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> The researchers had 35 male college students complete a competitive, aggressive task against either a student from their university or from what they were tol

> The researchers had 35 male college students complete a competitive, aggressive task against either a student from their university or from what they were told was a rival university. Male college students, an “aggressive task”, and a rival university. College students are literally trained to associate out-competing rival universities as a fun and desirable activity. It’s the entire foundation of sports programs. This study feels like the authors tried to simulate a competitive sports program as closely as they could get away with in their lab environment and then tried to spin it as a profound observation about humanity in general. This really just reads like “young male college students still enjoy competing against their rival university”

feet 4y ago
>College students are literally trained to associate out-competing rival universities as a fun and desirable activity. This was not my experience in undergrad, literally at all. No idea where this comes from
- wffurr 4y ago
  Go to hell LSU! Gotta win the Egg Bowl over those scrubs at Mississippi State. Woo hoo we’re in the playoffs! It comes from many people’s experiences of collegiate sports which is full of rivalries, largely with no real basis. Except for LSU.
  - r2_pilot 4y ago
    How do you say you associate with the University of Mississippi without saying that you associate with them? Ha. I work there and went to school there too, so those first few sentences(well, except for the playoffs remark lol) sound very familiar.
    - wffurr 4y ago
      Class of '04, Computer Science. Hotty Toddy.
      - r2_pilot 4y ago
        Fun times. You may remember me if you recall someone with a common first name and the last name of a bird(was there starting in 04); I certainly stayed around there long enough lol. Tended to keep to myself, though.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  Were you in college in the US, or somewhere else? It may be more prevalent in the US, dunno. Just based on observations of US sports and cheerleader culture.
  - feet 4y ago
    Undergrad in the Midwest US
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    It's not universal among U.S. college students either. I went to a Div3 top-tier (academically) liberal arts college, and most people were oblivious to how our sports teams did, unless you were on the team or close friends with someone who was. Probably because we lost a large percentage of the time. The sports culture is much more relevant at Div1 schools. These get a disproportionate amount of air time (at least as far as sports go), but that's largely because those are the schools where sporting matches are worth watching.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Anecdotally, my wife’s school (UNC) had a rival (Duke). Temple That’s not weird or exceptional. There’s long Wikipedia article about rivalries between universities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_rivalries_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_rivalries_in_t...
  - feet 4y ago
    Is that something that's just cultural in the community or is it something explicitly taught by university orientation/course work?
    - nverno 4y ago
      Those campuses are seeped in that rivarly. You'll hear chants, speeches, etc. It's a tradition.
      - jtdev 4y ago
      - casion 4y ago
        To add on to this, I have a co-worker from a specific university who would not buy a car because it was a rival universities colour. This person is ~30 years out of school, and the vehicle was an INCREDIBLE deal and exactly what the person was looking to buy (other than the colour). The person never competed in sports and was a comp sci major. It runs deep for at many schools.
        sitkack 4y ago
        They themselves might have cared, but damn if I wear a purple shirt in Seattle folks are like Go Huskies to me, to the point where I think twice about putting it on or wearing it outside the house. I could give a damn about sports or nationalism, but lots of other idiots do.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  I was referring to college sports programs, which are a huge deal in the United States (where this study took place). Pick 35 random male college students and you will get a lot of college sports fans.
- christophilus 4y ago
  I really enjoy trolling the Harvard grads I know by referring to their “time at Yale or Princeton or wherever.” Old school rivalries run deep and are a lot of fun to play up. Also, for all of you in South Carolina, go Tigers (and Chants), booo Cocks!
  - wanderingstan 4y ago
    I wonder if this research gives hints as to why rivalries are “fun”? Even when you know the in/out group distinction is silly, little aggressions like “boooo Cocks!” can tickle reward areas in the brain. Akin to how scary movies are fun even when you know you’re not in danger.
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      As a Gamecock fan, and a somewhat reasonable person (self described), I’ve been defending rivalries based on this exact case throughout this thread. I completely agree with your speculation. It’s fun for me to even type: go fight win kick ass fuck Clemson. Ahhhh
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    I’m a proud Gamecock, and maybe that’s why I’m all over this thread. I just replied to a guy a few comments up about how I unironically chose a red car over orange (one of my favorite colors) because go, fight, win, kick ass, fuck Clemson! We can all agree the SC state flag is pretty, I guess.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  We definitely were introduced to my state school’s rivalry at my undergrad orientation. It’s all in good fun, but certainly reinforced.
wanderingstan 4y ago
