Kotaku: Psychology

What Does Your Favourite Game Say About You? As a Person?

Luke Plunkett — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST

Sadly, it seems I missed Slacktory's excellent "What Your Favorite Video Game (Series) Says About You" feature from a few weeks back. More »

A Fresh Look at the Video Game Time-Suck

Kirk Hamilton — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EDT

You're playing a game, moving from objective to objective, and suddenly you look over and… six hours have passed. Where did the time go? More »

Study of 'Game Transfer Phenomena' Examines Why Some Get Tetris-on-the-Brain

Owen Good — Sat, 14 May 2011 17:00:00 EDT

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If you've ever closed your eyes and seen tetrominoes falling into place, or Angry Birds slamming into stone walls, you're experiencing "game transfer phenomena," and it involves more than mentally playing a game long after it's finished. More »

Research proves online gaming at work is good for you - and for your boss

Meredith Carpenter and Lillian Fritz-Laylin — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:47:18 EST

Are you in danger of getting fired because of too much gaming at work? If so, here's a scientific study you need to know about (and perhaps slip into the "to-read" pile on your boss's desk): "Games at work: the recreational use of computer games during working hours." More »

A Video Game, Violence, And Depression Study That Looks At The Big Picture

Mike Fahey — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST

Over the past decade countless studies have arisen supposedly proving a causal link between video games, violent behavior, and depression. A new study conducted by Christopher J. Ferguson pinpoints why all of the others may have gotten it wrong. More »

Psychologist Clarifies Bulletstorm Comments to Fox News

Owen Good — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:30:00 EST

One of the two experts quoted in Fox News' notorious hit-piece on Bulletstorm has clarified his remarks, and while he stands by them, says their presentation lacks context - and that he enjoys playing Mature-rated shooters in his free time as well. More »

Monkeys Express Self-Doubt Through Computer Gaming

Mike Fahey — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:00:00 EST

Are self-doubt and uncertainty purely human traits, or do other members of the animal kingdom experience these feelings? A team of scientists made monkeys play video games because it's awesome. Oh, and to address the whole self-doubt thing. More »

What Makes Zombies So Terrifying?

Mike Fahey — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:00:00 EST

As the entertainment world's zombie outbreak continues unabated, one of the nation's top minds seeks an answer to a pressing question: What makes humans fear these brain-hungry abominations, aside from the whole brain-eating thing. More »

Playing Video Games With Dad Builds Better Daughters

Mike Fahey — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:00:00 EST

Do video games make girls healthier and happier? A brand-new study out of Brigham Young University's School of Family Life suggests they do, as long as parents are willing to play along. More »

This Optical Illusion Will Silence Your Vision

Mike Fahey — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 14:30:00 EST

Think your eyes have no trouble detecting when an object changes color, size, or shape? This new illusion crafted by Harvard's Jordan W. Suchow and George A. Alvarez might just prove you wrong. More »

Angry Psychology Professor Explains Angry Birds' Success

Mike Fahey — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:30:00 EST

Why is Angry Birds such an addictive game? According to University of San Francisco psychology professor Mel Joseph Ciena, it's a combination of repetition and a "false impression you're competitive and achieving something." Oh come on, we're saving eggs! More »

Science Proves We Can See The Future

Mike Fahey — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:40:00 EST

Is the flow of time constant, or can events that haven't occurred yet influence our behavior? A new paper provides scientific proof that humans can see into the future. You probably saw this coming. More »

Playing With Your Children Can Save Their Mental Health

Mike Fahey — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:30:00 EST

Using the television or video game console to babysit your child might be more detrimental than you think. The results of a two decade study show that actively participating in your child's life could save them from severe personality disorder. More »

Man Wins (Ig)Nobel Prize For Swearing

Mike Fahey — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:20:00 EDT

Anyone who's played a particularly frustrating video game can attest to the therapeutic effect of dropping the F-bomb. The phenomenon has now been scientifically proven, and the man behind the research awarded for his efforts, sort of. More »

Remembering What Never Happened

Mike Fahey — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 21:00:00 EDT

What if your most treasured memories from childhood were false? A shocking new study finds that one in five people fondly recall events that never actually happened. More »

The Disturbing Ways Our Video Games Addict Us

Mike Fahey — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:20:00 EST

Have you ever spent so much time playing a video game that you felt like a caged rat? That means it's working. Cracked's David Wong takes a serious look at how and why our video games won't let us go. More »

