- Sep 22, 2013
- 4,956
- 250
- 85
The Alien sci-fi horror film franchise presents stories about human space explorers encountering terrifying predatory giant intelligent half-insect, half-dragon (and mostly bipedal) creatures called Xenomorphs who test their will to survive and their courage to work together in the most hellish circumstances.
These films have spawned a series of exciting video games inviting players to engage with these aliens (and in some cases use them as first-perspective warrior-avatars) with powerful weapons in intriguing labyrinths.
Since the Xenomorphs represents agility, ferocity, intelligence, and accessibility, it would be interesting to perform ethnicity-based psychology experiments using the Alien films-adapted video games.
So, let's say you have 100 American subjects, and 25 are Caucasian, 25 are African-American, 25, are Asian/Oriental-American, 25 are Latino-American, and 25 are mulattoes (or mixed-race). You have the subjects placed in rooms where they play with other subjects through a connected TV terminal or play-station but from separate rooms (so the subjects do not know the ethnicity of their opponents). You could measure if ethnicity (and hence racial/cultural background) has an effect on anticipation of fight-or-flight responses and measurement of empathy and/or teamwork conditions.
It is my simple hypothesis that Caucasians will be more aggressive in gameplay and will not make alliances or show pity to any of their opponents, regardless of ethnicity, while the ethnic minority contestants will exhibit more restrained behaviors. After all, Caucasians feel less historic anticipatory social threats from hypothetical creatures/beings exhibiting menacing postures. There are variables of course. Ethnic minorities may naturally exhibit less aggressiveness towards other ethnic minority opponents, and Caucasians may exhibit less discrimination behaviors regarding ethnicity recognition of opponents.
Perhaps such an experiment will reveal psychological imprints of socially conditioned 'grouping' behaviors purely based on race/ethnicity and the human 'experience' of migration and culture contact/exchange.
Such empiricism may be the best way to approach the problem of pluralism-related conflicts/obstacles in our modern age of globalization-induced culture exchange.
Alien (Franchise) Video Games
These films have spawned a series of exciting video games inviting players to engage with these aliens (and in some cases use them as first-perspective warrior-avatars) with powerful weapons in intriguing labyrinths.
Since the Xenomorphs represents agility, ferocity, intelligence, and accessibility, it would be interesting to perform ethnicity-based psychology experiments using the Alien films-adapted video games.
So, let's say you have 100 American subjects, and 25 are Caucasian, 25 are African-American, 25, are Asian/Oriental-American, 25 are Latino-American, and 25 are mulattoes (or mixed-race). You have the subjects placed in rooms where they play with other subjects through a connected TV terminal or play-station but from separate rooms (so the subjects do not know the ethnicity of their opponents). You could measure if ethnicity (and hence racial/cultural background) has an effect on anticipation of fight-or-flight responses and measurement of empathy and/or teamwork conditions.
It is my simple hypothesis that Caucasians will be more aggressive in gameplay and will not make alliances or show pity to any of their opponents, regardless of ethnicity, while the ethnic minority contestants will exhibit more restrained behaviors. After all, Caucasians feel less historic anticipatory social threats from hypothetical creatures/beings exhibiting menacing postures. There are variables of course. Ethnic minorities may naturally exhibit less aggressiveness towards other ethnic minority opponents, and Caucasians may exhibit less discrimination behaviors regarding ethnicity recognition of opponents.
Perhaps such an experiment will reveal psychological imprints of socially conditioned 'grouping' behaviors purely based on race/ethnicity and the human 'experience' of migration and culture contact/exchange.
Such empiricism may be the best way to approach the problem of pluralism-related conflicts/obstacles in our modern age of globalization-induced culture exchange.
Alien (Franchise) Video Games
