psychology
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Video games are tackling mental health with mixed results
Mental illness occupies a strange place in video games. After centuries of misdiagnosis and misinterpretation, we've begun to comprehend the reasons behind disorders and their prevalence in modern society. Recent research shows that roughly one in five American adults suffers from some form of mental health issue each year. When it comes to the media, though, these conditions are frequently misrepresented and misunderstood, and video games in particular lean on lazy stereotypes and tropes. Mental illness is used as a motivation for villainy, thrown in as an "interesting" game mechanic or mischaracterized as the sum and whole of a character's personality. There's a worryingly pervasive stigma surrounding mental conditions, and as one of our most dominant art forms, video games need to do a better job in portraying them.
Aaron Souppouris08.20.2015
Diet-based 'video game' claims to make you thinner
We know that Pavlovian conditioning can make you do all sorts of crazy things, so could it be used to make us all a bit healthier? Psychologists from the universities of Exeter and Cardiff believe that it's possible after building a "computer game" that, essentially, trains you to steer clear of bad food. Unfortunately, the game itself is just a flashcard routine where players are asked to push a button when they're shown salad and hold off when they see cookies. If we're honest, the bad guys in the food and drink industry still have the upper hand, just look at Cool Spot, the 1993 platformer that was a giant ad for 7 Up.
Daniel Cooper06.29.2015
Annoying song stuck in your head? Chew gum
Catchy songs are infectious, so you shouldn't feel bad if you've spent the last six months muttering about being all about that bass. Treatments for this persistent condition normally include either playing the track on a loop until you're bored of it, listening to anything else or forcing yourself to put it out of your mind. They all work to some degree, but it looks as if researchers at the University of Reading have found a far more successful solution: to chew gum. According to the findings, the best and easiest way to eliminate an earworm is to crack open a pack of Wrigley's.
Daniel Cooper05.11.2015
Yale Study: You're not as clever as your Googling suggests
Having all of human knowledge readily available on the internet has convinced people that they know a lot more than they actually do, according to a recent Yale study. For their recently published report in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, a pair of psychologists conducted multiple 1000-participant experiments. They found that participants who used the internet to research a subject were more likely to think that they also knew about a second, unrelated topic. Basically, if you look up subject A with the internet, you're more likely than offline researchers to think you also know about subject B -- even if you haven't actually looked anything up. In general, internet users believed themselves to be brighter and more clever than the other participants in the study.
Andrew Tarantola04.01.2015
Do you suffer from iPhone separation anxiety?
Now there's proof -- not being able to be near your iPhone or answer it because you're otherwise engaged causes a measurable increase in anxiety as well as decreased cognition. A study published yesterday in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication titled "The Extended iSelf: The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology" shows that "negative psychological and physiological outcomes are associated with iPhone separation and the inability to answer one's ringing iPhone during cognitive tasks". The study, by Russell B. Clayton, Glenn Leshner and Anthony Almond, showed that: The data tell an interesting and unique story about how iPhone separation and the inability to answer one's iPhone during cognitive tasks affects a variety of psychological outcomes. The data showed that the inability to answer one's iPhone while it was ringing activated the aversive motivational system (increases in heart rate and unpleasantness), and also led to a decline in cognitive performance. In addition, physiological levels of anxiety (blood pressure) increased in response to iPhone separation (i.e., acute stressor, Spielberger, 1979). It is interesting to note that self-reported feelings of unpleasantness and anxiety reflected participants' physiological responses such that perceived levels of unpleasantness and anxiety were greatest during iPhone separation. In contrast, when participants completed word-search puzzles with their iPhone in their possession, heart rate and blood pressure levels returned to baseline and cognitive performance increased. The team studied the effects of iPhone separation on a sample of 40 users by having them try to solve word search puzzles while separated from their iPhones or unable to answer a ringing iPhone. The study findings show that cellphone users are capable of perceiving their iPhone as an object of their extended self, which can be negatively impacted (i.e., lessening of self) during separation. I know that neither my wife nor I can leave our house without iPhones in hand, and that we've often had to drive back to our home to pick up an iPhone if we've inadvertently left it behind. How about you, TUAW readers? Does not having your iPhone around or not being able to answer it cause you distress? Let us know in the comments.
