How spicy are you?

Using hot peppers to measure cyber-aggression

LFG: Learning from Games is a series dedicated to making the complex world of video game research just a little easier to understand. I post one about 2-3 times a month in between my Science Shorts and Coming Soon series. LFG #29 is about the age-old debate on video games and violence.

Hello JOMT Reader!

Video games have been connected to violence for almost as long as video games have been around in mainstream media. It all started with a game called Death Race, which was released in 1976 and resembled a pixelated version of Grand Theft Auto. It was a simple game that asked players to run over virtual gremlins — but it caused enough of a public outcry to stop production of the game.

Plenty of other games have found themselves in the crosshairs of the violence and video game conversation: Mortal Kombat, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Counterstrike, and Grand Theft Auto. In each case, the age-old mantra that video games cause violent behaviours is repeated and then committed to memory. The “violent” in front of video games is frequently forgotten in these discussions.

More recently, academics like the American Psychological Association (APA) have said that “there is insufficient scientific evidence to support a causal link between violent video games and violent behaviour.”¹ No one has been able to show conclusively that playing video games leads to violent behaviour. What’s more, the APA says that “attributing violence to video games draws attention away from factors like history of violence, which is a major predictor of future violence.” It turns out that violence is a lot more complicated than just turning on a game of Mortal Kombat.

Things get even more complicated with the rise of the Internet and cyber-aggression, which is defined as behaviours that cause harm to individuals or groups using various communication methods and technologies. It’s particularly dangerous because unlike other forms of violence and aggression, cyber-aggression can be done anonymously and spread like wildfire. Video games represent a perfect incubator for cyber-aggression as players can hide behind in-game avatars and reach millions of other players at a time.

Researchers have proposed a number of ways to make sense of how cyber-aggression happens.

1. General Aggression Model²
   One of the very first frameworks to explain cyber-aggression simply says that exposure to violent content can trigger aggressive behaviour. Does that mean limiting access to violent content will reduce aggressive behaviour? Maybe not especially in the gaming context if playing non-violent games can still lead to cyber-aggression.

2. General Learning Model³
   So if exposure alone isn’t the cause of violent behaviour, can someone learn to be violent through repetition? That’s what this framework says: that repeated exposure to violent environments and imitation is what leads to cyber-aggression. This time, it puts the entire weight of a behaviour, which is usually something internal to you, squarely on the shoulders of external factors.

3. Catalyst Model⁴
   But repetition alone can’t be the answer either because otherwise, we would be a society of violent people as we’ve been repeatedly exposed to violent content through mass media. This model says that those prone to violent behaviours tend to lean into cyber-aggression in stressful situations. In this case, removing the violent trigger won’t make cyber-aggression go away.

4. Competitive Hypothesis⁵
   Finally, this model recognizes that there may be other factors in video games, like competition, which may have a role in enabling cyber-aggression. When applied to video games, it means violent but non-competitive games should have less impact compared to violent and competitive games, in terms of cyber-aggression.

The evolution of these models points to two things that could lead to violent behaviours: violent content and competition. Past research hasn’t addressed these two as separate things — the research I’m about to share with you attempted to separate violent content and competition. The hope is that we’ll get a clearer picture into which aspect of video games contributes to violent behaviours.

⚠️Why it’s important

The distinction between violent content and competition, and what they contribute to violent behaviours, is important because it helps reframe how we think and talk about video games.

Violent content is easier to recognize and address. Limiting access or monitoring our relationship with violent content is possible. But it’s important to recognize that the level of violence might affect people differently. Stellaris, a grand strategy game not normally considered violent, could be depending on the actions you take in the game.

Competition is harder to address in the context of gaming as for some, it is the main reason that they play. But if competition can trigger cyber-aggression, how do we approach a healthy relationship with competition?

In either case, there is a lot more nuance than “video games cause violence.” How we approach the relationship with video games with violent content or competitive elements will matter a lot.

🌶️The hot sauce test

You’re probably wondering why there is a red hot chili pepper in the middle of a conversation about violence and video games. There’s a good reason: it’s how the researchers conducted their study and it’s a fascinating way to address this hard-to-answer question.

Since we’re talking about the effect of violent content or competition on cyber-aggression, the most direct way to test this is to have participants experience violent content or competition and then see if they bully someone online. But we can’t do that — it’s just not ethical. So what can we do instead?

Enter the Hot Sauce Paradigm⁶. This scale was developed as a way to study a person’s willingness to inflict theoretical pain using hot sauce. Spicier pain was associated with more aggressive tendencies. Who knows maybe we’ll start referring to someone’s aggression in Scoville units!

🤬What effect does violent content and competition have on cyber-aggression?

When the researchers looked at violent content versus competition across three ways of delivering it (text, video, and games), they found that those exposed to violent content consistently scored spicier on the Hot Sauce Paradigm. Those exposed to violent content through video scored spicier than those exposed to similar content via text or gaming. In fact, video games ranked last among video and text for how much spicy pain they were willing to inflict on others.

A visual representation of the numbers presented in the study. Gaming wasn’t as impactful to cyber-aggression as the text or video formats!

↔️Does social comparison affect cyber-aggression?

A different way to look at the concept of competition is through social comparisons, which is the tendency to compare yourself to others to build a sense of self-worth. How does this tendency affect someone’s willingness to inflict spicy pain?

Similar to the analysis above, those exposed to violent content were spicier across all levels of social comparison tendency. Interestingly, those with the highest tendency for social comparison also scored the spiciest on the Hot Sauce Paradigm when exposed to violent content.

A visual representation of some aggregate scores presented in the article. In this case, competition had no real effect when viewed from a social comparison perspective.

The graph above is a combination of two scores, one for verbal aggression and one for physical aggression. I combined the two scores for simplicity and to show the trend that the spiciest scores came from those with higher tendencies for social comparison.

⛔One big limitation of the study

There is one gaping hole of a question left unanswered in this study. That is, what’s the baseline level of spiciness when they are shown non-violent and non-competitive content? I would be curious to see how spicy people are when shown a nature documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough, read a passage from the Origin of Species, or play Two Point Museum. Do people have a baseline level of spiciness that could change the interpretation of these results?

🔮For the future

I would love for research like this to be a springboard for more informed and nuanced conversation about video games and its effect on violence in the real world. It isn’t as simple as playing video games leads to violent behaviour — and I think we’re finally beginning to see the iceberg under the water.

If you want to read more about this study, you can access the article here for free: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1577717/full

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1. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2020/03/violent-video-games-behavior
The first line of this press release from the American Psychological Association is the line quoted here.

2. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135231
Unfortunately, this review article is locked behind a paywall, but it is the article that discusses the General Aggression Model.

3. https://www.craiganderson.org/wp-content/uploads/caa/abstracts/2005-2009/06BA.pdf
This is the freely available chapter of the book Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences.

4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0093854807311719
Another article behind a paywall that discusses the Catalyst Model.

5. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fa0024908
This is the first article to suggest that another common component of video games, competition, could contribute to cyber-aggression.

6. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2337(1999)25:5%3C331::AID-AB2%3E3.0.CO;2-1
The Hot Sauce Paradigm, also known as how much spicy pain are you willing to inflict on others?