Explaining the Commitment to Duke Nukem — Forever

Owen Good — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:00:00 EST

Why would anyone spend 12 years working on a single game, with no assurances it'll ever be finished. It's called "escalation of commitment" - a classic good-money-after-bad bargain, and a psychologist thinks it explains Duke Nukem Forever. More »

Performance and Mastery: Changing One's Motivation as a Gamer

Owen Good — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

Faced with a challenge, people are largely motivated by one of two processes - either the opportunity to demonstrate their talent, or the opportunity to improve it. Game genres also appeal to these processes. More »

Game to Soldiers: Don't Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em

Owen Good — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 13:00:00 EDT

If it sounds absurd - a video game, costing taxpayers $3.7 million, that nags people who do dangerous stuff all day long to quit smoking - know that "Escape With Your Life" is surprisingly effective. More »

Violent Gamers Immune to Pain — of Others

Owen Good — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:00:00 EST

More scholarship suggests playing violent video games makes one - get ready to have the song stuck in your head, too - "comfortably numb" to others in pain and less likely to help them. More »

Metro Social Discomfort Simulator

Stuart Houghton — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:30:00 EST

In the annals of largely pointless Flash games with something to say about the hidden rules that govern social interaction... well those annals pretty much start and end with Metro Rules Of Conduct. More »

Vexed by Online Bigots' Language? Psychologists Say They Want You to Be

Owen Good — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

By now it's sadly a common experience, hearing racist, homophobic, even anti-Semitic slurs during online games. Often it's for no apparent reason other than as a term of abuse used against competitors, that packs more of a punch than your standard four-letter word. But a couple months back, I had a different experience, and I'm sure it's no more uncommon for others, too. In a game of Castle Crashers - cooperative multiplayer - this guy I was playing with completely proffered some rather ugly opinions of African-Americans, and needlessly heaped racial slurs on the foes we were battling. More »

What Makes Fanboys Tick?

Maggie Greene — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Building off of his essay where he asked 'who's winning the battle for the hardcore?', Chris Bateman has posted an essay on 'what makes fanboys tick?'. His answer? Much like fanatics on any side of sports rivalry, political divides, or religious divides, it's cognitive dissonance at work. As Bateman explains, "When we come across situations that radically contradict our beliefs, we are filled with an uncomfortable feeling: to lessen this unpleasant experience (which is termed cognitive dissonance) we modify our beliefs in a way that will lessen the cognitive dissonance." What does this have to do with console wars (and warring factions?): More »

Study Finds Racial Bias Common In Virtual Worlds

Stuart Houghton — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:20:00 EDT

Anyone thinking that virtual worlds are edging towards some kind of utopia, please revise your hopes downwards. More »

Bringing Sports Psychology to the Realm of Video Games

Owen Good — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:00:00 EDT

It probably wasn’t coincidence that Shane Murphy returned my call just after I’d thrown my third interception in NCAA ‘09 and punched off the machine in full perfectionist disgust. Murphy, a professor and researcher of psychology at Western Connecticut State, would later explain that I exhibited classic high-ego, low-task gamer behavior. That is, I am fixated on being seen as a winner, and not the process of becoming one. More »

Do Drone Pilots Feel Combat Stress?

Stuart Houghton — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:20:00 EDT

Slate is running a story covering the debate about whether pilots of drone aircraft (which feels rather like playing a video game) suffer the same stress as pilots in actual combat. More »

Boston Globe Discovers Video Game Addiction

Brian Crecente — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:01:38 EDT

The Boston Globe has an intriguing question and answer session up with Dr. Jerald Block, who specializes in online video game addiction. More »

Playing the (Harvest Moon) Field

Maggie Greene — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 16:30:14 EST

Leigh Alexander of the Aberrant Gamer/Sexy Videogameland/Worlds In Motion is a woman after my own heart, and her latest AG column is on one of my favorite games, Harvest Moon. What does your HM mate selection say about you? Rather, does playing the field - or not - reflect on you, or on media more generally? Having spent many an hour, especially while jet lagged, flinging chickens, petting cows, and building up the farm empire of my dreams, that whole marriage thing is usually the last thing I get around to - I'd rather have sheep producing golden fleece and a prize-winning horse. So, I tend to pick the potential spouses that look most low-maintenance, being a little too lazy to play the field - but Alexander throws herself into the task of wooing virtual women (or men) with aplomb: More »

Virtual Crack House Aids Drug Rehab

Mike Fahey — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:20:31 EST

As a gamer, I've been through many virtual-reality crack houses in my time, usually with guns blazing. Duke University professor Zach Rosenthal, however, has an entirely different way of dealing with crackheads in virtual reality - curing them.

