Conditioned To Kill?

[gumboot]

Hi Gumboot, I always enjoy your posts. Not sure I buy this argument, though... A few things to consider:

1. If the act of actually shooting someone runs up against psychological safeguards, then it stands to reason that any useful simulant would also run up against them, if perhaps more gently. Many people blanch at the prospect of handling an actual firearm, even if unloaded and with no intention of firing it. But nobody that I am aware of has such feelings about FPS games -- disinterest or distaste, perhaps, but not the same thing at all.

Well it's a good question, but I don't agree. Firstly, I think the dislike of guns is entirely cultural, not biological. I would argue that the same cultural values that make some people dislike firearms intensely makes people dislike FPS computer games intensely - and a lot of people do intensely dislike these games.

Remember when we talk of this resistance to killing we're talking about highly trained soldiers, in actual combat. They know they are expected to kill. They're well passed the mere cultural distaste for violence and killing. Yet even so, at the moment of truth, most do not fire.

Secondly, any simulation does not involve killing someone, and the person partaking in it knows this. Even actual combat soldiers who are not directly engaged against the enemy (pilots, gun crews, etc) rationalise by convincing themselves that "I didn't personally kill that particular enemy" and as a result do not suffer serious psychological trauma.

2. Why single out FPS games alone? Why are regular cops 'n robbers games not equally satisfying to your four conditions above?

The key thing here is we're not talking about desensitisation to violence here. That's an entirely different matter. We're talking specifically about killing. The FPS makes the game character's POV the player's POV. Hence why it's only the FPS that reflects conditioning techniques.

As a personal example, see avatar at left, I am highly involved in the sport of paintball. By your criteria above, it would seem to be an ideal example of such a simulation as you describe, but it is not. There is no evidence linking paintball to homicide. Despite what many think, it is terrible training for would-be militants or actual soldiers. And, like my first point above, I've never run across anyone who had an innate aversion to the markers or even to shooting other people, even those who will run from the mere sight of an actual firearm. First-time players will mark others with total abandon, and their only fear is one of being hit themselves, not vice-versa.

So, what do you think?

Actually I'm glad you brought this up. When I first read Grossman's book, I immediately thought of paintball.

(As an aside I disagree that it's a terrible form of training for soldiers - the New Zealand SAS are considered amongst the best Special Forces units in the world and they regularly use paintball for training)

Paintball appears to offer up the same "simulation" of killing. This would indicate it too should condition people to kill. Of course, it might. Don't make the mistake of carrying the conclusion too far and thinking "conditioned to kill" = "will kill". It's quite possible that every single paintball player in the world is conditioned to kill, but does not kill. The factors that actually cause killing are an entirely different discussion.

When I thought about paintball though, I immediately came up with some problems. The first is repetition. The disabling of the safeguard occurs because of literally thousands of "kills". Soldiers spend days at a time on the shooting range, firing at a continual supply of targets. Likewise, in a single level of an FPS game, lasting a matter of minutes, a player can "kill" hundreds of enemy soldiers. It's important to note that those who occasionally play an FPS here and there possibly would not be conditioned.

In a typical day of playing paintball, you would achieve nowhere near the same level of kills. It's much like hunting - another activity that would clearly replicate the conditioning process. You don't spend six hours achieving "kills" virtually non stop. Over years, conditioning could occur, but a dedicated FPS player could "kill" more enemy in a day than a hunter kills in a lifetime, or a paintball player "kills" in a year.

Another key thing is the instant reward. A key part of the military conditioning is that the targets drop down instantly when hit. The same thing occurs, but more realistically, in an FPS, with the enemy avatar going through some sort of death animation.

When I've played paintball, some people would get into the whole "war" feel of it, and when hit would "play dead". But most people wouldn't. Often if you hit them they laugh, or curse, shout at you, etc. Psychologically it becomes a "hit", not a "kill". (Interestingly, when the military here do paintball wargaming, if you're hit you have to "play dead").

Finally, part of the process is the dehumanising of the enemy. In the military, this is fairly easy. You train to shoot at targets. Once in combat, the enemy then become targets, rather than people.

In an FPS computer game, obviously, you don't interact with the enemy characters. They're dehumanised.

In contrast, most people who play paintball do interact closely with the "enemy". In fact in non competition "do it for fun" paintball, more often than not the "enemy" are your best friends.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

With regards to FPS computer games, the CGI imagery in them is nothing like reality so I rather doubt that these are going to condition anyone to kill either.

But the military conditioning techniques do work, and a target falling down when it is hit is even less like reality than a computer game graphic. What appears to be key is repeatedly simulating the act with appropriate target response, rather than having it look convincingly real.

-Gumboot

 

[krazyKemist]

I don't think a human's resistance to killing is exactly innate/natural. After all, killing a competitor is not something detrimental, and you can observe it quite well in nature. For example, one male may fight to the death against another of the same species over a group of females. In that case, the subject unwilling to kill is pretty unlikely to ever reproduce.

The resistance against killing would rather be a social trait. One that is implanted, knowingly or not by parents in order to enable the child to fit into a 'peaceful' society, meaning one that is not currently expanding. I'm quite sure that children from warlike societies, once adult, don't have that many qualms against killing.

The psychological stress thus comes from a battle against a very strongly implanted parental conditionning.

How do you modify/implant new conditionning ? With rewards/punishments. With repetition. Is a video game that proposes killing, and rewards it, able to modify parental conditionning ? Possible. Especially if the parental conditionning is not that strong to begin with. Or if the person is not all that stable.

the Kemist

 

[Meadmaker]

I think this is a good topic, and I think Grossman is onto something. I hadn't realized that the military specifically developed techniques to deal with this very issue.

