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Player psychology (On Scapegoats)

TheDangerousTaco··3 votes·778 views

So I think this is the right place for this discussions. if not please let me know. What I want to talk about is the idea behind why players look for excuses when they underperform or a have a loss. I recently watched a vsauce2 video about scapegoats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNJq6BlVyhM . About how people in society often try to find excuses to help them cope with harmful situations in life. I thought maybe that people in league are the same way, yet I think there are valid reasons why we loose a game (Loss of a teammate, smurfing enemies, a enemy getting ahead etc). However, people will still often look for a scapegoat, even though one is not needed. So I thought we could have a discussion about this

A recent example of this, was when my last match https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=TheDangerousTaco . Alot of stuff happend, but in short, we had a jungle who was having dc issues during the game. It happens to the best of us, so I didn't report her ( probably a bad move on my part ). However the enemy botlaner was putting massive pressure on our botlane and ended up diving them 4-2. I used my own judgement and assessed that it would probably be best to try and get my mid tower in return.

Our bot laner then says this, "Our midlane is garbage. Vi is having dc issues, so she is excused, but our midlaner is just bad".

Now I don't want this to be a "I want sympathy, Report this guy for toxic " kind of post, but I am actually curious about this. It's this type of mentality that often confuses me about league of legends players. When there are issues in communication in any other game, people often point out that flaw. But in league of legends, it always seems like people try to find scapegoats for there problems, when the answer is more than obvious.

A coupe of examples of this, is whenever we loose to a jungle gank ( I myself included in this ), we often blame our jungler for not giving pressure, even though he might of just taken rift herald or counter jungled the enemy camp. And during the game people will flame and blame others , but if there winning, somehow the mistakes are forgivable? I am not saying we should bash other players, but if often seems to me, if your laner does bad and you win, you don't care. But if your laner does good, and you loose, somehow it becomes a common thing to blame other people? Another example is the common trope. Whenever a teammate goes 0-3 in any setting, its never "Oh that guy playing is really good" its usually "My teammates suck really bad". Why is this?

That's what I want to discuss.

  • on why you guys think league of legends players often try to find scapegoats for losses, despite the fact that there are many factors that can contribute to it.
  • What are some of the common scapegoats your encounter in your time playing this game
  • And why does league seem to attract this weird behavior.
  • And do you think that this is something unique to league of legends players, or is this human nature in general.

I actually do want a discussion, so I hope this post doesn't seem like a rant or something.

14 Comments

Hensetsu2 votes

League of Legends is a team game, and since we're humans we really only have a limited capacity to perceive the game in the way it's really playing out. I've been watching a lot of my own vods recently and though I perform extremely inconsistenly, there are many times where I both scapegoat and am scapegoated.

The main reason is because it's easier. People care about being good at League and when they feel like something threatens that perception, they will do whatever they can to rationalize themselves out of that state of mind. Players also get influenced by emotions and this often makes it harder for them to face up to the truth and admit.

I believe that a few other reasons include the risk of public exposure. This one gets ignored a lot but when you have 4 other people all attacking you for a mistake you made, then throwing other people under the bus is an easy way to avoid critisizm. There's also the case of people being angry/tilted due to previous games, and emotions play a HUGE part in the whole aspect of scapegoating. There's also the possibility of people being in premades and defending their friends, people having IRL psychological issues that play their part in League, or they may just be young. 14 year olds don't often have the understanding that other people can be as arrogant as them (though that's an assumption on my part).

I'm sure there are other reasons, but these are the ones that came to mind. I don't think LoL players do it so much because they want to delude themselves, but because they feel vulnerable and when it comes down to League people aren't always the kindest in the face of vulnerability. People getting flamed despite admitting how frustrated and helpless they are makes them feel so small they'd honestly rather not admit it again.

PrismalDawn1 votes

{quoted}

I thought maybe that people in league are the same way, yet I think there are valid reasons why we** loose** a game...

A coupe of examples of this, is whenever we** loose** to a jungle gank ( I myself included in this ), we often blame our jungler for not giving pressure, even though he might of just taken rift herald or counter jungled the enemy camp. But if your laner does good, and you loose, somehow it becomes a common thing to

GOD FUCKING DAMMIT. IT'S LOSE.

YOU "LOSE" A GAME. YOU "LOSE" YOUR TEMPTER (like me with this post) YOU "LOSE" YOUR BREATH AFTER WORKING OUT. God fucking damn people this is taught in First Grade in most places.