Steve Sande01.09.2015
MMOs and gaming psychology, part two: Interview with a researcher
Following yesterday's article discussing current research on psychology and MMOs, we have today our conversation with Dr. Rachel Kowert herself, the lead author on the paper that originally prompted these articles. Kowert, unlike many other researchers in her field, has established gamer cred; her earliest experiences were playing basic games on a Tandy computer with her brother, but the first game to really grab her was Super Mario Brothers. Her favorite game of all time is Final Fantasy 6 (Final Fantasy 3 in the US), and most recently she's played Banished and The Sims 4. Late in Kowert's Master's degree studies, her supervisor told her about an influx of parents expressing concern about their children's gaming habits. Finding information on the topic to help ease concerns proved difficult due to a severe lack of on-point research. This is what prompted her to switch her research focus to game studies.
Andrew Ross12.30.2014
MMOs and gaming psychology, part one: The research
Last month, Massively wrote a short article about research on the relationship between shyness and online game friendships. The topic is of interest to me not just because of the MMO connection but because I myself am someone who used to identify myself as shy but believe online games help me cope with and surmount it. Games are what I rely on to help myself meet new people as cultural and language barriers prevent me, an American, from making strong attachments in Japan, the country where I live and work. In preparing for this two-part article, I spoke to the research paper's lead author, Dr. Rachel Kowert, who helpfully provided me with a reader's digest version of recent research in this subfield of psychology. Tomorrow, we'll tackle our interview with Dr. Kowert herself, but today, we'll have a look at the research to bring us all up to speed.
Andrew Ross12.29.2014
Claims that MMOs are a 'threat to public health' are 'exaggerated' says new study
Dr. Rachel Kowert, lead author on the relationship between shyness and online gaming paper that we covered back in October, has just released another study relating to MMOs, this one investigating the psychosocial causes and consequences of online video gameplay. Due to be published in the science journal Computers in Human Behavior in April 2015, the paper seeks to improve on past research that links online video gaming to loneliness, depression, social anxiety, poor self-esteem, and social incompetence. Kowert and her colleagues from the Universities of Muenster and Hohenheim studied 4500 gamers over 1- and 2-year periods to determine whether negative psychological traits are a consequence of engaging in online games like MMOs or simply act to draw people to online games that help them compensate for those negative traits (the "social compensation hypothesis"). MMORPG gamers will be happy to know that the findings suggest that the latter is true; no, your MMOs won't make you depressed or suddenly unable to manage interpersonal communications: The results uncovered here do not support the claims that exposure to, or prolonged engagement within, OVG [online video game] spaces negatively impacts players' psychosocial well-being. In that respect, concerns regarding OVGs being a threat to public health seem to be exaggerated. These findings do, however, provide the empirical evidence for a social compensation model among young adult participants, indicating that OVGs have likely become alternative social outlets for young adult players with [low] social and psychosocial resources, as reflected by lower reported life satisfaction and social competence. In fact, the effect was strongest for young gamers: "For adolescent players, being a member of the online game playing community was found to bolster their reported life-satisfaction." Stay tuned later this month for a full Massively report on Kowert's MMO-related research.
Bree Royce12.18.2014
I'm a neurotic. IBM told me so.
I'm a late Wednesday afternoon tweeter. It's not a characteristic I'd necessarily include on any of my dating app profiles, but it accurately sums up my online behavior nonetheless. I'm also a tremendous neurotic (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well) who embraces self-expression, challenges and change. I'm that personality pie chart you see up above. I'm an open book, or at least my Twitter profile is to IBM.
Joseph Volpe09.19.2014
Facebook explains why it briefly toyed with users' emotions
Ever since word got out that Facebook had briefly manipulated some users' News Feeds to see how their feelings changed, a number of questions have popped up: just why did the company feel compelled to experiment in the first place? How noticeable was it? And was it worth the effort? As of today, we have some answers to those riddles. Study co-author Adam Kramer explains that Facebook was worried people would stop visiting the social network if they saw too many emotional updates -- a lot of negative posts could scare some people off, while a surge of positive vibes would leave others feeling left out. That's not what happened, however, and Kramer stresses that the company "never [meant] to upset anyone."
Jon Fingas06.29.2014
The Daily Grind: Does griefing in MMOs reflect a sinister personality?
