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Ask A Psychologist About EvE

Author
Gorki Andropov
I Dn't Knw Wht You Wnt Bt I Cn't Gve It Anymre
#61 - 2012-05-13 14:01:27 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:
I have a good one....




Why do people (such as the rabble in this thread) hate the very mentioning of psychology? It is as though they cannot stand the idea of people knowing them like an open book, and knowing what motivates them even if they do not admit it to themselves. It seems to hurt their ego and perhaps even scare them. Ultimately, It seems to bring them to anger when they hear their own motivations spoken aloud. To say to someone "you have a need for validation and a need to be right" tends to equal "you are having problems being as validated as you want to be, and you have a need to be right because you are insecure." The outcome is that they see themselves as being more little then they want to be, and the result is the lashing out towards (and attempts to invalidate) the source of what violated their imagined state of being.



Am I close Mr. Psychology BS degree?



I think people might hate the idea of it because it reeks of pseudoscience.
Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#62 - 2012-05-13 14:11:05 UTC
Snowflake Tem wrote:

It appears to be an entirely biased and self-serving organization. How can it exist?


Fixed that for you, and also took care of your spelling errors. No thx is needed.

[center]The EVE Gateway Blog[/center] [center]One Of EVE Online's Ultimate Resources[/center]

Eternum Praetorian
Doomheim
#63 - 2012-05-13 14:13:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Eternum Praetorian
Gorki Andropov wrote:


I think people might hate the idea of it because it reeks of pseudoscience.


Tom cruise? Is that you?


Also, to say that it is pseudoscience is the easiest road to attempt to discredit it (and thus validate oneself). It is a term often uttered by people who do not understand the science in question, and therefore have no say in it's legitimacy. In order to discern the pseudo from the science, one must first understand the science.


To "reek" is not to "know" it is only to assume.
Your assumptions are not based on facts, and thus... well... It does not matter.

[center]The EVE Gateway Blog[/center] [center]One Of EVE Online's Ultimate Resources[/center]

Aruken Marr
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#64 - 2012-05-13 14:22:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Aruken Marr
Eternum Praetorian wrote:
Gorki Andropov wrote:


I think people might hate the idea of it because it reeks of pseudoscience.


Tom cruise? Is that you?


Also, to say that it is pseudoscience is the easiest road to attempt to discredit it (and thus validate oneself). It is a term often uttered by people who do not understand the science in question, and therefore have no say in it's legitimacy. In order to discern the pseudo from the science, one must first understand the science.


To "reek" is not to "know" it is only to assume.
Your assumptions are not based on facts, and thus... well... It does not matter.

Agreed. The only reason I take the **** out of psych students is the same as why I take the **** out of biology students; because it's funny.

Both are sciences in their own right. As if the copious use of empiricism didn't drop the hint.
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#65 - 2012-05-13 14:25:48 UTC
Wow. Lots of questions. Here we go:

sri nova wrote:
how does eve achieve the adrenaline effect of the shakes ?

one can play battle field 3 all day and not even experience a minor tremble of excitement ( rage don't count here)

but in eve when it comes to pvp a large majority have experienced the adrenaline rush .

with eve being only a game what sets eve apart from the rest in this manner?


There's more inherent risk in EvE than in other 'pvp' games - when you die in EvE you lose what you're flying, as well as your clone and implants, if you aren't quick enough to warp out. If you're in a big enough fight you also stand to lose things like a POS, a customs office, even an entire solar system. The greater importance that EvE places on succeeding in PvP leads to a greater fight or flight response, and a greater increase in adrenaline.

durie wrote:
I've described EVE as a 10 year long Stanford prisoner experiment to people unfamiliar with the game. Is this a fair description?


Haha. More or less, yeah. The difference is that EvE provides opportunities for class advancement, and Zimbardo didn't provide any opportunities for the prisoners to become the wardens. In my opinion that makes it even worse - it opens up all kinds of opportunities for revenge.

Doctor Ungabungas wrote:
What parallels do you see between Erikson's life stage theory and the progression of newbies in eve online?


