作者：Jeff Crubb

你可以回去玩游戏了，并且不用担心它们会将你变成一个怪物。

来自德国科隆大学的一项新研究显示，长期接触游戏中对于人类角色的性别歧视描写并不会渗透到人们的日常生活中。这是对所谓的“培养论（游戏邦注：即关于人们花费更长时间于游戏或电视等媒体中，他们便越有可能接受虚构的社会现实）”的反驳。最近的研究发现，尽管在最近几个月里玩家间持性别持续态度的人数不断增加，但却不存在足够的证据能够支持它，有些批评人士指出这是使用了不适合产业所面对的问题的方法论。

Dead-or-Alive-5(from venturebeat)

来自科隆大学的社会心理学学科的Johannes Breuer教授表示：“在基于824名14岁以上的游戏玩家的纵向调查研究中，我们发现计算机和电子游戏的使用与有关性别角色的看法是没有关系的。更具体地说，我们发现更频繁地接触电子游戏（基于每天平均几个小时）并不能代表拥有更强烈的性别歧视态度。这是距第一次调查之后2年的结果。”

Breuer同样也告诉GamesBeat没有证据能够证明相反的情况。坦白地说，那些带有性别歧视态度的人不一定比其他人玩更多游戏。

3年的时间是这一研究的关键元素。纵向研究会测量一段较长时间上的多个时期中同样的变量（即参与者的性别歧视态度）。这让Breuer能够测试游戏是否依赖时间去获得一个可衡量的效果。

这一研究只针对于德国人。有可能在不同国家游戏对于人们的性别歧视态度具有不同的影响，但这项研究并未突出这点。我们还需要指出德国人所玩的游戏与美国人和来自其它西方国家的玩家玩的游戏一样—-尽管前者在暴力内容方面更加严格。欧洲国家禁止像《Wolfenstein》，《求生之路》，《死刑犯2：充血》等游戏的发行。德国并未因为性别歧视内容而禁止任何游戏。

传统看法

Breuer的研究是关于玩家，评论者以及整个产业对于如何在游戏中描述人类，特别是女性角色的看法。由Anita Sarkeesian等评论者所领导的运动强调了这个产业的创造者总是依赖于同样的性别歧视表达方法去呈现女性角色。即女性都是以一种性感的方式出现，就像在《生或死》等打斗游戏中，或者女性在游戏中往往都是“待拯救的角色”，她们的存在只是为了推动男性角色不断向前发展，如《超级玛丽兄弟》，《双龙记》等等游戏。

大多数理智的人都认同游戏总是未能将女性描述为不需要男性帮助的没有能力的角色。总是让一个英雄去拯救一个被绑架的女性可能会让某些人觉得很受伤。

Sarkeesian之前说过：“这种表达方式的一大问题便是会强化女性是柔弱的性别歧视对象的文化理念。但事实上并非如此。”

我们很容易基于许多自我认同的玩家对于Sarkeesian的评论的回应而接受一个理论。她是这个产业中一直在抵抗骚扰与暴力威胁的女性之一。Sarkeesian在遭到许多认为她正在抵制他们所喜欢的游戏的人的威胁后选择离开了自己的家并取消了一些公共活动。在YouTube上也出现了许多攻击Sarkeesian的行为。有无数“叫她出来”或“灭了她”的视频获得了大量的点击与点赞。

不存在显著的原因

显然，游戏中有些内容是错误的，但Breuer的研究似乎是在饶恕创造出性别歧视内容的游戏。开发商Giant Spacekat的联合创始人Brianna Wu则并不认同。她指出了Breuer用于决定性别歧视态度的方法论问题，即询问调查对象他们是否同意像“即使男女双方都在工作，但是女性总是需要照料家庭”这样的问题。

Wu说道：“这一研究所使用的规模是在1976年（由研究者Donna Brogan和Nancy Kutner）所创造的。关于询问调查对象他们是否认同像‘男性应该决定家庭中所有重大问题’等问题。但这并不是我在产业中所看到的问题，这也不是其她女性在产业中所看到的问题。”

Wu表示2015年的性别歧视问题与1976年相比更细微且更隐秘。

Wu继续说道：“这并不是关于男性认为女性不应该游戏而应该在家里做饭。这是关于玩家拥有对于女性的强大且无意识的偏见。当他们在思考玩家应该是怎样时，他们的看法是和我不一样的，而这将会影响他们看待我以及其她女性的方式。”

Wu继续指出研究并未考虑为什么女性在使用像Xbox Live等在线服务时遭遇到比男性更多的骚扰以及为何女性游戏记者比男性记者遭遇到更多威胁。

我问了Breuer他会如何回应那些仍然相信游戏是增强性别歧视态度问题的根源的评论者时，他说道：“我同意许多游戏，或者至少游戏中的某些内容被当成是性别歧视的。但是与游戏中的暴力内容争议一样，我更愿意说游戏是受到更多来自‘现实生活’或‘社会’的影响。这意味着有些游戏虽然会促进性别歧视或其它消极文化看法，但它们却不是形成这些观念的真正原因。通常情况下我会说电子游戏的内容对于人类的态度或行为的影响总是被高估了。”

但Breuer也表示并未完全“原谅”游戏。

Breuer说道：“你可能会说，尽管游戏中的性别歧视内容对于玩家真正的态度和行为不具有太大的影响，但它们却没办法改变先入为主的性别歧视理念。”

尽管Wu并不认为这一研究真正揭露了她所批判的内容，但她也愿意接受Breuer对于真相的追逐。

她说到：“显然他们都是非常诚实的学者。在研究的结论中，他们表示自己只是涉及了问题中的一些皮毛，所以需要为此进行更加深入的研究。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转发，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Games probably don’t make you sexist, German researcher finds — but one critic is unconvinced

Jeff Grubb

You can go back to playing games without the fear that they’ll turn you into a monster.

