[crAzerk]

Not taking any sides here but just offering some explanation from a Psych student's perspective (I love to discuss Psych stuff )

The Psychology Part
There is this thing in Psychology we learn called 'confirmation bias'. What this means is that it is human nature to seek out information that is in line with our beliefs, and ignore information that contradicts it.

The stereotype that exists is of course - 'females are bad at gaming' or some variation of this statement, whether in meaning or phrasing. This is the belief that many people have.

Thus when males encounter a female gamer who IS bad, he's going to naturally think 'I knew it' or 'yea she's a girl' or something along those lines. It reinforces his stereotype. It's reassuring to think that. It makes him feel at ease.

But when he encounters a female gamer who is GOOD, he is going to be like 'wait what? no way', and this contradiction to his belief is going to cause some amount of cognitive dissonance (in laymen's terms, make his mind uneasy).
He may then proceed to make misattributions such as 'She must have been lucky' or 'I am tired, that's why I lost', (which are called fundamental attribution errors) where he credits the success of the girl to situational factors(she got lucky) rather than personal factors (she is good)

These attributions help to ease the cognitive dissonance in him and thus such 'evidence' just 'bounces' off him, and he ignores these. 'Girls are bad at gaming' remains a personal belief. The effect may even be strongly positive reinforcing - that it could be a matter of personal pride, that he is defending the age-old sexist myth that Male > Female.
His group identity as a Male induces him to want to defend this at all cost (according to social identity theory), and that includes making such attribution errors and holding on to such stereotypes.


Therefore , for the awesome female gamers out there being discriminated against, do forgive the male chauvinists, they are almost programmed to behave this way. This kind of discriminatory behaviour of course does not apply only for the gender issue, but for race issues, and even simple ingroup-outgroup matters (e.g. SC2 vs WoW players. For example, 'All WoW players have no skill so they play WoW instead of SC2' )

For the males who still have this sort of stereotypes ingrained in them - do try to actively suppress it, and approach each female gamer with an open mind.

Quick Comments

	Zepph:	wow! Interesting :)
	syfChadMann:	nice

[zeffrin]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

Not taking any sides here but just offering some explanation from a Psych student's perspective (I love to discuss Psych stuff )

**** yeah, the question is, eventually some stimuli must force the observer to reconsider their belief, what does it take to achieve that?

You talk about being beaten by girls straight up, but i'd say this might not be the case, well at least on the ladder if so we don't know. If the girls were out owning face as a regular occurance then this belief wouldn't have been able to form in the first place.

Being a psych student, are you prepared to also discuss the difference in brain development which occurs between male and females which ultimately leads to a difference in spacial skills?

And, from your more educated perspective, would you consider lower spacial skills a possible reason for women on average being less skilled in RTS and FPS games?

And in turn, would the greater communication skills women posses account for at least some of their greater success in MMO games?

Relevant points for discussion from http://www.medicaleducationonline.or...d=46&Itemid=69 below

(3) Cellular connections: while men have more neurons in the cerebral cortex, women have a more developed neuropil, or the space between cell bodies, which contains synapses, dendrites and axons, and allows for communication among neurons .

(4) Corpus callosum: it is reported that a woman's brain has a larger corpus collusum, which means women can transfer data between the right and left hemisphere faster than men. Men tend to be more left brained, while women have greater access to both sides.(however other studies have told a different story).

(6) Language: two areas in the frontal and temporal lobes related to language (the areas of Broca and Wernicke) were significantly larger in women, thus providing a biological reason for women's notorious superiority in language-associated thoughts. For men, language is most often just in the dominant hemisphere (usually the left side), but a larger number of women seem to be able to use both sides for language.

(7) Inferior parietal lobule (IPL): it is a brain region in the cortex, which is significantly larger in men than in women. This area is bilateral and is located just above the level of the ears (parietal cortex). Furthermore, the left side IPL is larger in men than the right side. In women, this asymmetry is reversed, although the difference between left and right sides is not so large as in men. This is the same area which was shown to be larger in the brain of Albert Einstein, as well as in other physicists and mathematicians. So, it seems that IPL's size correlates highly with mental mathematical abilities. Studies have linked the right IPL with the memory involved in understanding and manipulating spatial relationships and the ability to sense relationships between body parts. It is also related to the perception of our own affects or feelings. The left IPL is involved with perception of time and speed, and the ability of mentally rotate 3-D figures .

(9) Limbic size: females, on average, have a larger deep limbic system than males. This gives females several advantages and disadvantages. Due to the larger deep limbic brain women are more in touch with their feelings, they are generally better able to express their feelings than men. They have an increased ability to bond and be connected to others .