The role of self-regulation and need satisfaction and frustration for predicting toxic behaviour in League of Legends

Abstract

Many online games are affected by toxicity, an umbrella term for disruptive behaviours (e.g., harassment and hate speech). In this paper, we investigated self-regulation ability and basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration as predictors of self-reported toxic behaviours using data from an online survey with 167 League of Legends players. Our findings highlight a negative total effect of self-regulation on toxic behaviours, mostly driven by an indirect effect through need frustration. Beyond this, we further explored how emotion regulation styles relate to toxicity and found a negative relationship between suppressive emotion regulation and toxicity, while dysregulation had a positive association with toxicity. We situate findings in the literature and discuss theoretical as well as practical implications, such as for designing preventative interventions.