Lose =/= Loose

Loose = When something is not firm and/or tight. Come on.

{quoted}

  • on why you guys think league of legends players often try to find scapegoats for losses, despite the fact that there are many factors that can contribute to it.
  • What are some of the common scapegoats your encounter in your time playing this game

  • And why does league seem to attract this weird behavior.

  • And do you think that this is something unique to league of legends players, or is this human nature in general.

Anyways...

  1. People find excuses because they think they are right and fail to see their own mistakes, thus blame others, because who wants to be wrong right?

  2. EVERYONE BLAMES THE GODDAMN FUCKING JUNGLER. As a jungle main, this is one thing that pisses me off the most. It is not my job to win your lane. It is, however, your job to farm, play passively until I come if you can solo kill without fucking up that's fine, just don't fuck up 10 times before 10 minutes. It is not m job to help you if you have died 5 times because of your lack of awareness and constant pushing without wards or summoners. By that time, your laner will require me and someone else to kill them because you're probably down 2 or 3 levels.

  3. Refer to number 1.

TheDangerousTaco1 votes

lol, was not expecting this type of post. I can tell your a very passionate person about English XD? Anyway, I agree that the number one reason is probably due to arrogance. But find self reflection to be a vital part of learning. Its hard to imagine people who don't sometimes feel like there wrong and want to correct it.

PrismalDawn1 votes

No, that's just a little pet peeve of mine and for some reason it's become more prevalent in recent years for some reason. You would think that with all the auto-corrects in Word Processors and such, people would learn a little something. But it appears that using computers and technology for the purpose of learning has deteriorated.

Anyways, yes. arrogance stops people from growing. Being able to see your own errors allows for growth. But in League, especially in low elo's, people will blame everything on their teams and never ask "What could I have done better?"

Shahamut1 votes

I would argue that it isn't arrogance but rather insecurity. When people's insecurities are put on display, people often react in offensive ways to push focus elsewhere.

TheDangerousTaco1 votes

Hmm. Can you provide me with some more examples?

Shahamut1 votes

It's just human psychology. Sometimes, it's arrogance (thinking they honestly made no contributing mistakes) but most of the time, I would bet that if people were honest, they KNOW they made mistakes, but rather than admit it, they focus the problem elsewhere so as to make less of their own errors.

Reminder, this is my hypothesis based on the limited conversations I've been able to have with members of the league community and also on my, albeit somewhat limited, study of psychological patterns and behaviors.

TheDangerousTaco1 votes

That sounds pretty reasonable. If I understand what your saying, people are afraid of being responsible. Which I think I can understand

Shahamut1 votes

You understand correctly.

KORGtuners1 votes

It is** not m job** to help you if you have died 5 times because of your lack of awareness and constant pushing without wards or summoners.

Shahamut1 votes

People in general seem to have this innate desire to "Not be responsible". This can be seen when my adc, who clearly did all he could, feels the need to say the loss wasn't his fault. This desire is most commonly dealt with by trying to reason blame away from one's self, hence scapegoating. We then mob-rule style seek confirmation bias with anyone else involved and feel better about our own failings (or just flat deny them) when we succeed.

Raksha1 votes

I've seen and been a victim of this scapegoat mindset under a few circumstances (support main) , one of which wasn't mentioned in your post, so I'll bring up the example for discussion's sake. Sometimes, there will be a premade of 2 or 3 and in that premade, people will be friends. Now, if one of those people starts to have a bad game, their 'friend' might look for another player to use as a scapegoat to harass so as to draw the light away from their friend who's doing badly. In that case, it could be because, A, they hope in blaming another player, other players wont notice their friend and thus, wont flame said friend ; B, because they are friends with the one doing badly, the thought that they might not be doing that great doesn't occur to them, so they seek another explanation for why their team is loosing the game, thus making a scapegoat out of another player.

TheDangerousTaco1 votes

Yea. I completely forgot about the premade option. People will often try to avoid telling there friends that there preforming bad due to backlash. I tried telling my friends about there mistakes sometimes, and I often get backlash. So I can understand that point of view completely

J4 Ulted Mexico1 votes

People find scapegoats because they're too arrogant to admit their own mistakes. If they don't blame someone else, they blame themselves, and they can't have that.

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