Speaking of Psychology - Bonus Episode: The Psychology of Esports with Kaitlyn Roose and Shawn Doherty, PhD

Episode Date: October 16, 2019

Russell Shilling, PhD, guest host for Speaking of Psychology and Chief Scientific Officer for the American Psychological Association, sits down at APA2019 to talk with Kaitlyn Roose and Shawn Doherty, PhD, to discuss the psychology of esports, the benefits of gaming on higher level cognition, and the culture of video games. Join us online August 6-8 for APA 2020 Virtual.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, it's Caitlin Luna, host of Speaking of Psychology. This episode was recorded live during APA 2019, our annual convention that was held in Chicago this year. I was away on maternity leave during that time, so my colleague Dr. Russ Schilling was a guest host. We hope you enjoy the episode. Welcome. This is Speaking of Psychology from the APA convention. I'm the host for this session, Russell Schilling. I'm the chief scientific officer for APA. And I'll let my two guests introduce themselves. My name is Caitlin Ruse.

I am a fourth year PhD student at Michigan Technological University, studying higher level cognition in games. My name is Sean Doherty. I'm an associate professor at Emory Riddle Aeronautical University in the Human Factors in Behavioral Neuroscience Department. I am also currently the program chair for Division 21 here at APA, which is the applied experimental and engineering psychology division.

We'll leave it there. Okay. And today what we're going to be discussing is the psychology of e-sports, why it's relevant to psychology and why we should care as psychologists about e-sports. And so I'll start out with just asking that question of our panelists. So why should psychologists be concerned with e-sports? Psychologists should be concerned with e-sports for many reasons. Regardless of what discipline you're a part of, we have many people of many disciplines here at

APA. And so whether it's the mental part, so disorders, abnormal psychology, stress management, performance psychology, coming from sports psychology, development of a culture, communication, team dynamics. There are many facets of e-sports that I think are fascinating, if not maybe confusing to a lot of psychologists, and it hasn't really been delved into very much. So I think it's an open field that I'm calling upon many psychologists to explore further. Okay. Well, it's so open, in fact, because it's relatively brand new. So just to give a little bit of context, e-sports involves the use of video games in competition with other video game players. So just as in traditional sports, you may have one team competing against another one. It's the same thing for e-sports, but we're utilizing video games where you have one team competing against another within a video game context. So that's what we're talking about here with e-sports. And so this is a relatively new area for research in that e-sports is relatively new as a discipline itself, which means that there's not a lot of research on it, which provides a lot of opportunity.

Well, I know all three of us have been active in games. So in my background, I've helped create games. I was a sound designer on a major title. I funded at various times, various educational and, Games for Impact, so really been part of the culture. A big fan of Portal, my favorite video game, we have to get that out there. Absolutely. So what are the differences you see between traditional gaming in those contexts and e-sports?

You hit on a few of them just now, but how do you see the overall differences? I think a lot of times there's a lot of environmental pressure coming on the side of the professionals as they are literally being paid on a stage to perform well and they are expected to perform well. They're expected to face their fans, the media with a certain professional face. They're expected to be professional. They're expected to perform both internally within the team and maybe externally if they attend events and things. So I think that in and of itself, those pressures that have given a lot of young players because the average age of e-sports players

has actually is slowly rising and I say very slowly. I think it is now 24 years old. So typically, esports players are between 18 and 28. Yes, there are people outside of that range, but players typically are very young. So these pressures of maybe things that people in other careers would experience

on a day-to-day basis, maybe that are more mature in development, they're experiencing this in a very high pressure situation. So this may be very new to them and very difficult. Compared to maybe more casual players, and I say casual in quotes, maybe non-professionals, but there are definitely competitive players and maybe more casual players, but they're not quite at the level of the esports professionals. So I certainly agree that there are different levels of play.

And so you may have different views or different pressure. at those different levels. But if we're talking about professional players, you're talking about just like sports teams, they may be playing in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators. Their performance may be streamed to people watching online. And so their performance is under scrutiny all the time, just like standard sports teams typically are.

And so there's a lot of pressures. And so while Russ, you and I may have grown up on largely solo play games because we didn't, you know, back in our day, we didn't have multiplayer. No. Nowadays there is much more integration of coordination between people and in teams and play through e-sports. And so I think that's a big difference that has been growing over time. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of our listeners to this will be familiar with some. of the news items out for the professional leagues.

What are we seeing in the schools? I mean, so what is the overall, I know you've helped create a league? So what's that like on the non-professional levels? What are we seeing out there for this? I know a lot of universities have reported university benefits to integrating an e-sports program. For example, increase in recruitment,

increase in enrollment, obviously. And in a general increase, I believe, and student well-being and happiness across campus, especially across maybe individuals who are international students. My university has many international students. And in my survey that I sent out an actually e-sport climate survey,

many students that were international students felt it would be an excellent opportunity to integrate this program into our university because esports is such a worldwide thing. It is such an international thing. It brings people of different countries together, different backgrounds. It doesn't matter who you are.