I do have a minor quibble.

Roman historic records indicate a specific focus on forcing their soldiers to stab with the weapons rather than use the edge. They also document a primary reason for victory was that their enemies consistently slashed instead of stabbing.

In this case, I think there's an easier explanation. Speaking from some experience with martial arts training, slashing is a lot easier and requires less training than stabbing. You really have to practice to get in a good stab, and if you do it wrong, you are a lot more vulnerable.

 

[R.Mackey]

Well it's a good question, but I don't agree. Firstly, I think the dislike of guns is entirely cultural, not biological. I would argue that the same cultural values that make some people dislike firearms intensely makes people dislike FPS computer games intensely - and a lot of people do intensely dislike these games.

Personal anecdote only, so I accept that it has limited value, but I've never seen anyone react to even the most splatter-filled video game with nearly the same aversion as some, even a majority, treat firearms. And I come from a fairly redneck, gun-loving culture by worldwide standards. The fear is palpable.

Remember when we talk of this resistance to killing we're talking about highly trained soldiers, in actual combat. They know they are expected to kill. They're well passed the mere cultural distaste for violence and killing. Yet even so, at the moment of truth, most do not fire.

This is a situation that is well removed from ordinary experiences, and beyond my own. My question is whether it's too far removed for us to draw any conclusions.

Secondly, any simulation does not involve killing someone, and the person partaking in it knows this. Even actual combat soldiers who are not directly engaged against the enemy (pilots, gun crews, etc) rationalise by convincing themselves that "I didn't personally kill that particular enemy" and as a result do not suffer serious psychological trauma.

Agreed. However, the better the simulation, the less obvious it should be for the participant.

The key thing here is we're not talking about desensitisation to violence here. That's an entirely different matter. We're talking specifically about killing. The FPS makes the game character's POV the player's POV. Hence why it's only the FPS that reflects conditioning techniques.

I would have speculated that desensitization to violence was at the heart of the military training you're talking about -- and I would have guessed that it was a predisposition to cruelty, not participation in these simulations of varying fidelity, that led to homicidal tendencies later.

There's a subtle distinction here that you may have already figured out, and I may have missed... let me articulate:

• I might believe playing FPS games (and paintball) leads one to become a better soldier, in training one to overcome indecision on the trigger.
• I do not believe either of these things increases one's tendency for murder.
• This should be obvious, since a professional soldier and a serial killer have almost nothing in common, and should not be treated similarly.
• But: How do we test for "being a better soldier?" We can't use crime statistics to back our argument, if this is the case.

Actually I'm glad you brought this up. When I first read Grossman's book, I immediately thought of paintball.

(As an aside I disagree that it's a terrible form of training for soldiers - the New Zealand SAS are considered amongst the best Special Forces units in the world and they regularly use paintball for training)

I've played for 18 years, captain one team and appear on another professional team, and last month's Splat! Magazine ranked me #6 among the "Dream Team" of active scenario players. Now that the appeal to authority is out of the way, let me explain the problems with it as a training vehicle:

1. The ballistics are totally different. Even at 20 meters you're arcing a shot, and players tend to watch the ball rather than use their sights. Most modern paintball markers actually have the hopper feed straight down, blocking any ordinary sight.
2. The form factor is totally different. You're wearing a full face mask and this tends to keep your head high, off the weapon. Combine this with the point above, and it absolutely kills your shooting fundamentals. I go trap shooting about once or twice a year, and my first round is always terrible, because paintball has given me exactly the wrong muscle memory.
3. The supply factor is totally different. I've known people to blow through 2,000 rounds or more in a single hour. You can't compensate just by restricting the supplies, either, because this leads to similarly unrealistic tactics (see below).
4. Paintballs are stopped by the lightest of cover. What a soldier wouldn't even consider decent concealment, a paintballer may treat as an invulnerable wall. But take those lessons to the battlefield, and you'll quickly be a WIA drag on your platoon.
5. Paintballs are not very accurate. I own one of the most accurate markers ever made, and it'd be about even odds to hit a person at 50 yards with it under ideal conditions. At 100 yards the shot is basically impossible.
6. Military tactics do not apply to paintball games. I've played with Special Forces, SWAT, all kinds. I even helped put on a paintball Tactical Entry contest a couple of years ago. The mechanics of paintball favor one of two tactics: Either extremely fast, aggressive, suicidal maneuvers; or outright deception, trying to blend in with the other side, body language being your best weapon. Either of these will probably get you real dead on the battlefield. Many try military maneuvers, and without exception, they are quickly destroyed by those versed in paintball tactics.
7. Limiting the amount of paint available only accentuates these tactical features. The only thing that will force a paintball game into a trench-like stalemate is high rates of fire and a densely packed front line of troops. Increased technology actually makes a game more realistic, but does so for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, I didn't mean to preach a sermon on paintball, but suffice to say that the best paintballers use absolutely no military tactics. For that reason I find that it is a bad choice of a training aid. There are contrived scenarios that could be force-fit to paintball, but large maneuvers and long duration exercises cannot.

I understand the SAS uses live fire in the jungle for its training. Risky, but superior... that's why they're the best, I imagine.

Paintball appears to offer up the same "simulation" of killing. This would indicate it too should condition people to kill. Of course, it might. Don't make the mistake of carrying the conclusion too far and thinking "conditioned to kill" = "will kill". It's quite possible that every single paintball player in the world is conditioned to kill, but does not kill. The factors that actually cause killing are an entirely different discussion.

Yeah, I thought you might have caught on to that subtlety before me. I conditionally agree here.