"What we're trying to do is take people into a virtual crack-related neighborhood or crack-related setting and have them experience cravings, just like they would in the real world," Rosenthal said.

Therapists then wait for the cravings to subside and associate it with a trigger such as a specific sound, conditioning the addicts to associate said sound with the cessation of cravings. The idea is that when the addict encounters real-world sensations they can call a phone number to hear the tone, and the cravings go away. More »

Gamers, Our Brains Are Limited To Tracking Eight Objects At Once

Mark Wilson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:40:09 EDT

At some level, no matter how many hours we dedicate to honing our...craft, if you will...our skills will always be limited by hardware based limitations. And by hardware we mean brain matter, not Cell processors. Researchers long believed that human perception was limited to tracking four moving objects at one time. But a new study, challenging participants to follow 16 dots moving at a very slow pace on a computer screen, found that participants were able to track up to eight objects at once (or double what we previously thought possible). There are limitations, of course. More »

Why Gamers and Pigeons Are Superstitious

Brian Crecente — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:00:44 EDT

When I met with Nick Yee last week to discuss his fight against The Barbarians at the Gate, we ended up going down a lot of tangents. One of the more interesting ones was his paper on superstitions in massively multiplayer online games. More »

Smiley Face Game Makes Smiley Face Gamers

Brian Crecente — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:00:54 EDT

Reuters has an interesting story up about MindHabits Trainer, a game developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal which is meant to cut down on your stress, increase your confidence and make you a happier person. More »

Have Problems? Here's Your Game: Reach Out

Maggie Greene — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:00:00 EDT

Via Wonderland comes this Australian news clip of a game aimed at helping kids work through problems via role playing real-life situations. Called Reach Out!, the game got off to a good start with a $500K Australian from the Sony Foundation, and describes itself thusly: More »

Why Video Games Are Hard To Give Up

Michael McWhertor — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:20:47 EST

Sometimes you just don't want to stop. I know that I've sunk weeks of my life into playing Starcraft, Tetris, and Advance Wars. So why is it so hard to separate oneself from the keyboard or cross pad? Because it "fulfills basic psychological needs." More »

Xbox Brand Taps Inner Power-Hungry Prick

Michael McWhertor — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 11:35:47 EDT

This should settle it once and for all: Xbox fanboys are smug, distrustful jerks and PlayStation fanboys are simpering ninnies with no self-confidence. That's not hyperbole, that's scientific fact! Maybe. More »

Gamers Don't Play Ugly Characters? Horde!

brownlee — Fri, 05 May 2006 14:40:42 EDT

Alex Krotoski over at the Guardian Gamesblog doesn't think people play ugly avatars in MMORPGs... and she's got a bunch of quotes from a gaggle of slightly illiterate internet strangers and a Google of psychological papers to prove it. More »

A Gerontologist Talks About Brain Age

Brian Crecente — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 18:15:18 EDT

I had a chance to speak with Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski recently about the theory behind brain games. More »

Violent Video Games Reduces Violence

Brian Crecente — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 02:00:48 EST

Games like City of Heroes are more likely to foster violence in children than something like Manhunt, according to yet another study. A group of researchers surveyed nearly 600 primary school students over two years and found that kids who played games featuring good guys attacking bad guys were significantly more aggressive a year later. On the other hand, kids who played games where characters went on indiscriminate killing sprees became less aggressive over the year. I have a feeling Rockstar Games paid for this survey and that the researchers are really just a bunch of chain-smoking howler monkeys. More »

The emotions of gaming

Brian Crecente — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:34:49 EST

Galsgow Caledonian University is kicking off a study of the emotions of gaming. The university has set up an eMotion Laboratory to allow researchers to use a two-way mirror to study the reaction of gamers while they play. Infrared cameras will be used to track eye movements and pupil dilation, pressure sensors will measure how hard the gamer is squeezing the controller and moisture sensors will track excitement. Ummm, exactly where are they putting those moisture sensors? More »

Griefers suck in real life too

Brian Crecente — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:45:57 EST

We all know griefers, those roving gangs of punks who pick on new and weak players in online games, suck. But apparently there is a reason why they suck. A psychologist at Rider University says griefers are usually motivated by one of two reasons: They had a bad relationship with their parents or they were victimized in the real world. So the next time some dipshit is looting your corpse over and over and over again, keep this happy thought in mind: Their miserable real lives are way worse than your digital one. More »