You may identify as a gamer or a part of this fan base or a part of this team. So I think just like we talk about the Olympics being that thing that kind of brings the world together, obviously in competition, but to join ourselves. And that's kind of what e-sports does. So from a university perspective, in my opinion, it's very attractive for a student to feel

that they can find a place that they can belong and identify with. You know, you may feel maybe you're not a greatest football player, maybe you're not a traditional athlete, and this is your thing. You game, like this is what you're good at and this is what you identify with. And it allows you to represent your university in a way that you can be proud of and you can represent in a unique way compared to traditional sports. Absolutely.

And you touched on one piece in there, which is that it provides a different avenue or culture for support for students as well. So just as we have at most universities, there are many clubs for all of the other. sorts of different kinds of interests. This is another avenue for providing a culture, a way for students to engage with one another, but it goes that one step further in the sense that now there is also a clear purpose that is gaining for these students as part of that activity. Well, and one of the other things that I've seen, and I've had some discussions with some of the

folks involved in e-sports, is kind of the controversy that I think it's out there between gender-based leagues versus non-gender-based. And I think the argument, which I kind of fall on the side of, is that we have a level playing field in this area, and we should actually treat it as a level playing field, and not really start with that gender discrimination kind of issues in sports. Do you have any thoughts? No, absolutely. I mean, being a female in gaming, identifying as a female in the gaming community, It is not easy, and I'm sure many people of many different backgrounds and identities feel similarly. However, I will say gaming has come a long way.

People realize at the end of the day, they want to win. You want to win that SR, you want to win that rank, you want to be the best, and it really doesn't matter who you have on your team at the end of the day as long as you win. And so I think that that's what we're striving for, especially in the professional scene. I know they are looking at trying to increase diversity. And similar to the problems that women face in STEM and other oppressed groups or minority groups in STEM, where they're kind of pushed down a little bit or they grow up feeling hesitant in engaging in these environments. And so I think that opening up the community and having such a diverse and welcoming community that I know the ESports leagues are striving to do

by decreasing toxicity and things like that and celebrating diversity. So I think that that's where we're going. and I think it's coming along and we're going to get there. We're not there now. But in my experience, being the female president and the only identified female in my e-sports organization and the co-founder, you know, I've had a little bit of difficulties, but I do my best as a face of an organization

to try to get people and say, hey, we're welcoming. We want you in. It doesn't matter where you come from. If you love gaming and you love to compete, we want you to be a part of this. And so at that point, it'll start, growing once people feel that they can identify with that group. Very good.

Well, and the interesting thing is that it's not just e-sports. That is, if you take a look at the proportion of people that play games in general, it's basically a 50-50 split and has been for at least that I'm aware of for the last 10 years that people have been collecting data on that information. And so it's not just e-sports, it's gaming overall has become much more balanced in terms of the people that are playing it. Okay. Well, let's get down to the psychology's part now.

Absolutely. We've done our setup discussing a little bit about e-sports and the culture. You know, we've, especially lately in the news, we've been hearing a lot of the negatives that people perceive about games, and we'll get to those on a little bit. But let's talk a little bit about what you see as the positives in games that we know from psychological theory and from data, and where you see the research gaps in this area. Because I know right now, being as new as it, there's really really. not a lot of specific research in this area. So what are your thoughts on this?

Okay, so again I'm program chair for Division 21. 21 looks at scientific research to try and understand how people interact with technology, of which this certainly is a key element of that. And so if we want to talk about benefits, there's a really important paper that came out in 2014 an American psychologist by Granach-Labelle and Engels. that outlines a very long list of benefits that come from playing video games, from cognitive effects and emotional effects and social effects. So, for example, one of the things that they outline is that playing video games

oftentimes improves spatial awareness, understanding where things are in three-dimensional space, which is required for a lot of different gameplay, especially for things like first-person shooters. Knowing where you are relative to your opponent and where you need to shoot in order to take them out generates an increase in awareness of you and your surroundings and the relative nature of where things are relative to one another. And part of the reason why this is so important

is because there's also been evidence in the literature that demonstrates this increase in spatial awareness is also very highly correlated with success in STEM areas. And so it's video games can help improve these kinds of cognitive elements. And there's many more things in there, but I want to provide up to you for Katie. Let me just do a follow-up for you. Not all of the e-sports games are first-person shooters.

