The most sexist male gamers are usually also the least skilled

You can apparently learn a lot about how men treat women just by observing how they interact during games of Halo 3. Brave researchers at University of New South Wales and Miami University saw an interesting pattern develop over the 163 games they watched: The less skilled a male gamer was, the more likely he was to be sexist toward his female counterparts. Regardless of skill level, the researchers found the men treated one another with respect.

The implications of the study, published in PLOS One, reach far beyond the video game world, The Washington Post reports. The anonymity and gender ratio in games like Halo 3 closely mimics what you find in a lot online communities like Reddit, Twitter, and 4chan.

Researcher Michael Kasumovic wrote that men are more likely to harass women when they feel their social status is threatened. Essentially, this supports what a lot of talented women already know: that the men who get them down are probably overcompensating for something.

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