A recent psychology paper picked up by Slate suggests that maybe there's more to bad behavior on the internet than previously thought. Researchers asked study participants to evaluate what they found most fun about commenting on the internet, then gave those same participants a personality test to determine their levels of sadism, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism -- the "dark tetrad" of antisocial personality traits. (One of the agree/disagree statements on the personality exam? "I enjoy griefing other players in multiplayer games.") The researchers found a significant correlation between those who flagged as sadists and those who claimed to enjoy trolling and expressed "sadistic glee at the distress of others." While the study focused on the 5% of participants who cause comment moderators the most grief on the internet, over here in MMOland I'm wondering whether this study would map equally well to griefers in video games since we might define griefing in a virtual world the same way: causing someone distress because it's pleasurable for the griefer. That guy who ganks your lowbie and corpse camps you for an hour might not be so socially well-adjusted in the real world after all, in spite of what griefer-apologists have been claiming all these years. What do you folks think? Does griefing in MMOs reflect a sinister personality? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Bree Royce03.04.2014
Study says what you play can affect who you are
Does playing an evil character influence gamers to be less than nice in real life? A recent study conducted at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests just that. Gunwoo Yoon, lead author on the project, told Reuters Health, "The biggest finding of the paper is that virtual representation of your avatar can profoundly affect real world behavior [...] And the fascinating thing is that the participants did not perceive these effects." The experiment involved a group of college students that played for five minutes as one of three avatars in a game: Superman (hero), Voldemort (villain), or a circle (neutral). After the gaming session, participants then had to decide how much chocolate sauce or chili sauce to give to other participants in a supposedly unrelated taste test. As it turns out, those who used the Superman avatar poured twice as much chocolate sauce (symbolizing a "good" deed) than chili sauce (a "bad" deed), whereas those who played as Voldemort did exactly the opposite. The study authors suggest a possible explanation for these effects might be related to the lasting influence of total immersion in a virtual environment. [Thanks to Jose for the tip!]
MJ Guthrie02.21.2014
Nick Yee's new book delves into the psychology of MMO players
Researcher Nick Yee, who has often enlightened us on the subject of MMO player psychology, hasn't been on our radar much since the Daedalus Project went into hibernation (no, not druid-inflicted) back in 2009. Since then, he's done some interesting research with PARC's PlayOn Group, but without hearing much from him in 2013, we had wondered if he'd found a new favorite research subject and had left us behind. But now we can cut out the /weeping, because Yee has released a new book called The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us--And How They Don't. Here's what it's all about: Using player surveys, psychological experiments, and in-game data, Yee breaks down misconceptions about who plays fantasy games and the extent to which the online and offline worlds operate separately. With a wealth of entertaining and provocative examples, he explains what virtual worlds are about and why they matter, not only for entertainment but also for business and education. He uses gaming as a lens through which to examine the pressing question of what it means to be human in a digital world. His thought-provoking book is an invitation to think more deeply about virtual worlds and what they reveal to us about ourselves. If you've enjoyed reading Yee's previous work, we think you'll enjoy this, too. You can pick up a hardcopy on Amazon now.
Elizabeth Harper12.05.2013
Psychologist asks designers to shorten quests to fight addiction
It's impossible to play video games without noticing that some people have downright unhealthy gaming habits. Addiction to games is discussed a great deal, often without solutions being offered. Dr. Zaheer Hussain does propose a solution in a recent study, however, arguing that game designers need to cut down on the length of quests to prevent people from forming unhealthy habits. He suggests that designers need to look at the structure of the game and how mechanics might encourage pathological behaviors. You may feel like it's a good suggestion or you may feel like it's comparable to fighting alcoholism by selling beer in smaller bottles, but the study goes into more detail than that simple suggestion. The study, which was published in the Addiction Research and Theory journal, recommends steps be taken before games see the sort of government administration as seen in countries such as China and South Korea. It ultimately concludes that anywhere between 7-11% of all gamers suffer from "pathological" behavior. The full paper can be purchased by those interested for closer review.
Eliot Lefebvre08.06.2013Does playing WoW increase your social competence?
A study that looks into how playing World of Warcraft effects players' social competence and loneliness, done by the Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, was recently released by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. To players, especially those who are shy or socially anxious, it's no surprise that getting into the game can be an easy way to socialize -- but our perceptions of the game are a long way from scientific evidence. This study surveyed 790 high school students and found an indirect correlation between those who played WoW and those who were more socially competent. From the study itself, "Adolescents who play WoW vary more in their communication partners, leading to an increase of social competence and a decrease of loneliness." This study is a long way from concrete proof one way or the other, but it's nice to know that WoW might not be outright bad for our social skills. [Via NZGamer]
Elizabeth Harper07.26.2013
Psychology of the Steam Summer Sale
We all recognize the phenomenon inflicted by the Steam sale, which leaves us with heaps of unplayed games cluttering our libraries. That's just what Steam sales do to people, right? But why? The Psychology of Video Games is run by Jamie Madigan, who holds a Ph.D in psychology and is a lifelong fan of gaming, and he recently outlined The Psychology Behind Steam's Summer Sale. New to the 2013 Summer Sale are Steam Trading Cards, which Madigan says nag at your inherent need to complete things you've started – a progress bar shows how much more you need to spend to get a random card, and this taps into a bias toward completion. Steam adds another layer after that with the Summer Getaway badge, which is crafted by collecting 10 of these cards. Additionally, Steam has perfected the facade of a random reward schedule, something that keeps you coming back at regular intervals, hoping to see a good game in the Daily Deals, or in the eight-hour Flash Sales, or the Community Choice games. People respond to random rewards, such as good games, and even though Valve probably has its sale games strategically planned out ahead of time, they seem random to the audience, Madigan argues. Steam also works the artificial scarcity angle, offering game sales for a limited time and heightening the chances you'll get it now, before the deal is lost, Madigan says. Just as people value diamonds and panda bears because they're relatively rare, you're more likely to spend more, more often, on things that have "limited availability." Madigan offers five psychological tricks that Steam seems to be employing on The Psychology of Video Games.
