Video Game Psychology: Hijacking a Dopamine Rush for Educational Purposes

Wai Yen Tang, who runs the excellent VG Researcher Blog, introduces us to The Psychology of Video Games Blog, run by Jamie Madigan, an author, programmer, and government personnel psychologist with a PhD in Organizational Psychology.

Dr. Madigan devotes his blog to exploring the psychology involved in making and playing games. His post Phat Loot and Neurotransmitters in World of Warcraft focuses on the reward system in WoW. He notes an early experience while leveling up a hunter, when a blue (high level) item dropped while he was still at a low level. This greatly encouraged his game play and led him to play even more in hopes of further random drops. Madigan draws a parallel with slot machine players, who likewise continue gambling in hopes of hitting another jackpot.

All of this has a neurological explanation, Madigan asserts. Dopamine in the brain is released in expectation of a wondrous event, such as hitting it big at the slots or finding a rare item in a video game. I think also intermittent reinforcement plays a role in gambling and gaming when there is truly no pattern evident for the rewards other than putting in the time (and in the case of gambling, the money).

So, from an educational perspective, obviously, there would be strong interest in leveraging the dopamine rush experienced by players for pedagogical purposes. The question is, can we adequately insert worthy content, say SAT study materials or state exam questions, into a game that provides the same rush as World of Warcraft (or slot machines, for that matter)?

Addictive Group Play Might Make Johnny an Angry Boy

I found a nice site devoted to research on videogames from the psychology side. A lot of academic research on videogames seems to be deriving from psychology profs lately. Wai Yen Tang is a student who decided to start the VG Researcher – Psychology blog in “an attempt to bridge the gap between gamers and VG researchers in psychology. Another pertinent reason is that I’m simply tired of reading short and somewhat inaccurate news report on VG research (angers me a lot) and makes me want to read the article directly and write on it.”

I couldn’t agree more! As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the media can put an entirely different spin on stories than what researchers published. VG Researcher is filled with several interesting entries, each devoted to a different paper. Several caught my eye, including this one:

Eastin, M. S. (2007). The influence of competitive and cooperative group game play on state hostility. Human Communication Research, 33 (4), 450-466.

Tang notes that Dr. Eastin took a novel approach to aggression research in videogames, finding higher levels of hostility measured among players who teamed together. I look forward to reading this one, as soon as I make it over to the university library. Alas, it’s not available freely online.

Also, this paper examined hostility in the context of “addiction”:

Grüsser, S.M., Thalemann, R., & Griffiths, M.D. (2007) Excessive computer game playing: Evidence for addiction and aggression? Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 1o, 2, 290-292.

Griffiths, Tang notes, is renowned for addiction research in the field of psychology. The study was an online survey of over 7,000 players, and noted that those meeting the researchers’ definition of addiction (11.9%) reported higher levels of aggression, “But regression analysis demonstrated that gaming addiction accounts for 1.8% for being responsible for aggression.” Tang concludes the connection between addiction and aggression seems tenuous.

Give Tang’s site a visit. I’ve added VG Researcher to the Blogroll.