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> Students in the study then participated in a competitive reaction time task, which is used to measure aggression. Ok, if you have fast reflexes you are a vio

• ovi256 14y ago
  RTFA please. The reaction time task was phony, there was no competitor. What they actually measured was the punishment that the "winner" dished on the non-existent loser. The punishment was allegedly more severe for the aggressive game group.
• dllthomas 14y ago
  My initial reaction was similar, but after the elaboration it's just poor writing. The "competitive reaction time task" had them competing against no-one, and told they won about half the games. During play, they could decide how much to punish the opponent (through controlling the volume of some unpleasant noises) when the opponent lost. So, they assume that choosing to inflict more unpleasantness on your opponent when it doesn't make a difference in game or out means you're a more violent person. That doesn't seem perfect, necessarily, but it's clearly a much better measurement than "if you have fast reflexes you are a violent person".