his book was that, despite the importance of this matter for the army, and despite their concerted efforts to address it, it's not openly talked about - even in military circles.

Grossman talked to numerous WW2 officers who talked of how, before going to war, other veterans had quietly told them to expect most of their men would not fire. Dozens of officers expressed frustration that the military had never told them how to make their men fire at the enemy.

We also mentioned the notion of FPS-genre video games “training” individuals to do things like “shoot for the head”, which is often rewarded in such games.
However, the action of positioning a cursor on a particular group of pixels and left-clicking your mouse is about as analogous to actual shooting as it is to actually swinging a baseball bat or any other physical activity. In other words, not at all.

Psychologically speaking, however, picking up a toy gun and shooting at pixels on a screen that resemble people is no different to picking up a real rifle and shooting at targets that resemble people.

Mastering combat shooting is a difficult discipline, and requires the same sort of training and constant reinforcement as any other physical activity.

You're talking about technical proficiency. That's not what this is about.

The deranged mass-murderers mentioned are not engaging in combat shooting; they are engaging in execution.

Killing is killing.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

The American army might have been a conscripted one, but the Canadian army in WWII wasn't. There was conscription, but you couldn't be sent to a combat zone unless you volunteered to do so (except for a very short period late in the war involving a few hundred conscripts).

Which leads me to my question: how much of Grossman's book deals with the American military experience as opposed to the military experiences of other countries? I'm wondering if the cultures and attitudes of different nations plays a role in what you're discussing.

Well I've given a pretty good summary of the variety of cultures and periods of time that Grossman talks about. He does cite some examples of particular Canadian soldiers in the book, from memory, but I don't recall the specifics.

The point of the US army being conscripted is that someone suggested the poor firing rates in WW2 were because it was a conscripted army, so it represented everyone, not just those who wanted to fight and shoot. If this were true, the same would be true of Vietnam, which was also a conscripted army. But it wasn't.

Marshall's WW2 research focused on American soldiers, however by extrapolation one can conclude that all forces were about the same.

If Americans are shooting at a rate of about 20%, but enemy forces do not have the same resistance, enemy units of comparable size will be able to produce 5x the firepower. American units would be totally overwhelmed. That's not what happened. All evidence suggests by and large things were pretty even in WW2.

Likewise, if the Germans, Japanese, and Italians are not producing 100% firing rates, but other non-American allies were, in these engagements the allied forces would totally overwhelm the axis forces. Again, this didn't happen.

If firing rates for all forces were comparable, and there is definitive data to suggest one particular country had a poor firing rate, it's reasonable to conclude that all forces had a poor firing rate.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

If it is extremely difficult to kill someone at close quarters for innate reasons, would one of those reasons have to do with being aware of the odds of being killed in return? Would suppressing the fear of dying also help remove barriers to being willing to kill? If this is too much of derail, feel free to ignore it.

Ah right, I got ya.

Well this is actually the first interesting point Grossman makes in his book. He starts by basically redefining post traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD was first identified in WWI and identified as "Shell Shock". Later it was renamed "Combat Stress Reaction" and later it was included as part as "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" which was also applied to the civilian world and victims of violent assaults etc.

The long held belief is that soldiers in combat - under constant threat of death, suffer enormous stress which ultimately reduces them to a quivering wreck (Grossman's book cites the WW2 research of Swank and Marchand which found that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98% of surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties. They also concluded the 2% that were unaffected had aggressive psychopathic personalities.).

It was this long held belief that naturally led to the disorder being applied equally to victims of violent crime.

Grossman flips this argument on its head. He argues these psychological traumas are not a result of being exposed to the risk of death, but being continually in an environment where one is called on to kill others.

He cites a great deal of evidence in support - for example soldiers who did not do any killing, such as combat medics - did not have the same high rates of psychological trauma. Civilians exposed to attack did not suffer (the rates of psychological trauma in London civilians during the Blitz was the same level as during peacetime). Soldiers protected by distance from their enemy (either via distance or technology) such as those using crewed weapons, pilots, artillery operators, and crews of ships did not suffer the same rates of psychological trauma.

The same common denominator was that the people suffering high psychological casualties were the ones called on to personally and individually kill fellow humans at short range.

In addition, soldiers he talked to (and those interviewed in numerous studies) rarely, if ever cited fear of death as their greatest fear on the battlefield. Overwhelmingly, the most common fear was that they would not do their job properly, and would let their comrades down. Soldiers either shot at the enemy, and were driven mad by the guilt of killing another, or didn't shoot, and were driven mad by the guilt at letting their comrades down.

What, to me, is interesting about this, is it means the PTSD suffered by soldiers in war is totally different to the trauma suffered by victims of assault, rape, etc.

-Gumboot

 

[Bikewer]

I confess still to a degree of skepticism, not of phenomena itself (that is, the disinclination to kill) but rather it's extent.
One wonders, if it's as widespread amongst the various militaries of the world (and history), how we much were able to kill anyone at all....

We do have all those historical battles with casualties running in the many thousands (or hundreds of thousands), many killed in very intimate ways indeed. Just recently archaeologists in Europe unearthed a mass burial site from some ancient war or other, and all the remains bore the signs of close-up and personal combat. (smashed skulls being popular).

I early on mentioned Chuck Yeager's "10 percent" comment about fighter pilots. If my hypothesis about the percentage of the populace having little disinclination to kill is correct, then that 10 percent (or whatever figure it might be...) would have to be effective all out of proportion of their numbers.

In support of Grossman's ideas, however, I might concede the actions of the victims of a number of well-publicized mass murders. I can think of several instances where comparatively large numbers of "victims" were confronted by a single killer, who could have been easily overwhelmed by concerted action on the part of the crowd.
Yet very rarely does this happen. Instead, we see the behaviors I listed earlier.