When I thought about paintball though, I immediately came up with some problems. The first is repetition. The disabling of the safeguard occurs because of literally thousands of "kills". Soldiers spend days at a time on the shooting range, firing at a continual supply of targets. Likewise, in a single level of an FPS game, lasting a matter of minutes, a player can "kill" hundreds of enemy soldiers. It's important to note that those who occasionally play an FPS here and there possibly would not be conditioned.

In a typical day of playing paintball, you would achieve nowhere near the same level of kills. It's much like hunting - another activity that would clearly replicate the conditioning process. You don't spend six hours achieving "kills" virtually non stop. Over years, conditioning could occur, but a dedicated FPS player could "kill" more enemy in a day than a hunter kills in a lifetime, or a paintball player "kills" in a year.

You play differently than me, apparently. I once shot out 50 players in under two minutes. In an average weekend scenario game, I am likely to get 25 to 100 eliminations, and I'll probably get shot out myself 25 times or more. The repetition factor can be extremely high.

Hunting, however, I see as a useful conditioner. Another anecdote, I have a friend, currently deployed in the USMC, who is a sniper. He hunts. (I don't.) He told me that they favor hunters, i.e. people who have actually killed large animals, for sniper training. Here you may not be shooting a person, but you are taking a shot that has irrevocable consequences. Not so for paintball or for video games.

Another key thing is the instant reward. A key part of the military conditioning is that the targets drop down instantly when hit. The same thing occurs, but more realistically, in an FPS, with the enemy avatar going through some sort of death animation.

When I've played paintball, some people would get into the whole "war" feel of it, and when hit would "play dead". But most people wouldn't. Often if you hit them they laugh, or curse, shout at you, etc. Psychologically it becomes a "hit", not a "kill". (Interestingly, when the military here do paintball wargaming, if you're hit you have to "play dead").

We don't do the "play dead" thing, because it cuts into the playing time that you've paid for -- but there is generally that sense of "instant reward," even if nobody else saw it.

Finally, part of the process is the dehumanising of the enemy. In the military, this is fairly easy. You train to shoot at targets. Once in combat, the enemy then become targets, rather than people.

In an FPS computer game, obviously, you don't interact with the enemy characters. They're dehumanised.

In contrast, most people who play paintball do interact closely with the "enemy". In fact in non competition "do it for fun" paintball, more often than not the "enemy" are your best friends.

-Gumboot

This is partially true. I've made more and better friends through paintball than everything else combined.

But on the field, you're dehumanized. You put a mask on. This has an enormous impact. It's rare for players to recognize individuals, even on their own teams. I play in some of the brightest and most recognizable costumes imaginable, and even then some people simply won't notice. It's just another target, one that looks only vaguely human, and on top of that it's shooting back.

Sorry for the paintball derail.

One of the guys on my team deployed out to Afghanistan with the 101'st recently (combat medic). He was an ace paintballer before joining the Service. I'll see if I can get his thoughts whenever he makes it home.

 

[gumboot]

I don't think a human's resistance to killing is exactly innate/natural. After all, killing a competitor is not something detrimental, and you can observe it quite well in nature. For example, one male may fight to the death against another of the same species over a group of females. In that case, the subject unwilling to kill is pretty unlikely to ever reproduce.

How do you explain that killing between animals of the same species is rare, and killing between social animals of the same species is even rarer, yet killing between animals of different species is exceedingly common?

A friend of mine is the tiger conservationist David Salamoni - I worked with him on a TV series called Animal Face Off. He explained that to control the tigers he was training to hunt, he had to play a psychological game with them and convince them he was a bigger tougher tiger than they were. As long as his posturing as a "tiger" was more powerful than theirs, they would continue to submit to him.

But the moment they thought he wasn't the dominant one - they would attack him. Yet not intending to kill. He was severely injured when one of the tigers attacked him. Yet the tiger's behaviour was distinctly different to when it got into a paddock full of cattle and started slaughtering them. When the tiger attacked him it was the "posture-submit" response that was acting. When the tiger attacked the cattle it was the "fight-or-flight" response.

Male lions very rarely kill each other when they fight. One male establishes dominance, and the other male submits - leaving. The submissive lions more often starve to death because they cannot survive without a pride.

You see it even in dogs and cats - they seldom kill each other when they fight their own species, yet they will readily kill other animals.

The resistance against killing would rather be a social trait. One that is implanted, knowingly or not by parents in order to enable the child to fit into a 'peaceful' society, meaning one that is not currently expanding. I'm quite sure that children from warlike societies, once adult, don't have that many qualms against killing.

Except the evidence suggests they do, unless the safeguard has been removed. How is this resistance to killing established in children? I don't recall my parents ever discouraging me from killing. I don't really recall ever having much desire to kill. I was certainly exposed to plenty of killing in my childhood, from flies to rats to farm animals.

The psychological stress thus comes from a battle against a very strongly implanted parental conditionning.

How do you modify/implant new conditionning ? With rewards/punishments. With repetition. Is a video game that proposes killing, and rewards it, able to modify parental conditionning ? Possible. Especially if the parental conditionning is not that strong to begin with. Or if the person is not all that stable.

The problem I see with this is that armed forces the world over used extensive drilling and development of specific culture to ensure that killing was acceptable, and that it was expected. The punishments - both from authority and from one's peers - for failing to engage the enemy was harsh. And yet none of this worked.