This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. You’re right that it could conceivably be trained, but that’s not what it felt like for me as a young male in college. While many people (myself included) could anecdotally say that aggression to an outgroup can feel good, it’s the job of science to look for the hard evidence in the brain. This quote from the researchers seemed key: > “This finding helps to balance the narrative about the psychological processes that underlie aggression against outgroup members, which typically emphasizes negative emotional states such as anger and fear,” Chester said.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students. The point I was trying to make is that this is a specifically narrow finding with confounding factors (mirrors the structure of sports programs, which are significant social activities at many colleges). The study authors stretched the narrow funding into a very general finding, which is heavy editorializing. This stretching gets a free pass from many because it feels truthy, but it’s not great science.
  - wanderingstan 4y ago
    Ah, you think the social aspects confound the in/out group distinctions. But what other grouping would have been better? E.g. People from opposite sides of ethnic conflicts, members of bowling clubs vs non-members?
  - dahart 4y ago
    > This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students That’s not accurate. The research is based a-priori on knowing that competition is fun, and is asking the question “which specific parts of the brain are making it fun?” The abstract concludes: “Both before and after outgroup exclusion, aggression towards outgroup members was positively associated with activity in the ventral striatum during decisions about how aggressive to be towards their outgroup opponent. Aggression towards outgroup members was also linked to greater post-exclusion activity in the rostral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortexduring provocation from their outgroup opponent. These altered patterns of brain activity suggest that frontostriatal mechanisms may play a significant role in motivating aggression towards outgroup members.”
dalbasal 4y ago
Perhaps, and studies such as these should have to withstand such questioning. But..... The problem as I see it isn't expiremntal design. The problem is larger scientific "design." To learn something useful with a sufficiently nuances understanding would take a lot of studies. Replication, redesign, boundary testing of the hypothesis, re-theorizing, etc. Science is supposed to be a process. With this, it may be possible to arrive at usable knowledge about human psychology and why/how we behave badly. This smattering of disparate studies, even if they were well designed and executed.... It just doesn't lead anywhere. If expiremnts and studies were pieces in a larger scientific endeavour, I think both quality issues resilience to quality issues would improve naturally.
shadowgovt 4y ago
Oh no... Is this another "Harvard men do a study of Harvard men to find out about Harvard men" study? http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04152016 http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04152016
dahart 4y ago
The authors might even agree with that summary, the paper talks more or less about picking people that give the strongest competitive signal. But the point wasn’t to check whether people enjoy competition, the point was to understand more about how the brain works, right? That does seem like useful research - even when we know we behave a certain way, we don’t always know exactly why, and we certainly have a long way to go toward understanding the brain, no? Personally I think it’s interesting that the “aggressive task” was to push a computer button faster than the opponent. This isn’t “aggressive” in the way most people would imagine when you describe this study as “simulating” a competitive sports program. It’s more of a clinical/scientific concept of aggression and quite dissimilar from actually playing hockey or lacrosse, for example. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Aggression_Paradigm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Aggression_Paradigm) The participants were sitting alone inside a brain scanner playing an extremely basic video game, and being primed with some pure narrative about who their opponents and team mates were. Physical safety was not in question, and there was no interpersonal interaction (all other players were computer simulation). This says a lot about the power of narrative, and how much we operate on things we’re told and don’t have first hand knowledge of. Also interesting: left-handed people were excluded. The paper doesn’t appear to say why, but I wonder if that was due to the design of the game UI (seems most likely), or if it was done for statistical reasons and/or known behavioral differences of left vs right handed people (this seems less likely, but possible?).
- yunohn 4y ago
  > Also interesting: left-handed people were excluded. This is pretty common in brain research: https://www.freethink.com/science/left-handed-people-brain-research https://www.freethink.com/science/left-handed-people-brain-r...
yunohn 4y ago
I would go a step further, and question if this even counts as an “outgroup” in the commonly used sense. These are just rival college teams, not people with opposing beliefs or structures.
anigbrowl 4y ago
A more charitable way to look at it might be 'we identified the specific neural correlates of competitive vs aggressive activity', but that's not as catchy. The authors make the point that they deliberately picked a mild kind of rivalry because it was fun and socially desirable, vs selecting for some deeply held antagonism that might be stressful to the subjects. There is prior evidence that some people actively prefer seeing an opponent worse off (even at a cost to themselves) than merely outcompeting an opponent. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
salt-thrower 4y ago
This is the classic trope that psychology studies in general don’t reveal truths about humanity, they reveal truths about (mostly white) American college students.

