Video gamers aggress non-human opponents less

I think that this might be relevant to the subject matter I've been exploring in relation to forgiveness and atonement: :

"The more human players perceived the aggressive targets to be, the more verbally aggressive they were and the more violent words they generated," the study says. "Although we predicted that less human targets would result in more aggression, players seemed to be more aggressive after perceiving more human targets."
Human-like opponents lead to more aggression in video game players

 You may recall that I suggested in exploring anger that taking it 'personally' was a key factor in generating a sense of having been wronged as opposed to simply suffering an accidental detriment. I suspect that this finding supports or corroborates that. If it is the case that we react more angrily when we think we're deliberately being targetted for harm by someone with intent to do us down, then we might expect that the more we can recognise our harmer as having agency, the more likely we are to 'take it personally'. So it seems that non-human 'agents' are quite likely to be perceived as less agentive, less 'personal' -and so less deserving of us taking it personally.

Now, I don't know how, if at all, this relates to kicking the cat (that famous scenario of taking it out on something else non-human -which I don't condone btw) or whether it makes ET's safer from us. It might be interesting to compare/contrast this with the greater ease of unleashing lethal force against those we don't see in front of us (think drones and IBMs) -but that seems to be related to reducing the possibility of empathy rather than upping the ante on aggression.

I take it for granted that video gaming in this respect uses the same brain 'circuitry' as actual aggressive acts and that the interpretive 'circuitry' is the same as in real life. So at an emotional level there is little differenc between a fantasy situation and a real life one.