And yet experiments such as the Standford prison experiment demonstrates quite clearly that social norms and behaviours can be completely undone and rewritten in exceedingly short periods of time. The persistence of this particular resistance to killing - in the face of overwhelming social conditioning - suggests that the force causing it is stronger and more inherent than a social construct.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

In this case, I think there's an easier explanation. Speaking from some experience with martial arts training, slashing is a lot easier and requires less training than stabbing. You really have to practice to get in a good stab, and if you do it wrong, you are a lot more vulnerable.

What martial arts training were you doing? I've found quite the opposite experience, to be honest. A poorly executed slash will leave you open to a counter attack, whereas a stab or thrust keeps your weapon in front of your body.

The other point, which I think the Romans were focused on, is that a poorly execute stab is still usually fatal. Before the era of quality medicine, if a blade went deeper than an inch or so into your body chances are it would kill you. In contrast a person can take dozens of slashes and cuts and continue to fight.

Perhaps it's a question of weapon. Many weapons are specifically designed for slashing and cutting rather than stabbing or thrusting. If you take a gladius - a weapon designed for stabbing - it's actually quite hard to cut effectively with it because it's exceedingly blade heavy. Stabbing with them comes quite naturally.

-Gumboot

 

[The Atheist]

Interesting stuff, Gumboot. Seems to confirm the premise which has existed for a couple of decades that video games correlate with violence. Couple of questions before I get warmed up:

Have any injury details for the NZ wars? I imagine powder and muskets would have been jealously guarded early on and that there was a fair amount of hand-to-hand combat.

You state a case that soldiers in the US Civil War succeeded in causing lots of casualties because they'd been schooled well in musketry. You also claim the lack of bayonet injuries supports your position.

Given that soldiers - conscripts especially - were given highly explicit training in bayonet usage, using targets designed to represent a man; for your premise to hold true, we'd expect to see more, rather than fewer bayonet injuries, wouldn't we?

 

[Hokulele]

How do you explain that killing between animals of the same species is rare, and killing between social animals of the same species is even rarer, yet killing between animals of different species is exceedingly common?

A friend of mine is the tiger conservationist David Salamoni - I worked with him on a TV series called Animal Face Off. He explained that to control the tigers he was training to hunt, he had to play a psychological game with them and convince them he was a bigger tougher tiger than they were. As long as his posturing as a "tiger" was more powerful than theirs, they would continue to submit to him.

But the moment they thought he wasn't the dominant one - they would attack him. Yet not intending to kill. He was severely injured when one of the tigers attacked him. Yet the tiger's behaviour was distinctly different to when it got into a paddock full of cattle and started slaughtering them. When the tiger attacked him it was the "posture-submit" response that was acting. When the tiger attacked the cattle it was the "fight-or-flight" response.

Male lions very rarely kill each other when they fight. One male establishes dominance, and the other male submits - leaving. The submissive lions more often starve to death because they cannot survive without a pride.

You see it even in dogs and cats - they seldom kill each other when they fight their own species, yet they will readily kill other animals.

I think it is incredibly unfair that you only chose predators in all of your examples. Of course they will be more likely to kill animals of another species, that is how they survive. It would be more realistic to look into herbivores for a more just comparison. For example, many bird species will viciously attack each other, sometimes resulting in death, but are seed or insect-eaters, and do not prey on other bird species. Fighting chickens are an extreme example of this.

 

[gumboot]

Personal anecdote only, so I accept that it has limited value, but I've never seen anyone react to even the most splatter-filled video game with nearly the same aversion as some, even a majority, treat firearms. And I come from a fairly redneck, gun-loving culture by worldwide standards. The fear is palpable.

I think that makes sense if it's a cultural thing, as culturally guns are perceived (correctly) as weapons designed to kill. A game - be it paintball or Grand Theft Auto or tiddlywinks - is ultimately designed to entertain, regardless of how distasteful the content might be.

This is a situation that is well removed from ordinary experiences, and beyond my own. My question is whether it's too far removed for us to draw any conclusions.

I think it has value simply because there is actually an enormous body of research and knowledge on this specific topic in military circles. I have to admit when I read about Marshall's research, and other follow up research, I was quite surprised. To my mind, this sort of research is deserving of front page news coverage as the Milgram Experiments. I couldn't understand that I'd never heard of it. When I've talked to people about it, what surprised me wasn't necessarily that they disputed the theory, but that they'd never even heard of the idea, or the research before. And these were often civilians with extensive knowledge of military matters.

Yet Grossman claims that the soldiers he has interacted with have affirmed the same information - that prior to post WW2 conditioning, soldiers consistently refused to fire in combat.

Now, soldiers are still human beings. For all their training and "indoctrination" they do not have a personality transplant, and no computer parts are inserted into their heads.

If a feature is present in soldiers, and if, despite concerted efforts by the military, that feature remains fully intact, it's sensible to assume all people have that feature.

If one narrow specific series of exercises disables that feature, it is also sensible to at least consider that any other activities that also consist of those exercises will also disable the feature.

Agreed. However, the better the simulation, the less obvious it should be for the participant.

To a degree I agree with you. However were the simulation to become too real, it would cause the soldier psychological trauma. The objective is to make the simulation as close as possible to reality without triggering the safeguard. For this reason, I would expect the increasing "realism" in FPS computer games is of significance.

I would have speculated that desensitization to violence was at the heart of the military training you're talking about -- and I would have guessed that it was a predisposition to cruelty, not participation in these simulations of varying fidelity, that led to homicidal tendencies later.

That's probably what would be expected, but it doesn't appear to be true. Armed forces do, and have in the past employed violence in warfare, true. The US Army Rangers, for example, formally train in a doctrine that all actions on the battlefield must be carried out violently.

But the main affect of encouraging "violent action" is on your enemy, not your own forces. Grossman terms it the "Wind of Hate" and it is a powerful psychological tool that soldiers have employed for centuries.