feet 4y ago

>College students are literally trained to associate out-competing rival universities as a fun and desirable activity. This was not my experience in undergrad, literally at all. No idea where this comes from

wffurr 4y ago
Go to hell LSU! Gotta win the Egg Bowl over those scrubs at Mississippi State. Woo hoo we’re in the playoffs! It comes from many people’s experiences of collegiate sports which is full of rivalries, largely with no real basis. Except for LSU.
- r2_pilot 4y ago
  How do you say you associate with the University of Mississippi without saying that you associate with them? Ha. I work there and went to school there too, so those first few sentences(well, except for the playoffs remark lol) sound very familiar.
  - wffurr 4y ago
    Class of '04, Computer Science. Hotty Toddy.
    - r2_pilot 4y ago
      Fun times. You may remember me if you recall someone with a common first name and the last name of a bird(was there starting in 04); I certainly stayed around there long enough lol. Tended to keep to myself, though.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
Were you in college in the US, or somewhere else? It may be more prevalent in the US, dunno. Just based on observations of US sports and cheerleader culture.
- feet 4y ago
  Undergrad in the Midwest US
- nostrademons 4y ago
  It's not universal among U.S. college students either. I went to a Div3 top-tier (academically) liberal arts college, and most people were oblivious to how our sports teams did, unless you were on the team or close friends with someone who was. Probably because we lost a large percentage of the time. The sports culture is much more relevant at Div1 schools. These get a disproportionate amount of air time (at least as far as sports go), but that's largely because those are the schools where sporting matches are worth watching.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jakelazaroff 4y ago
Anecdotally, my wife’s school (UNC) had a rival (Duke). Temple That’s not weird or exceptional. There’s long Wikipedia article about rivalries between universities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_rivalries_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_rivalries_in_t...
- feet 4y ago
  Is that something that's just cultural in the community or is it something explicitly taught by university orientation/course work?
  - nverno 4y ago
    Those campuses are seeped in that rivarly. You'll hear chants, speeches, etc. It's a tradition.
    - jtdev 4y ago
    - casion 4y ago
      To add on to this, I have a co-worker from a specific university who would not buy a car because it was a rival universities colour. This person is ~30 years out of school, and the vehicle was an INCREDIBLE deal and exactly what the person was looking to buy (other than the colour). The person never competed in sports and was a comp sci major. It runs deep for at many schools.
      - sitkack 4y ago
        They themselves might have cared, but damn if I wear a purple shirt in Seattle folks are like Go Huskies to me, to the point where I think twice about putting it on or wearing it outside the house. I could give a damn about sports or nationalism, but lots of other idiots do.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
I was referring to college sports programs, which are a huge deal in the United States (where this study took place). Pick 35 random male college students and you will get a lot of college sports fans.
christophilus 4y ago
I really enjoy trolling the Harvard grads I know by referring to their “time at Yale or Princeton or wherever.” Old school rivalries run deep and are a lot of fun to play up. Also, for all of you in South Carolina, go Tigers (and Chants), booo Cocks!
- wanderingstan 4y ago
  I wonder if this research gives hints as to why rivalries are “fun”? Even when you know the in/out group distinction is silly, little aggressions like “boooo Cocks!” can tickle reward areas in the brain. Akin to how scary movies are fun even when you know you’re not in danger.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    As a Gamecock fan, and a somewhat reasonable person (self described), I’ve been defending rivalries based on this exact case throughout this thread. I completely agree with your speculation. It’s fun for me to even type: go fight win kick ass fuck Clemson. Ahhhh
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  I’m a proud Gamecock, and maybe that’s why I’m all over this thread. I just replied to a guy a few comments up about how I unironically chose a red car over orange (one of my favorite colors) because go, fight, win, kick ass, fuck Clemson! We can all agree the SC state flag is pretty, I guess.
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
We definitely were introduced to my state school’s rivalry at my undergrad orientation. It’s all in good fun, but certainly reinforced.

