Introduction

Research Question

Why do players exhibit toxic behaviors? Does playing the video game League of Legends cause players to be more impulsive?

Hypothesis

Playing the video game LoL causes players to be more impulsive, which is why the game sees a lot of toxicity and cyberbullying.

Problem

Playing video games can lead to toxic behaviors such as bullying both in-person and online, mental health impairments, and addiction. All of these trends can then lead to depression and suicide. When looking at the broader picture of current problems- specifically in suicide rates amongst teens and young adults aged 10-34, we can see that suicide is the leading cause of death (National Institute of Mental Health). While there is no connection to be made between playing video games and suicide, there can be a connection between bullying, mental health impairments, and addiction to suicide. In other words, while playing video games itself is not inherently a problem, the implications and impressions it can cause in people is something we need to keep in mind. So, this study hopes to understand more about these toxic behaviors found in video games in order to properly find a solution to the problem identified. To do this, the following behaviors will need to be tested:

Toxicity
Aggression
Violence

Impulsivity is going to be the main focus of this study. Figuring out why it is that players feel the need to exert these toxic behaviors in the first place will be important and paramount to finding a solution to preventing or limiting toxicity.

While there are other studies highlighting the negatives of video games, there are typically covering a broad range of games/ talk about how playing different genres of games can affect mood and the ones that do focus on league of legends do not talk about impulsivity. My research can be used as a catalyst to prompt future studies.

Significance

Technology is on the rise–and with it, more and more people playing video games. As competitive video games such as League of Legends can be extremely blood-boiling, players may find themselves portraying toxic behaviors on impulse which could potentially hurt a friend or loved one, even if unintentional. Due to this, many mental health ailments and issues may arise from the usage of playing video games, so it is important that we understand the whole scope of the problem in order to create countermeasures. The first step in doing so would be to widen the current existing knowledge about this topic by conducting studies, like the one I'm doing, in order to better understand the problem at hand and to create solutions.

Definitions

LoL: League of Legends

Impulsivity: The tendency to act without thinking

Toxicity: Anything that ruins the experience of another player through the use of harassment, threats or acts of violence, privacy violations, and spamming (Ratan)

Barratt Impulsivity Scale: A questionnaire composed of 50 questions aimed at measuring impulsivity levels

Body of Knowledge

Current research has fleshed out the concept of toxicity and impulsivity in its relation to various different video games (Bartholow, 2014). However, while it has been confirmed that playing video games does lead to various negative effects in real life behavior, there is an inherit lack of coverage on how the video game League of Legends compares to other games, and while there are studies acknowledging the problem of League of Legends toxicity, few has attempted to study, why and what causes toxicity in the first place, which I theorize to be an increase in impulsivity levels caused by playing the video game. This is a problematic situation as although League is well known for its toxic community, there is a very apparent lack of coverage on how playing league increases impulsivity.

Important Surrounding Literature

Barratt, E. S. (2021, September 24). Barratt impulsiveness - society for research on impulsivity. ISRI. Retrieved April 26, 2022, from https://www.impulsivity.org/measurement/bis11/

Bartholow, B. D. & Engelhardt, C. R. (2014). Elsevier. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from http://web.missouri.edu/~bartholowb/docs/pub/2015/engelhardt_etal_cihb_difficult_games_dysregulate_control.pdf

Carnagey, N. L. (2006, July 17). The effect of video game violence on physiological desensitization to real-life violence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Retrieved April 26, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103106000825.

Ewoldsen, D. R., Eno, C. A., Okdie, B. M., Velez, J. A., Guagamo, R. E., & DeCoster, J. (2012, May 14). Effect of playing violent video games ... - liebertpub.com. Mary Ann Liebent Inc. Publications. Retrieved April 29, 2022, from https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.2011.0308?rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org

Gentile, D. A. (2012, January). Video game playing, attention problems, and impulsiveness ... Video Game Playing, Attention Problems, and Impulsiveness: Evidence of Bidirectional Causalty. Retrieved April 26, 2022, from https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/ppm-1-1-62.pdf

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