The basic idea is, faced with the undeniable full force of hatred and violence from another human, an average person is struck senseless, unable to respond, and has no idea what to do. Panic and terror render the person totally vulnerable.

We see it in the Goths who fought against the Roman Legions, and were utterly terrified of the dogs that they would employ. The Romans broke entire formations of Gothic warriors simply by unleashing a handful of angry snarling dogs.

And we see it today in the victims of mass murder and serial killers. To quote Jeff Cooper:

Any study of the atrocity list of recent years - Starkweather,Speck, Manson, Richard Hickok and Cary Smith, et al - shows immediately that the victims, by their appalling ineptitude and timidity, virtually assisted in their own murders.

That's pretty harsh, obviously, but there's a valid point there. The overwhelming common factor in people who survive such attacks is that they do something.

The purpose of desensitisation to violence, then, appears to be not to enable soldiers to kill, but to protect them from the enemy's "wind of hate" and to amplify the affect of their own "wind of hate" on the enemy.

There's a subtle distinction here that you may have already figured out, and I may have missed... let me articulate:

• I might believe playing FPS games (and paintball) leads one to become a better soldier, in training one to overcome indecision on the trigger.
• I do not believe either of these things increases one's tendency for murder.
• This should be obvious, since a professional soldier and a serial killer have almost nothing in common, and should not be treated similarly.
• But: How do we test for "being a better soldier?" We can't use crime statistics to back our argument, if this is the case.

I agree, but again. We're not talking about tendency to commit murder. One cannot commit a crime unless one decides to do so. I've seen no indication that being conditioned to kill makes one have a greater desire to kill, merely that one is more able to.

I've played for 18 years, captain one team and appear on another professional team, and last month's Splat! Magazine ranked me #6 among the "Dream Team" of active scenario players. Now that the appeal to authority is out of the way, let me explain the problems with it as a training vehicle:

*SNIP*

Anyway, I didn't mean to preach a sermon on paintball, but suffice to say that the best paintballers use absolutely no military tactics. For that reason I find that it is a bad choice of a training aid. There are contrived scenarios that could be force-fit to paintball, but large maneuvers and long duration exercises cannot.

I understand the SAS uses live fire in the jungle for its training. Risky, but superior... that's why they're the best, I imagine.

I can't really disagree with you, even excluding your expertise in the topic. When I say "the SAS play paintball for training" I'm not really being that honest. They don't really play paintball. They use paintball markers in some very specific exercises. These exercises would not doubt be tailor made to the objectives of the exercise, and probably bear little resemblance to a game of paintball.

Yeah, I thought you might have caught on to that subtlety before me. I conditionally agree here.

It's a tricky thing. Most people coming into this sort of discussion naturally assume the argument is that computer gamers do, or are going to, kill lots of people. Grossman himself appears to head in that vague direction with his other work and his quite strong public stance against FPS computer games.

It can perhaps best be explained through an analogy.

When I'm driving along in my car on the road, I could quite easily veer onto the wrong side, hit and oncoming car, and kill that person. It's as easy as turning my steering wheel a little.

But just because I can doesn't mean I will. There's quite a strong incentive for me not doing so - firstly there's a good chance I'll die too. Secondly, my car will be written off. Lastly, I'm highly likely to get in a LOT of trouble with the police.

Of course, if there is a barrier, it's a lot harder for me to cross the centerline. Not impossible - if I really wanted to I could smash though it. But it's going to significantly reduce the liklihood of it happening. The scope of this talk is "Is there a barrier?" and "What can remove the barrier?", not "Are people driving on a road without a barrier more likely to choose to cross the centerline?"

You play differently than me, apparently. I once shot out 50 players in under two minutes. In an average weekend scenario game, I am likely to get 25 to 100 eliminations, and I'll probably get shot out myself 25 times or more. The repetition factor can be extremely high.

I appreciate that. But when we talking about the shooting range or a computer game, we're talking about at least a magnitude more than that. Also, how often do you play?

I think the sort of players Grossman is concerned about are people like my brother, who literally spend hours upon hours playing these games, "killing" literally thousands upon thousands of people.

Hunting, however, I see as a useful conditioner. Another anecdote, I have a friend, currently deployed in the USMC, who is a sniper. He hunts. (I don't.) He told me that they favor hunters, i.e. people who have actually killed large animals, for sniper training. Here you may not be shooting a person, but you are taking a shot that has irrevocable consequences. Not so for paintball or for video games.

Well snipers are a different breed all together. Part of the anatomy of killing is distance. A sniper is quite detached from their victim, even though they can see them clearly, because of the scope they're looking through.

This, in fact, is the key element that would keep me slightly skeptical of Grossman's computer game conclusion. It seems possible, at least, that the interface a game player uses - a controller or mouse and keyboard or whatever - and the format of the game - on a computer monitor, health bar along the bottom with statistics, etc - would place distance between the killer and the target in the same way that a rifle scope would, unlike a shooter on a range who is physically holding the gun.

Another thing regarding snipers specifically is they, like Special Forces soldiers, are specifically chosen. It's proposed in the book that the 2% of people without this biological safeguard are congregated in special forces type units and amongst snipers.

I would certainly agree with your hunter notion, and there appears to be good collaboration through history - indeed the earliest warriors were all hunters who defended their tribal group from outsiders. The effectiveness of hunting, is somewhat diminished however because rates of repetition aren't necessarily as high - most hunters won't go out for a weekend and kill thousands upon thousands of animals. And because they're not shooting human targets - they're shooting animals.