wanderingstan 4y ago

This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. You’re right that it could conceivably be trained, but that’s not what it felt like for me as a young male in college. While many people (myself included) could anecdotally say that aggression to an outgroup can feel good, it’s the job of science to look for the hard evidence in the brain. This quote from the researchers seemed key: > “This finding helps to balance the narrative about the psychological processes that underlie aggression against outgroup members, which typically emphasizes negative emotional states such as anger and fear,” Chester said.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> This research gives evidence that outgroup aggression feels good/rewarding. I’d tend to think this is hard-wired biologically. This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students. The point I was trying to make is that this is a specifically narrow finding with confounding factors (mirrors the structure of sports programs, which are significant social activities at many colleges). The study authors stretched the narrow funding into a very general finding, which is heavy editorializing. This stretching gets a free pass from many because it feels truthy, but it’s not great science.
- wanderingstan 4y ago
  Ah, you think the social aspects confound the in/out group distinctions. But what other grouping would have been better? E.g. People from opposite sides of ethnic conflicts, members of bowling clubs vs non-members?
- dahart 4y ago
  > This research gives evidence that rival college competition is fun to male college students That’s not accurate. The research is based a-priori on knowing that competition is fun, and is asking the question “which specific parts of the brain are making it fun?” The abstract concludes: “Both before and after outgroup exclusion, aggression towards outgroup members was positively associated with activity in the ventral striatum during decisions about how aggressive to be towards their outgroup opponent. Aggression towards outgroup members was also linked to greater post-exclusion activity in the rostral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortexduring provocation from their outgroup opponent. These altered patterns of brain activity suggest that frontostriatal mechanisms may play a significant role in motivating aggression towards outgroup members.”

dalbasal 4y ago

Perhaps, and studies such as these should have to withstand such questioning. But..... The problem as I see it isn't expiremntal design. The problem is larger scientific "design." To learn something useful with a sufficiently nuances understanding would take a lot of studies. Replication, redesign, boundary testing of the hypothesis, re-theorizing, etc. Science is supposed to be a process. With this, it may be possible to arrive at usable knowledge about human psychology and why/how we behave badly. This smattering of disparate studies, even if they were well designed and executed.... It just doesn't lead anywhere. If expiremnts and studies were pieces in a larger scientific endeavour, I think both quality issues resilience to quality issues would improve naturally.

shadowgovt 4y ago

Oh no... Is this another "Harvard men do a study of Harvard men to find out about Harvard men" study? http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04152016 http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04152016

dahart 4y ago

The authors might even agree with that summary, the paper talks more or less about picking people that give the strongest competitive signal. But the point wasn’t to check whether people enjoy competition, the point was to understand more about how the brain works, right? That does seem like useful research - even when we know we behave a certain way, we don’t always know exactly why, and we certainly have a long way to go toward understanding the brain, no? Personally I think it’s interesting that the “aggressive task” was to push a computer button faster than the opponent. This isn’t “aggressive” in the way most people would imagine when you describe this study as “simulating” a competitive sports program. It’s more of a clinical/scientific concept of aggression and quite dissimilar from actually playing hockey or lacrosse, for example. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Aggression_Paradigm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Aggression_Paradigm) The participants were sitting alone inside a brain scanner playing an extremely basic video game, and being primed with some pure narrative about who their opponents and team mates were. Physical safety was not in question, and there was no interpersonal interaction (all other players were computer simulation). This says a lot about the power of narrative, and how much we operate on things we’re told and don’t have first hand knowledge of. Also interesting: left-handed people were excluded. The paper doesn’t appear to say why, but I wonder if that was due to the design of the game UI (seems most likely), or if it was done for statistical reasons and/or known behavioral differences of left vs right handed people (this seems less likely, but possible?).

yunohn 4y ago
> Also interesting: left-handed people were excluded. This is pretty common in brain research: https://www.freethink.com/science/left-handed-people-brain-research https://www.freethink.com/science/left-handed-people-brain-r...

yunohn 4y ago

I would go a step further, and question if this even counts as an “outgroup” in the commonly used sense. These are just rival college teams, not people with opposing beliefs or structures.

anigbrowl 4y ago

A more charitable way to look at it might be 'we identified the specific neural correlates of competitive vs aggressive activity', but that's not as catchy. The authors make the point that they deliberately picked a mild kind of rivalry because it was fun and socially desirable, vs selecting for some deeply held antagonism that might be stressful to the subjects. There is prior evidence that some people actively prefer seeing an opponent worse off (even at a cost to themselves) than merely outcompeting an opponent. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451

salt-thrower 4y ago

This is the classic trope that psychology studies in general don’t reveal truths about humanity, they reveal truths about (mostly white) American college students.