No, it's well to mention. And so, you know, there's certainly, I was just drawing that up because that's one that has been derived specifically or tied specifically to first-person shooters. Right. But yes, there are many other. genres as well that provide other other benefits from games as well yeah yeah he pointed out a lot of the research that I've read which I think is both excellent and also needs needs improvement great work by Green and Bevié on a lot

of attentional spatial awareness peripheral vision spoiler alert gamers are better than non-gamers at these things but non-gamers can be trained to become just as good as gamers through hours of gameplay So for me as a decision-making researcher, I'm thinking myself, okay, but these players are making decisions on less than seconds sometimes bases, time pressure-wise. So I'm interested in that aspect, which that aspect has not been delved into a lot. So my research focused on trying to understand problem-solving in games and how video games can affect problem-solving skills. And now currently the study is creativity as well. So what we're finding is that non-gamers actually are able to benefit very greatly from playing

just 30 minutes of roller coaster tycoon, which those of you in the audience who are maybe less than 30, I'm not quite sure. I see thumbs up from the audience. We loved this game. I'm sure we all played hundreds of hours to our parents dismay, but we may have been increasing our project management problem solving skills. And so again, in my discipline, we talk about well-defined. and ill-defined problems.

Well-defined problems are these things that maybe only have one correct solution, or it's a very obvious solution. For example, a math problem. There's maybe one or two ways to do it that our math teachers are trying to teach us, and that's how we solve the problem. And there's only one right answer.

Exactly. But in the real world, I'm sure many of us experience ill-defined problems, which are problems that can be approached from many different directions, have many different solutions, and you can still come out with a good, solution or product or outcome.

And so in games, a lot of times players are presented with these ill-defined problems. You know, oh, this player is acting this way, or this situation is this way. I have this much money, I have this much territory, I have this many resources. I can do this multiple ways. So what I'm interested in is what are those different ways, what are they considering, and why they're considering those things, and how that impacts something real world, like solving a problem or coming up with creative solutions. And so I think that that area specifically of cognition,

cognition is I think a very buzzword because a lot of people have a different understanding of our opinion about what cognition is, but I would argue that this higher level cognition is what's missing from games research and especially valuable with e-sports because these are the experts that are doing these things. And as Sean mentioned, the social aspect as well. I think there's a paper in there that's referenced in the

in the Granik paper where they say, people feel that their online friendships are more valuable and meaningful and fruitful than their in-person friendships. Whether that's bonding over a hobby or communicating in a different sort of way or getting through these hard problems together. So that I found was especially interesting coming out of that paper. But yeah, that's an excellent paper to look at. Parents or people that want to know about what are the benefits of gaming.

That's a great paper to start with. Yes. So what about the social aspects? So again, the popular concept of a gamer is somebody who's by themselves in their bedroom with the lights out and in their gaming all night long. But that's not Eastworks, correct? No, not at all, actually.

I mean, okay, yeah, you're sitting at a computer, but usually you have your team sitting right next to you kind of doing the same thing. But you're almost having a conversation not face-to-face. So if we were all on a team, and I said, okay, there's a flank coming here, okay, there's a flank coming from the right, you both would hear it, and you both could respond

and communicate back. Obviously, it's not like a conversation we're having right now, but it's a level of communication that now businesses are doing telecommunication. Maybe you can't afford to send your sales guide to China, but you can have a Skype call, and that concept of virtual communication is very similar. Right.

And part of what you were alluding to too, is that we're talking about professional e-sports, where they may be in the same physical location, just not necessarily oriented toward each other because they're talking through their headsets. But for things like casual e-sports, you're still working on a team with players that may be from around the world.

So it's not only communication and coordination of people for that particular purpose, but oftentimes players will, outside of the game themselves, coordinate with one another and talk to one another about things that are going on in their life sharing other elements, which then increases things like cultural awareness. If you're talking to somebody that is from around the world, they may have a very different perspective than you are, and that's something that e-sports can facilitate.

Okay. So I have another question. Again, I see this as a very potentially broad area of research. So coming from, as, you know, my background originally is a military experimental psychologist. I'm familiar with the team training research so and decision-making under stress and a lot of these other research areas some of which involves simulation not necessarily games so are we drawing on any of those concepts from these bigger other areas into our research thinking on these? Absolutely I know a lot of education research that's being done trying to understand learning it and getting using games serious games or games for learning

There are many different terms for that that are being used. But I know that especially in areas like military, aviation's been using simulations since they were probably first made. I'm not quite sure about the history of simulations, but the point is it's a form of a game. I would argue a simulation to some degree of visual simulation can be maybe considered a game. If there are objectives,

if there are potentially multiple decision points, if there are other players involved. And so that makes the question, like, what is considered a game? And so obviously that's a little distant from e-sports. But when you get in the concept of training and learning and potentially team building or leadership development that I know is very important in a military context, those concepts are happening.