Oh snap. Nice question.Truthfully, I don't think there's too many parallels, although it's interesting that 'healthy' development in EvE flips some of Erik's stages around. For example, trust is an awful thing in EvE, and you do far better once you've figured out that nobody can really be trusted, especially people you don't know. The industry vs. inferiority stage really applies to PvP pretty heavily too, I think - I think I posted about this earlier. People who engage in PvP with a learning approach will always wind up achieving more success in PvP than people who enter PvP with a risk-aversive attitude.

I mean, there's some parallels, sure, but I don't think that Erikson's life stage model plots exactly the course of a newbie in EvE.

Lexmana wrote:
Why are so many players whining on the forums about sucide ganks and the so called "non-consensual" PvP? Surely, they must have been aware of PvP in EVE when they signed up.


You would think. I can guarantee you that some people don't though. I think the general perception among players who complain about suicide ganks is that they perceive EvE as two halves - a 'safe' half and a 'dangerous' half. Most other players recognize that EvE is a spectrum of danger. Events like Hulkageddon upset the 'danger spectrum' and cause players in highsec to perceive it as less safe, so they complain.

And they kind of have a point - it's a half-full / half-empty situation. On one hand, CCP wants highsec to be a safe place - you have police responses, and global timers, and all that. But on the other hand CCP wants highsec to be subject to the same sandbox environment as the rest of the game - if you want someone dead in highsec, you can make them dead. The difference between the players who complain and the players who don't is how they perceive that argument.

karn dulake wrote:
ive just realised that you are American. It takes 3 years for a Phd which includeds empirical research.


I cant be bothered to look at this stuff any further but do you know what IVs and DVs are and which type of data a basic spearmans correlation would analyse.


Also can you think of an Empirical research that you can conduct on this game and would you need internal validity or external validity as a basis.

If you can answer the above i will accept that you have a basic understanding of Social science research


1.) It depends on your research. The graduate student I work under has been here for six, because his data set isn't complete enough to write a dissertation on. In 'Merica, anyway.

2.) An IV is a variable that can be manipulated, and is predicted to have an influence on subsequent experiment outcomes. A DV is a subsequent result from an experiment. A Spearman correlation analyzes continuous numeric varialbes and reports the degree to which one changes in response to another, however, it provides no information on causality and should not be reported as such.

3.) The project I was considering doing was looking at the influence of rewards on subsequent behaviors. I would have found some participating corps or alliances and had them schedule an event, and offer pilots a large or small ISK reward. You would measure their subsequent attendance to the event, and then a week or two later, you would hold the same event but with no ISk reward. Theories by Lepper and Nisbett would indicate that pilots who received a high ISK reward for attending the event would be LESS motivated to attend the non-reward event, because they could attribute their attendance to receipt of the reward. Pilots who received a low ISK reward, on the other hand, would be unable to justify their attendance to the reward, and instead attribute it to interest in the event, making them more likely to attend the non-reward event.

Due to difficulties in implementation of such a paradigm, and an inability to ensure participation, and difficulties in getting basic IRB approval, I scrapped that idea in favor of looking at some biological controls over motivation, but it's still an interesting idea.

As far as validity goes, internal is generally the more important one. You want to verify that your experiment is examining the variables, and drawing the conclusions, that it is supposed to be drawing. External validity is nice, and when you have it that's great, but it isn't as important, and you can't JUST have external validity, it would make no sense.

** more responses below **
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#66 - 2012-05-13 14:33:58 UTC
ElQuirko wrote:
Why am I so good at internet spaceships?


Because you're better than other people who aren't as good.

Aruken Marr wrote:
Why do people feel the need to belittle achievement? A BSc in psych is probably a BSc more than they'll ever have...

Also, is in game behaviour such as scamming and ganking indicative of real life behavioural problems? I always find it silly when people start spurting out ridiculous things like "if you pod people then you're a bad person"


1.) It's probably acognitive dissonance thing. To say that another's choices are wrong means that, by default, the choices you've made are right (or at least not as bad). People are generally insecure about their decisions, choices, and actions in life, and to belittle another's accomplishments is to affirm your own beliefs. If you want to read more about the many different ways people go about being dicks, read Leon Festinger's work on cognitive dissonance.

Peter Raptor wrote:
Why is existence better than non-existence and how do you know your answer is correct?


Well, first, from a scientific perspective, you'd want to hypothesize whether existence were better than non-existence, and to answer that question (scientifically) you would need to experience both.