It probably sounds like I'm claiming this whole thing is black and white. It's certainly not. The effectiveness of this resistance varies based on distance, proximity of authority, emotional state, and so forth.

We don't do the "play dead" thing, because it cuts into the playing time that you've paid for -- but there is generally that sense of "instant reward," even if nobody else saw it.

I think you certainly get a degree of instant gratification in terms of your own pleasure at achieving a hit. I'd agree on that. But the question is how closely does it simulate the gratification from an actual kill.

But on the field, you're dehumanized. You put a mask on. This has an enormous impact. It's rare for players to recognize individuals, even on their own teams. I play in some of the brightest and most recognizable costumes imaginable, and even then some people simply won't notice. It's just another target, one that looks only vaguely human, and on top of that it's shooting back.

That's a very good point, well made. This would certainly be a very valid point to raise in terms of supporting the notion that paintball would also condition.

Sorry for the paintball derail.

Not at all. It relates directly to the topic at hand. I think it's a very valid process to go through. If, as Grossman claims, FPS computer games do mimic conditioning techniques, and do disable the resistence to killing, it's absolutely valid to then ask "what other activities also mimic these techniques?" Because surely if the premise is right, they would condition as well.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

Interesting stuff, Gumboot. Seems to confirm the premise which has existed for a couple of decades that video games correlate with violence.

To be honest I'd be hesitant to go that way. I think increased exposure to violence - in various computer games, in films, in news articles, from violent friends or family members and so forth, would certainly be a major contributing factor in a person becoming violent. But I think "being violent" and "having one's resistance to killing disabled" are related but separate issues.

Have any injury details for the NZ wars? I imagine powder and muskets would have been jealously guarded early on and that there was a fair amount of hand-to-hand combat.

No, I don't I'm afraid. However the actual scale of the conflict may be too small to make useful conclusions - only about 2,000 people were killed in 25 years of sporadic fighting.

You state a case that soldiers in the US Civil War succeeded in causing lots of casualties because they'd been schooled well in musketry. You also claim the lack of bayonet injuries supports your position.

Not really. The study on stabbing wounds was done for Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. The Civil War stuff related more directly to the evidence that soldiers who had been drilled well followed through on their drill perfectly, yet skipped the step where they fired their weapons.

The casualty rates in exchanges of musket fire in all black powder battlefields - not just the US Civil War - were remarkable for how low they were. Their firing accuracy would suggest 500 soldiers should be killed a minutes, yet in really a more typical rate of one or two soldiers a minute. This suggests their battlefield effectiveness was 1/250th of what it should have been.

Most black powder battlefield deaths are caused by cannon fire.

Given that soldiers - conscripts especially - were given highly explicit training in bayonet usage, using targets designed to represent a man; for your premise to hold true, we'd expect to see more, rather than fewer bayonet injuries, wouldn't we?

Well, the premise would suggest that soldiers - despite being trained well in bayonet use - would have a profound resistance to stabbing another human, and thus would not do so. This is supported by other black powder battlefields where soldiers were repeatedly documented reversing their weapons in close quarters fighting and using the stocks of their muskets like clubs, rather than using the bayonet as they were trained to do.

-Gumboot

 

[gumboot]

I think it is incredibly unfair that you only chose predators in all of your examples. Of course they will be more likely to kill animals of another species, that is how they survive.

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.

It would be more realistic to look into herbivores for a more just comparison. For example, many bird species will viciously attack each other, sometimes resulting in death, but are seed or insect-eaters, and do not prey on other bird species. Fighting chickens are an extreme example of this.

I'm not sure how looking at animals already predisposed to not killing would be helpful.

For what it's worth, I don't have a great deal of knowledge on the matter as relates to animals. Grossman's work focuses entirely on humans. I would imagine the concepts in question would be more prevalent amongst higher mammals, and even more prevalent amongst social animals.

-Gumboot

 

[Earthborn]

Relevant to this discussion is the interesting 2 part documentary The Truth About Killing which was originally from Channel 4, but reruns on National Geographic Channel every now and then.

It doesn't discuss computer games, and shows that the methods used to condition people to kill involve putting them physically in realistic combat situations. I'm skeptical that computer games are realistic enough to condition people to kill in reality, it is more likely that it conditions people to press combinations of buttons when faced with an enemy. More realistic controls (Wii-mote) or actual weapons with gamepad like controls may change that, though.

 

[Meadmaker]

What martial arts training were you doing? I've found quite the opposite experience, to be honest. A poorly executed slash will leave you open to a counter attack, whereas a stab or thrust keeps your weapon in front of your body.

However, if fighting with a shield, and facing multiple opponents, you don't want the weapon in front of your body for defense. You want it protecting your head, or wherever your opponent's weapon happens to be.

The stab is a much better attack than the slash, but it isn't as instinctive. The Romans trained enough to instruct their people in the effective tactics. The barbarians didn't.

The point, for this discussion, is that I think Grossman might be overreaching for evidence of his thesis in this particular case. From your summary, I think he's onto something, but I just don't think the lack of stabbing is an example of the aversion to killing. I think it's more that it's a nonintuitive maneuver not easily performed in combat by untrained individuals.

 

[Gurdur]

...The basis of my interest is the book On Killing by Lt Col Dave Grossman.
.....
Therefore, FPS computer games disable the biological resistance against killing. ....

I am not familiar with that book you cite, but I do know a bit of the literature on the subject.

Sorry to sound pedantic, but it would be better to say "...desensitize the biologically-inbuilt resistance against...." rather than "disable"; there is a point in there which comes in later. All of what you have said is rather noncontroversial, well-known and well-explored in the literature, AFAIK.

