McGill Study Shows Videogame Can Decrease Stress, Increase Telemarketer Sales

Stress levels are linked to subject focus on perceived social threats. Thus, when someone focuses more on frowning faces in a crowd, chances are they are feeling an increased level of stress. So asserts a study recently published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, an APA journal.

In the multi-part study, Canadian researchers at McGill University and Douglas Hospital Research Center used a videogame to help train subjects to respond in a more positive manner toward faces in a crowd. The higher the stress level of the subjects, the more they were drawn to frowning faces. The videogame used in the study showed 15 faces, and subjects were asked to look for the one smiling face. Repetition resulted in training the subjects to find the smiling faces faster.

In the final test, telemarketers were chosen as subjects since the high level of rejection cold-callers face make them likely candidates for high levels of stress. Measuring the hormone cortisol,  the experimental group, playing the videogame designed to reduce stress, displayed 17 percent less stress as measured than the control group and racked up 68% higher sales. Very interesting findings.

ScienCentral News has a nice write-up of the study with several quotes from second co-author Mark Baldwin here. Also, a PDF of the article is over at McGill U. here. The other authors were Stephane D. M. Dandeneau, Jodene R. Baccus, Maya Sakellaropoulo (all from McGill) and Jens C. Pruessner (from DHRC).

Out of this experiment, a commercial version of the videogame was developed, and it is available from MindHabits.com. A free trial of the software is available.

References:
Dandeneau, S.D., Baldwin, M. W., Baccus, J. R., Sakellaropoulo, M., Pruessner, J. C. (2007, October). Cutting stress off at the pass: Reducing vigilance and responsiveness to social threat by manipulating attention. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(4). 651-666.

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categories APA, Brain Science, Game Writing, Making Video Games, Medical Games, Research, Serious Games, Video Game Research | John Rice | datetime January 17, 2008 2:42 pm

8 Comments

  • By Suze, January 5, 2009 @ 1:23 pm

    This is an excellent product – relieves stress and is a work-out for your brain!

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