Cue liberal arts and philosophy majors telling me I'm wrong.

malcanis wrote:
Why do Psychology and Philosophy have different names?


The same reason ecology and environmentalism have different names. One uses application of the scientific method, and one does not.

amarra mandalin wrote:
No. No. No. This question is a waste of the good Sir's time. The real question is, why did this poster and myself pick the Red Team and not the Blue one?


There's actually some neat research on this. Red is just a color that people pick more often. If you want to have some fun with your friends, write the number "2" on an index card and ask them to guess a number between 0 and 2. You will be right far more often than 33% of the time.

** continued below, ran out of quote space **
Arix Sarn
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#67 - 2012-05-13 14:37:37 UTC
Why do I have an irresistible urge to wear my wifes panties when I log on my PvP alt to melt face? It is the only time I wear them.
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#68 - 2012-05-13 14:45:02 UTC
Eternum Praetorian wrote:
I have a good one....
Why do people (such as the rabble in this thread) hate the very mentioning of psychology? It is as though they cannot stand the idea of people knowing them like an open book, and knowing what motivates them even if they do not admit it to themselves. It seems to hurt their ego and perhaps even scare them. Ultimately, It seems to bring them to anger when they hear their own motivations spoken aloud. To say to someone "you have a need for validation and a need to be right" tends to equal "you are having problems being as validated as you want to be, and you have a need to be right because you are insecure." The outcome is that they see themselves as being more little then they want to be, and the result is the lashing out towards (and attempts to invalidate) the source of what violated their imagined state of being.


No, that's pretty spot on, I think. I don't think it's necessarily because we're mind readers, people actually just don't hide their behavior very well because they don't recognize the kind of things to hide.

See one of my responses above about the posts in the thread.

I think another perception is that a Psychology B.S. is a waste of time degree, and I'd agree with that. If I had to go back and redo college, I'd definitely go with a degree in Chemistry, or maybe Statistics. But Psychology has just been something I've always enjoyed, and I would up with the degree before recognizing the dour career prospects that came with it.

But as far as degrees go, it is pretty a much a "teach you how to think, and not how to do" degree, and in general those are kind of a waste, since they don't prepare you to do anything meaningful in the real world.

Snowflake Tem wrote:
I don't understand the CSM.
It appears to be an entirely altruistic organisation. How can it exist?


It's a position of perceived importance, so I would guess that people sitting on the CSM feel that they have an important role in the design and direction of the game, and that leads them to try and do the right thing. There's two conflicting aspects of human nature: the desire to do whatever you want, and the need to do what's right. You can style it as id vs. superego if you want, I don't really like Freud too much.

Anyway there's also some neat work that says if you feel like you're being watched, you're way more likely to 'do the right thing'. This even applies if it's just a pair of eyes painted on the wall. The CSM is a pretty high-visibility position, compared to some backwoods asteroid belt where some sod got his Hulk ganked, and so that may lead to their altruism as well.

Finally, it could just be a response to a position of authority. From what I understand of the CSM, you actually communicate directly with CCP, and Milgram has plenty to say about responses to authority.

Gorki Andropov wrote:
Yes, I'd love to speak to one regarding EVE Online. Do you happen to know the name of one?


Get in touch with Josh Diaz. He wrote a 225-page thesis on the narrative architecture within Dwarf Fortress and probably plays the hell out of some video games.

Oh sh oh you were implying that I wasn't a psychologist. Damn. Well, you got me. Shoot.
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#69 - 2012-05-13 14:47:00 UTC
Arix Sarn wrote:
Why do I have an irresistible urge to wear my wifes panties when I log on my PvP alt to melt face? It is the only time I wear them.


Paraphilias lead you to do some weird things. I would guess that the first time you successfully PvP you (for whatever reason) had panties on, and now you've linked the panties to the feelings of euphoria that come with your PvPing.
Aruken Marr
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#70 - 2012-05-13 14:54:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Aruken Marr
Gahagan wrote:
I'd definitely go with a degree in Chemistry


Chemistry's ok. There's far too much physics for my liking but it can be ignored the more Organic you go; Inorganic still has it's bits. I found that I was mis-sold chemistry while at school. It's nothing like what I'd thought it to be.