BTW, it was my understanding that at least parts of the US armed forces aklready use computer games in training? Notably their own version of Doom?

 

[Hellbound]

Just a few thoughts...

Althought he drill in the military is definately a part of the conditioning that desensitizes a person, there is a control on the military training (which is where the authority comes in): you only kill the enemy. When a particular group is defined by authority as "the enemy", it pretty much amounts to official sanction to dehumanize that group. Well, not really official. The Army leadership, at a high level, would talk about how they respect the other group, and don't view them as subhuman, and all the political talk one would expect. However, at the level of the battlefield leaders (NCOs and lower-ranking officers), dehumanization of the enemy group was the course of the day. The emeny wasn't people, they were "Hajis", "ragheads", "Abduls", "sand n*****s", and several other, less palatable terms.

At the same time, the military places a sort of mythic ideal about civillians. This, I think, serves to place them firmly in a "non-enemy, non-target" group. OVer and over you hear that your job in the Army is to "protect the civillians". Civillians are viewed a lot as a shepard might view his sheep: clueless most of the time, a pain to work with, but they have to be protected from the wolves.

Of course, I think this led to some problems in the current action in Iraq, and likely a similar mechanism for things that occurred in Vietnam. The enemy group is "Arab terrorists". But, they look just like the civillians, and often are civillians who took up arms. You can't pick them out of a group. So the dehumanization "bleeds over" to the civillian sector, and you end up with things like Abu Garib. In Vietnam, it was a similar situation: the enemy was not readily identifiable.

So I suppose I'm breaking military training down into several factors. To use gumboot's earlier comments, there are three things needed for killing: means, motive, and oppurtunity.
1. Means. Rifle ranges, human targets, wargames using MILES gear, with realistic feedback ("killed" soldiers falling down, being issued casualty cards (cards that list an injury/injuries sustained, so medics can train), moulage (injury make-up) for wounded, etc), and similar things overcome the resistence to pulling the trigger, much as gumboot sugests. Whether this plays into FPS games is another factor, but I think, to a degree at least, FPS games can contribute to conditioning. The conditioning is the "means" part.

2. Motive. This is where the dehumanization techniques come in. I discussed this earlier. This is the part where there is some question concerning FPS games. Very few people view the targets in an FPS as "real people", or even as a simulation of real people. The dehumanization that goes on in soldiers (and even, I think, to a degree in murders) is the factor that seems to be lacking in an FPS. Now, some I think come closer than others...and for some people this can occur here (those that view the video game enemies as realistic representations of a particular group, and end up identifying the fantasy game elements with actual people).

3. Oppurtunity. This is where the authority figures and chain of command in the military come in. They give you the oppurtunity to kill legally: through direct orders ("Open Fire!"), indirect orders ("Patrol, and respond to enemy fire as you see fit."), or standing orders (Rules of Engagement). FPS games provide oppurtunity to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the game. Some penalize you for hitting non-combatants, and some give you points for killing everything.

I think you don't see increased violence in military personnel because the military training also tries to control items 2 and 3, motive and oppurtunity, above. This also helps explain some of the wartime atrocities, I think, that occur against non-combatants. I'd have to do the research, but it seems more of the atrocities in modern wars occur when one has trouble telling the "enemy" from anyone else (guerilla wars, civil wars without clear uniforms for each side, terrorist actions, etc). This tends to support some of the ideas above (if it holds true).

IN any case, I've wandered around a bit getting my thoughts out . I think FPS games can condition a person, in varying degrees, on all three levels listed. I think this is a variable thing, though. In other words, each FPS offers differing levels in each of the above categories, and each person takes those in a different way. Examples:

1. Means. An FPS game where the enemies are non-human/non-humanoid, mechanical, or otherwise "wierd" would offfer a lesser effect here, while those using realistic representations of people, with relaistic blood and gore, a higher level.

2. Motive. This is the sketchy one. If anything, this is the one I'd throw out on FPS games. I think the motive provided by an FPS is only going to exist if there are already certain biased thoughts against a particular group or mental problems in the player. I think the FPS can feed an already-existing motive, but I don't think they'd create one.

3. Oppurtunity. Again, I think this is iffier for FPS games. I think this effect would vary from game-to-game (games that offer penalties for hitting non-combatants, and offfering clear enemies being a lesser effect, and those that rewards random killing a greater effect). Again, though, I think there has to be an underlying inclination or metnal issue before this would really have a large effect.

 

[krazyKemist]

How do you explain that killing between animals of the same species is rare, and killing between social animals of the same species is even rarer, yet killing between animals of different species is exceedingly common?

A friend of mine is the tiger conservationist David Salamoni - I worked with him on a TV series called Animal Face Off. He explained that to control the tigers he was training to hunt, he had to play a psychological game with them and convince them he was a bigger tougher tiger than they were. As long as his posturing as a "tiger" was more powerful than theirs, they would continue to submit to him.

But the moment they thought he wasn't the dominant one - they would attack him. Yet not intending to kill. He was severely injured when one of the tigers attacked him. Yet the tiger's behaviour was distinctly different to when it got into a paddock full of cattle and started slaughtering them. When the tiger attacked him it was the "posture-submit" response that was acting. When the tiger attacked the cattle it was the "fight-or-flight" response.

Male lions very rarely kill each other when they fight. One male establishes dominance, and the other male submits - leaving. The submissive lions more often starve to death because they cannot survive without a pride.

You see it even in dogs and cats - they seldom kill each other when they fight their own species, yet they will readily kill other animals.






Except the evidence suggests they do, unless the safeguard has been removed. How is this resistance to killing established in children? I don't recall my parents ever discouraging me from killing. I don't really recall ever having much desire to kill. I was certainly exposed to plenty of killing in my childhood, from flies to rats to farm animals.







