As I was reading through the situational influences of aggression I noticed a funny little trend. All but two of them can be attributed to most first-person shooter video games.
Interpersonal Provocation: Little kids yelling insults, not surprisingly, make us more likely to lash out.
Frustration: Between lag and bad teams there are many ways to be thwarted from achieving your goal.
Media Influences: This one speaks for itself.
Aggressive Cues: Guns, knives, warfare are all stimuli for aggression.
Arousal: It is easy to get hyped up playing a game that pits you against others in a war scenario.
Seeing this, its not hard to understand why so many people can get aggressive and resort to trash-talking. So the next time your getting yelled at by 12-year-olds over Modern Warfare 3, remember you put yourself in this situation.
My favorite blog was The Final Countdown (duhduh duh duh, duhduhduh duh duh) because I loved the title, it was nice and short, and it had an entertaining video.
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