Jessica Conditt07.15.2013
Nexi robot helps Northeastern University track effects of shifty body language (video)
MIT's Nexi robot has been teaching us about social interaction for years, and has even done a stint with the US Navy. Its latest role, however, involved studying those moments when society falls apart. Northeastern University researchers made Nexi the key ingredient of an experiment where subjects were asked to play a Prisoner's Dilemma-style game immediately after a conversation, whether it was with a human or a machine. Nexi showed that humans are better judges of trustworthiness after they see the telltale body language of dishonesty -- crossed arms, leaning back and other cues -- even when those expressions come from a collection of metal and plastic. The study suggests not just that humans are tuned to watch for subtle hints of sketchy behavior, but that future humanoid robots could foster trust by using the right gestures. We'll look forward to the friendlier machine assistants that result... and keep in mind the room for deception when the robots invariably plot to take over the world.
Jon Fingas09.12.2012
EVE Evolved: A game of cat and mouse
Outside of the annual Alliance Tournament, it's rare to find a fair fight in EVE Online with both sides being evenly matched in numbers or odds of success. On the actual battlefields of EVE, lone pilots and fleets alike hunt for fights they can win and tend to shy away from fights that aren't stacked in their favour. A bold few will intentionally engage when they're outmatched or outgunned in the hopes of getting a lucky and impressive-looking kill, but most of the time, that kind of fight is the result of a poor judgment call or misreading the situation. Something new EVE players tend to have trouble accepting is that the outcome of a fight is often decided before the guns even start firing. EVE PvP is a massive game of tactics in which the goal is to catch weaker enemies at a disadvantage, so the fight could already be lost the moment you're caught by a superior foe. A lot of PvP is psychological; you trick enemies into thinking they have the upper hand, and you hide your true intentions and abilities until it's too late. Fleets of all sizes roam around EVE appraising the smaller fish while avoiding the sharks, and I wouldn't trade that cat-and-mouse gameplay for any level of pre-arranged fairness. But what motivates people to fight or flee, and how can we win the psychological battle to gain an upper hand? In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at three tricks you can use to catch targets off-guard.
Brendan Drain08.12.2012
Texting: the truth serum of the 21st century
The University of Michigan and The New School for Social Research has found that if you want someone to tell you the truth, you should text them. Dispensing with the lie detector for job interviewees, academics found that people gave more honest and detailed answers via SMS than over the phone. The team believes it's due to the lack of time pressure and not having to produce a pleasing answer for your interrogator. If the findings continue to provide similar results, it looks like Steve Wilkos could be replaced with a smartphone.
Daniel Cooper05.17.2012
SnowWorld breathes new life into severely burned Afghanistan veteran
We know video games can offer deeply immersive experiences that affect our real-world emotions and draw intense reactions from our real-life bodies and minds. We know this, and finally the professional medical community is beginning to recognize our insight, with truly encouraging results, as described by GQ's recent feature, Burning Man.Sam Brown's body was burned horrifically during his tour in Afghanistan, after his Humvee ran over an IED, GQ writes. He spent many months after the accident drugged out of consciousness on rave-grade hallucinogens and enduring the highest levels of physiological pain during therapy that no amount of morpihne could tame. And then a cognitive psychologist told him to play SnowWorld, a virtual-reality game full of snowball-chucking snowmen and penguins, while his skin was stretched, a procedure that normally garnered a score over 10 on Brown's pain scale.Playing SnowWorld, he gave the pain a six.Hunter Hoffman, the psychologist behind SnowWorld, is working on further research into the art of pain distraction through video games, but already results such as Brown's show great potential. Hoffman is using $7.5 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health to expand his research, including the incorporation of Second Life-style elements into video game therapy. Read the entire, captivating story at GQ. [Image via MGShelton]
Jessica Conditt01.31.2012