The problem I see with this is that armed forces the world over used extensive drilling and development of specific culture to ensure that killing was acceptable, and that it was expected. The punishments - both from authority and from one's peers - for failing to engage the enemy was harsh. And yet none of this worked.

And yet experiments such as the Standford prison experiment demonstrates quite clearly that social norms and behaviours can be completely undone and rewritten in exceedingly short periods of time. The persistence of this particular resistance to killing - in the face of overwhelming social conditioning - suggests that the force causing it is stronger and more inherent than a social construct.

-Gumboot

Yes, killing prey is different from killing among your own species, and much more frequent, since the predator needs it to survive. Yet, killing among the same species is not that rare... In nature, a female tiger with cubs has to avoid the company of male tigers since they will kill her cubs. The reason for this is that once her cubs are dead, she is available to mate with that male... Similarly, among lions, when a new male has established his domination, he will kill all the cubs of the former dominating male, for the same purpose.

Another instance is the killing of siblings. That is most observed among birds. The strongest cub attacks and kills the others in order to get more ressources (food) from the parents.

Unfortunately, the worst competitor for a member of a species is another member of that species, since it occupies the very same niche.

And I think the strenght of parental conditionning (to which the parents were themselves submitted) is greatly underestimated... Especially as it is done from infancy. All the following experiments were done on adults, for very good ethical reasons.

I think that what we need to do is to observe how much psychological damage adults raised in warrior societies from infancy (not in western ones) do sustain after engaging in killing. I think we are, once again, a little blinded by our own cultural background, which we naturally, well, find more natural.

the Kemist

 

[krazyKemist]

Just a few thoughts...

Althought he drill in the military is definately a part of the conditioning that desensitizes a person, there is a control on the military training (which is where the authority comes in): you only kill the enemy. When a particular group is defined by authority as "the enemy", it pretty much amounts to official sanction to dehumanize that group. Well, not really official. The Army leadership, at a high level, would talk about how they respect the other group, and don't view them as subhuman, and all the political talk one would expect. However, at the level of the battlefield leaders (NCOs and lower-ranking officers), dehumanization of the enemy group was the course of the day. The emeny wasn't people, they were "Hajis", "ragheads", "Abduls", "sand n*****s", and several other, less palatable terms.

Yes, I quite agree... Dehumanization seems to be the only effective method of pushing soldiers to kill the ennemy. With an unfortunate drawback, unfortunately: severe underestimation/excessive fear of the ennemy. This has been seen many times. A readily available example is what happened in somalia in 1993.

the Kemist

 

[Bikewer]

It sounds to me that this fellow Grossman has an ad hoc argument for nearly everything that's not in support of his position; at least I give points for being meticulous.
Still....In reading a great deal of WWII history (I'm a bit of a buff...), it's apparent that large numbers of soldiers become quite sanguine about their activities. Audie Murphy's book was rather chilling.
I suppose this is just "desensitization"....

The original premise, that FPS-type games perform this same sort of desensitization, is still rather suspect IMO.
We've had such games available for perhaps 20 years? What percentage of the populace is involved? Mostly rather well-to-do kids with access to computers and consoles.
I know that at present, video games (to use the general term) are now extremely popular, and the industry now generates more revenue than does motion pictures.
What percentage of this overall total are represented by the FPS genre?

In other words, at what point do we see large numbers of young men actually playing such games? What would that number be?
How would this correlate to instances of actual violence committed, and how would we determine what percentage of say, murderers were video-game addicts? The average "gangsta", responsible for so many inner-city homicides, is likely not spending hours playing GTA; He's living GTA.

What percentage of young men now entering the military are "pre-conditioned" to kill by their prior exposure to video games?
Do we now see a greater percentage of soldiers in the field becoming more effective fighters as a result of this exposure? Do military trainers notice a difference in the combat effectiveness of their recruits?

Do our soldier's enemies (often from underdeveloped nations with limited access to such things) suffer in comparison? Are they as likely to be effective killing machines or less so?

I'm inclined to look for simpler things.

1. The innate tendency towards violence amongst human beings.

2. The innate tendency to dehumanize the "other", the "enemy".

3. The innate tendency to protect one's fellows. In immediate terms, the individual's fellow soldiers, (well-observed among combat forces; "I'm just trying to keep my buddies alive") and in general terms one's family, tribe, country, whatever.

Despite what I see as rather dismissive claims of the level of violence inflicted by our ancestors, humanity has a long and bloody history of warfare, violence, persecution, pogrom, genocide, torture, etc. etc.
None of this was conditioned by modern training methods or exposure to media of any sort.
One might argue that our contemporary soldiers are perhaps less willing to kill, as we now expend a great deal of effort to limit "collateral damage" (hardly a concern in WWII!) and to prosecute the perpetrators of atrocities.

We have not heard the phrase, "kill them all and let God sort them out" for a while....

 

[krazyKemist]

While video games have been used by the US army for recruiting purposes as well as for training for a while, the most disturbing thing in relation to FPS games is high school shootings.

I'm trying to find the case again, but I once read the case of a 14-year old boy who commited several murders at his high school. Most of the victims were shot in the head. Disturbingly, many of the most popular FPS highly reward head shots. The boy was known to be quite an addict of FPS games. And reportedly not violent before this.

Does an FPS game condition a teenager to kill, or does it attract already mentally sick kids ? Is there reason to be weary of a teen whom spends every free moment playing such games ? Most people get bored of them after a while. What makes these particular kids stick to them ?

the Kemist