New research from the University of Cologne in Germany finds that long-term exposure to the sexist portrayal of human characters in games does not imbue a person with sexist attitudes in their everyday life. This directly counters the claims of “cultivation theory,” which is the idea that the longer people spend consuming media like games or television, the likelier they are to accept the fictional social realities as the norm. But this latest study found no evidence to support that despite what appears as an increase in sexist attitudes among gamers in recent months, although one critic points out that it uses methodology that may not apply to the problems the industry faces when it comes to gender.

“We found that the use of computer and video games were not related to beliefs about gender roles in a longitudinal study with participants from a representative sample of [824] German gamers aged 14 and older,” Dr. Johannes Breuer of the University of Cologne’s Department of Social Psychology told GamesBeat. “More specifically, we found that a more intense overall video game use — measured in average hours per day — at ‘time one’ was not predictive of more sexist beliefs about gender roles at ‘time two.’ In this case, this was two years after the first interview.”

Breuer also told GamesBeat that he found no evidence for the opposite effect. Put plainly, people who hold sexist beliefs do not play more games than the average person, and that did not change over the length of the study.

And that three-year length is a key aspect of this research. A longitudinal study measures the same variable (the sexist attitudes among participants) on multiple occasions throughout an extended period of time. This enabled Breuer to test if gaming required years to have a measurable effect.

This study did only look at Germans. It’s possible that games could have an effect on attitudes toward gender in different cultures, but nothing about this research suggests that is the case. It’s also worth pointing out that Germans have most of the same games as the United States and most other Western countries — although it is a bit more strict on violence. The European nation has banned releases like Wolfenstein (for the Nazi material), Left 4 Dead 2, and Condemned 2: Bloodshot. No game in Germany is prohibited because of its sexual content.

Conventional wisdom

Breuer’s research surfaces as gamers, critics, and the industry as a whole struggle with how to portray people — and especially women characters — in games. A growing movement, led by critics such as Anita Sarkeesian, has highlighted how creators in this industry regularly rely on the same sexist tropes to represent women. These come in the form of women as sexual play things, as in the Dead or Alive fighting games, or women as “damsels in distress,” where they only exist to give the male hero a motivation to act in Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and dozens more.

Most reasonable people do not disagree with the criticism that games typically do not do a great job at depicting women as capable humans that do not need the help of a man. Having a hero save a kidnapped woman over and over is tired and offensive to some people.

“One of the problems with that is [that these tropes] actually reinforce this cultural myth that women are sexual objects or sexual play things for male amusement,” Sarkeesian said on an episode of The Colbert Report a few months back. “And we’re not.”

It’s easy to buy into that theory based on the way that many self-identified gamers have responded to Sarkeesian’s criticism. She is one of many women in this industry who constantly live under the threat of harassment and violence. Sarkeesian has had to leave her home and cancel public appearances after receiving death threats from a large and vocal group of people who believe she is trying to take their games away. Attacking Sarkeesian is basically a genre of its own on YouTube. Hundreds of videos “calling her out” or “busting her” have racked up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of approving “likes.”

Nothing to blame for an obvious problem

Clearly, something in gaming is wrong, but Breuer’s research would seemingly let games off the hook for creating a sexist atmosphere. Brianna Wu, the cofounder of developer Giant Spacekat and another target of harassment by some gamers, disagrees. She takes particular issue with the methodology Breuer used to determine sexist attitudes, which asked respondents whether they agree or disagree with sentiments like “even if both partners work, the woman should be responsible for taking care of the household.”

“The scale this study uses was devised by [researchers Donna Brogan and Nancy Kutner] in 1976,” Wu told GamesBeat. “The questions ask the respondents if they agree with ideas like, ‘The man should be responsible for all major decisions made in a family.’ It’s great that gamers don’t agree with those ideas more than the general population — but it’s not the problem I see in the industry, and it’s not what other women see in the industry.”

Wu says that sexism in 2015 is more subtle and insidious than it was in 1976.

“It’s not that men believe that women shouldn’t be gaming and should be making sandwiches instead,” said Wu. “It’s that gamers have strong unconscious biases against women. When they think about what a gamer looks like, it doesn’t look like me — and that affects how they treat me and other women on an unconscious level.”

Wu went on to point out that the study doesn’t consider why women are harassed more than men when they use online services like Xbox Live or why women game journalists get more threats than their male counterparts.

I asked Breuer what he would say to critics of gaming who still believe games are somewhat responsible for bolstering or excusing sexist attitudes. He didn’t buy it.

“I would agree that many games — or at least parts of their contents — can be considered sexist,” Breuer said. “But, similar to the debate about violence in games, I would rather say that games are more influenced by ‘real life’ or ‘society’ than vice-versa. In this case, this would mean that some games do proliferate sexist or other negative cultural stereotypes, but they certainly do not cause them. In general, I would say that the effects of the contents of video games — be they violent or sexist — on people’s actual attitudes or even behavior are often overestimated.”

But Breuer doesn’t completely excuse games.

“You might also say that, even though sexist content in games has little effect on players’ real-life attitudes and behavior, they also provide no reason to change preconceived sexist beliefs,” said Breuer.

And while Wu doesn’t believe that this research debunks her criticisms, she does accept that Breuer is after the truth.

“It’s clear that these are honest academics,” she said. “But in the study’s conclusion, they say themselves they’ve only scratched the surface of this problem and more research needs to be done.”(source:venturebeat)