Funny thing is I wanted to do a degree in history, but I realised it would've destroyed my interest in the subject much like it did with most of chemistry. Luckily I stil have some bits in chem that make me go wow. Hoping to get into a nanochemistry research group next year, specifically CNTs and the like.
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#71 - 2012-05-13 15:00:51 UTC
Nanotech is neat stuff. Lots of opportunities for growth there - that field's going to get huge in the next 5-10 years and never really go away.
Pok Nibin
Doomheim
#72 - 2012-05-13 15:22:39 UTC
A BS in psych and ready to be an authority. How amusing. Here's my question:

Why do people receive a modicum of education in a field then suddenly must present themselves as experts?

The right to free speech doesn't automatically carry with it the right to be taken seriously.

Aruken Marr
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#73 - 2012-05-13 15:24:16 UTC  |  Edited by: Aruken Marr
Gahagan wrote:
Nanotech is neat stuff. Lots of opportunities for growth there - that field's going to get huge in the next 5-10 years and never really go away.



I know, right. Just waiting on one of those little wonder discoveries that result in exponential growth.

Pok Nibin wrote:
A BS in psych and ready to be an authority. How amusing. Here's my question:

Why do people receive a modicum of education in a field then suddenly must present themselves as experts?


Why do people assume that ability is limted by the level of their qualification? A man can read, understand and teach without a lable.

:edit: that's even assuming that the level of education at BSc isn't already enough to school people who know nothing about the field.
MeestaPenni
Mercantile and Stuff
#74 - 2012-05-13 15:30:59 UTC  |  Edited by: MeestaPenni
Pok Nibin wrote:
A BS in psych and ready to be an authority. How amusing.


Given how poorly the vast majority of people understand the inner workings of cognition, behavior, memory, et al, it doesn't take much study to be way ahead of the curve on grokking some s h i t.

I am not Prencleeve Grothsmore.

Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#75 - 2012-05-13 15:36:14 UTC
Pok Nibin wrote:
A BS in psych and ready to be an authority. How amusing. Here's my question:

Why do people receive a modicum of education in a field then suddenly must present themselves as experts?


I would guess it's for the same reasons as why people enjoy devaluing others' achievements - demonstrating your ability to others makes you feel good. And then also, perceiving someone as extremely knowledgeable but knocking them off their high horse also leads to feelings of satisfaction.

In generally, people act more civilized in face-to-face interactions, or in interactions when personal details are tied to the conversation. On a mostly anonymous internet forum, it's easier to strive for good feelings through expressing negativity and superiority towards others.
Klandi
Consortium of stella Technologies
#76 - 2012-05-13 15:54:09 UTC
Gahagan
Glad to see you could take my idea and build on it to the next level. Always liked people that grabbed opportunity.

As to you eduction progression, Chem with psyc, I feel would be a really good way to go as the majority of human emotion comes from chemical reaction so in effect you would be covering cause and effect .

Keep it up

I am aware of my own ignorance and have checked my emotional quotient - thanks for asking

Lexmana
#77 - 2012-05-13 16:28:42 UTC
Gahagan wrote:
A Spearman correlation analyzes continuous numeric varialbes and reports the degree to which one changes in response to another, however, it provides no information on causality and should not be reported as such.

Actually, Spearman correlations are used for rank order data. For continuos data we use the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. At least in Sweden.
Corina Jarr
en Welle Shipping Inc.
#78 - 2012-05-13 16:29:32 UTC
Read OP....

Trying to hold off on joke about B.S. in Psychology...
Vulix
Doomheim
#79 - 2012-05-13 16:32:12 UTC
Why did OP make this thread? Because he has low self-esteem and is looking for validation on the Internet.

There's your psychology.
Gahagan
White Moon Aeronautics
#80 - 2012-05-13 16:33:59 UTC
Vulix wrote:
Why did OP make this thread? Because he has low self-esteem and is looking for validation on the Internet.

There's your psychology.


That's one theory, sure.

The other theory would be that the OP is tired of reading about the "psychology" of gankers and the "psychology" of PvPers and the "psychology" of gankers and wanted to lend his knowledge to the debate by answering questions people have instead of writing a 3-4 post essay.