 

[osmosis]

In his book he establishes a number of key points:

1. Human beings have a basic biological resistance to killing other human beings, sort of like a safeguard.

I disagree right from point 1. While the majority of humans may have a learned/social resistance to murder, it's not biological. It ain't in our genes.

 

[krazyKemist]

The same pattern follows with killing. Death was a part of every day life. If you needed meat, you had to kill an animal yourself. Rituals developed around this, in which the life of the animal was respected. Children were exposed to proper treatment of killing and death from an early age.

But now, we deny it. Even funerals are a clean septic affair. Many people never actually see someone die (or even a dead body) until well into adulthood (or never!). Death is not talked about. Our meat is pre-packaged in the supermarket. Society tries to protect children from the reality that killing plays a fundamental part in our society. We're essentially denying that killing and death are both fundamental parts of society, just as our recent ancestors tried to deny sex was a fundamental part of society. Killing has become our dirty little secret. We send soldiers to fight wars to protect us, and when we come back we don't want to hear what they did. Better not to talk about it.

-Gumboot

Funnily I had this type of discussion once with a bunch of friends after a car accident (speeding + alcohol + inexperience = real bad combination) which killed a teenager of the local high school. The government paid for an additional staff of psychologists to allow all the kids to "consult" since they were considered "in shock" after the death of their comrade (yeah, they were so much in shock that the kid's best friend broke through my uncle's fence to retrieve the car's modified engine from the wreck ).

Even these almost grown-up kids are treated as if they can't withstand the idea of death (but that may be a unique feature to our government ). On the day they turn 18, they should magically have aquired maturity and be able to deal with everything.

I'm convinced that this too, plays a role in high school shootings. FPS in which you are repeatedly rewarded for killing, and an absence of actual exposure to death and its meaning during childhood, for fear of "traumatising" children. Bad combination.

the Kemist

 

[The Atheist]

The same common denominator was that the people suffering high psychological casualties were the ones called on to personally and individually kill fellow humans at short range.

In addition, soldiers he talked to (and those interviewed in numerous studies) rarely, if ever cited fear of death as their greatest fear on the battlefield. Overwhelmingly, the most common fear was that they would not do their job properly, and would let their comrades down. Soldiers either shot at the enemy, and were driven mad by the guilt of killing another, or didn't shoot, and were driven mad by the guilt at letting their comrades down.

What, to me, is interesting about this, is it means the PTSD suffered by soldiers in war is totally different to the trauma suffered by victims of assault, rape, etc.

-Gumboot

You're really starting to pique my interest now - I'm a WWII buff and I have a current fictional scenario involving PTSD and soldiers returning from Iraq.

Couple of other thoughts to toss in the mix which support your hypothesis about PTSD and its victims.

I am working from anecdotal evidence as I tend to read biographies of particpants (and talk to participants) than read psychological studies. One glaring example springs to mind is the Royal Merchant Navy. Here is a group of blokes who risked their lives, every single day, for weeks on end, but who had no way of shooting back.

If threat is the cause of PTSD, then you'd expect that it would have been almost universal in survivors of the Atlantic War, but it is demonstrably not. I have no stats on how many cases of PTSD came out of the Merchant Navy, but I know and have known, many active participants in that war and PTSD is not somthing which springs to mind. Some of these people were close enough to me that they would have spoken of the stresses and I am the kind of nosy bastard that asks those questions. Nor is it in U-Boat survivors. While U-Boat crews were killing, the majority of crews were pretty uninvolved in the actual killing process and far removed from the action.

On the other hand, WWI pilots, where the real levels of PTSD probably never became apparent because the death-rate was so high, may have had so much stress precisely because the killing was so personal. To an outside observer, it may seem quite impersonal, but sending a fellow pilot into a spin and watching him crash is actually more personal than shooting someone else at 500 yards, in my opinion.

We do have all those historical battles with casualties running in the many thousands (or hundreds of thousands), many killed in very intimate ways indeed. Just recently archaeologists in Europe unearthed a mass burial site from some ancient war or other, and all the remains bore the signs of close-up and personal combat. (smashed skulls being popular).

I believe bashing the skull in with a club was a popular way of dealing with POWs in those days, in some parts. It is about as personal as it gets, and similar to the Dyaks. Maybe these are competing evolutionary traits we're developing or losing? On one side, kill all the males to preserve the genes, on the other, don't kill at all. Luckily, there appear to be a lot more of the non-killing than the killing so far.

Well, mass-killings, who could pass the Holocaust itself? How does that fit into the scenario? Were all SS members involved psychopathic? Or had the de-humanisation process been so accepted that it was no different to killing cows?

 

[The Atheist]

I disagree right from point 1. While the majority of humans may have a learned/social resistance to murder, it's not biological. It ain't in our genes.

Got anything to back that up with, or just opinion? Also, the premise, I believe talks about "killing" rather than "murder". The two are quite different.

 

[Meadmaker]

I wonder if the low firing rate in WWII had more to do with the nature of the warfare than anything else. There was a lot of artillery involved, and keeping your head down was a good survival tactic. The officers could make you move forward, but they couldn't make you keep your head up long enough to aim.

It just seems unlikely to me that most people in that situation just wouldn't fire, and it seems even less likely that the phenomenon would be across the board equally in the different armies.

It also seems almost impossible to think that when the Redcoats and the Rebels squared off, that those people weren't shooting their muskets, or were deliberately missing. I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem so.

Still, I think there is something to the study. I think there is a powerful aversion to killing, and I think violent video games or other forms of simulated combat might "help" overcome it. The more realistic, the better. On the other hand, I don't think all this simulated violence makes anyone want to kill, but if they have that inclination, it might wear down that last line of defense.