Shakespeare being a staple in high school English classes yields a common question: why do we still read the Bard? Put simply, he creates a mirror into the underlying moral flaws still prevalent four centuries later. Despite having been born more than 300 years before modern psychology began to take shape, Shakespeare provides psychological prototypes for understanding a person’s reactions to these flaws.
Macbeth, the play-turned-archetype, explores not only the fate versus free will duality, but also the manifestations of guilt stemming from immoral acts. Having killed the king, Macbeth calls upon “all great Neptune’s ocean” to cleanse his hands of blood and accompanying guilt. Lady Macbeth later parallels this need for moral cleansing – too little too late, mind you – in her famous lines, “Out, damned spot!”
In psychology, this need to cleanse oneself to re-establish moral purity is known as the Macbeth effect. The Macbeth effect has recently found its way into video game research, as illustrated by two studies over the last year.
Last summer, a study at the University of Luxemburg conducted by Dr. André Melzer linked cleanliness and morality with video games. After playing violent video games, 76 players were each asked to select a gift for having participated. Almost invariably, players new to violent video games not only felt higher levels of moral distress, but also chose gifts related to personal hygiene, such as shower gel or deodorant.
“We find that the Macbeth effect can result from playing violent video games,” Melzer concluded, “especially when the game involves violence against humans.”
Does this mean that experienced gamers have become immune to this effect? Hardly. Melzer stressed that players of violent games simply use different strategies to cope with their exposure to the violence in video games.
As a play, Macbeth is an example of what happens when we follow through with immoral choices placed before us. But what happens when the choice to commit forbidden behaviours, such as cheating or stealing, is taken away from us? In this situation, given the logical, moral psychology underlying the Macbeth effect, could we see the reverse occur, where immoral acts are subsequently sought after? Turns out that’s exactly what happens.
Last month, an experiment from Ohio State University concluded that people who are frustrated when their attempts to steal or cheat are denied are more likely to turn to violent video games. In phase one of the experiment, Brad Bushman, a professor of psychology at OSU, provided 120 college students the chance to cheat on a multiple choice test. In the second phase, Bushman gave 141 students an opportunity to steal. Through the design of the experiment, the chance to cheat or steal was revealed and then taken away from half of the participants.
According to Bushman, this denial had a distinct effect.
“We believe students felt frustrated when they didn’t get a chance to cheat on the test,” he said.
But as the Scottish play reveals, feelings are not as important as the choices one makes based on those feelings. After each phase, students were given a choice of eight fictitious video games – four violent, four nonviolent – and asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how badly they wanted to play each game. Participants whose chance to cheat or steal was taken away from them were more attracted to violent video games.
A reverse version of the Macbeth effect therefore holds true in this latter study.
“Our results help us understand why people are attracted to violent entertainment in the first place,” said Bushman, “they feel they can take out their frustration virtually.”
I wonder whether Macbeth or Lady Macbeth would have dived into a little Call of Duty if their attempts to kill Duncan had been denied.
When he’s not teaching high school, St. Albert Catholic High School alumnus Derek Mitchell can be found attached to a video game console.
