Game results about authoritarians’ world destruction parallel real history

Evidence

Conclusions. Obviously, I do not think these results generalize willy-nilly to the real world. The players were about nineteen years old, knew that the situation was a game, knew that no one would really die in their wars or from starvation or skin cancer, and knew that it was a psychology experiment. Also, whatever its sophistication, the Global Change Game cannot be nearly as complicated as the global change game being played in the real world every day. Still, I would be surprised if you did not note similarities between how these two groups of people acted, when the future of the world was in their hands, and the past history of the world. You may also have noticed the many points at which the results of this experiment connect with other differences we have discovered between Low and High RWAs. And finally you may, with me, greatly prefer the world that the Lows created over that which the Highs burned to a cinder and, upon restarting, filled with corpses. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1764