They're doing that training for these players because it needs to happen. You need to maybe have that individual that is the commander or the shot callers is a typical term for it. That makes the decisions. They get the information and they make the decisions. They make the calls. And so that is a skill, arguably, that needs to be developed or worked on depending on the dynamic of your team.

Yeah. And there's certainly, when you talk about e-sports, the skills that e-sports players have comes from a wide array of different topic areas that can be drawn upon from pre-existing literature. So things like expertise has been, looked at for decades. And so we can draw upon that kind of literature to try and understand how somebody might become an e-sports player expert. The interesting

thing though is that of course Katie made the argument of games may not exactly be the same as simulation but they're very similar but then we also have to consider well what is different about video games and we have this body of literature that already exists but you may have now with video games something that nobody's really looked at in that way before. Right. And so there are some elements of just basic perceptual processes that we know a lot about that can apply to video games.

How fast can somebody respond? How quickly can somebody see something? But there are ways in which we are looking at games that, in ways in which games are played, that haven't really been addressed before that is a wide open area for research. Well let's get down in the weeds. I'll ask you a hard one now. So we'll pull out the hard questions. So I've been doing technology research almost all of my career. And one of my big concerns in simulation and games is that we do our research on these games or on simulations, but they're very game and simulation specific. So what's the generalizability with some of our

research? Because again, the games that we put when I was doing work on, 20 years ago are certainly not like the games that are out there today and which will not be like the games that are going to be out in another even five years so what can we say across time what what generalizes on these on these issues and what does it really so going back to the literature we're talking for example about training literature right there's a very large body of knowledge about what trains and what doesn't and generalize ability and specificity of skills And so depends a little bit on what kind of skills you're talking about as to the degree of generalizability.

And so, for example, if you learn how to play tennis and then you start taking a badminton, well, some of the basic hand-eye coordination skills might apply, but a lot of the specifics for that game may not generalize very well. Right, so a shot that you play in badminton is certainly not going to be exactly the same one as it is in tennis. Right. And so a lot of the skills that we learn in playing games, some of the basic hand-eye coordination elements may transfer, but a lot of the cognition, the literature is a bit mixed on that as to exactly how much and how well these kinds of skills transfer. Okay. No, I would agree with that.

I think the T word transfer is a big problem. The problem solving research is one is our labs attempt to answer that question specifically for problem solving and creativity, the effects of games on those two abilities. And whether or not they could transfer to a, quote, real world situation or a real problem. For example, we use the dunker problem, so they're analogical problems. On the surface, they're very different. There's a medical example and then there's a military example. The solution is exactly the same.

It's a divide and conquer. So you're either dividing the rays up to attack the tumor, which gives you the same intensity, but from obviously a combined angle, or you divide your troops among all of the little roads so your men don't blow up on the mines. The answer is the same, but people get caught up on the surface features. And so I think that how people are able to come at those problems and able to see past those surface features, whether that's, I'm in a simulation and this is what I'm being trained on. I don't see the real world transfer here and they have that difficulty, but there are people

that are pushing past that and are able to see past that and say, this is what I've learned, whether it's a mental model, whether it's a different approach to problem solving, whether it's, I need to consider this resource, I need to think about this resource differently. Games provide that constant change of pace. Things are different, not all features are the same. You can control for that, which makes it sometimes a really great tool for research. We all love control, which is great. But also it allows you to see how people are able to navigate the environment and really take what they've learned and transfer it over. But I think where we're lacking is how do we measure that transfer? You know, how do

you quantify, oh, you know, this is a transfer of decision making or this is this? So my other research is focused on identifying those key cues and facets of decision-making at critical points within a game and categorizing those and I've actually pulled a categorization scheme from the military strategic operational and tactical decisions and so I found those in both football players and in Overwatch players and in League of Legends players so these types of decisions are happening in different contexts but the key is to note for example for transfer maybe is what do all of those have in common or what are the trends and strategies of what

they're using with these different types of decisions to solve these types of problems. Okay. So, but again, you know, I think decision making is a great skill. I think it applies in different things. There are many different facets of it, different pressures. And that also includes the perceptual motor stuff. You know, maybe you're tired or maybe you're realizing you, there's an issue with a technology or yourself and you're like, I have to deal with this issue and this is going to affect my

decision making. So there's a lot of things that affect it. So I think, my opinion is that decision making and other similar aspects of psychology would be great to attack that transfer problem. Okay. All right. Another question then. Actually, bring it on.

Yeah. Actually, this should be maybe easier. So again, I've had another couple of roles in my background. So I co-chaired a White House committee on digital gaming for a while, and I was at the Department of Education. But during those times, I was looking at educational games. And one of the things one of my PIs did, a non-psychologist, I might add, but still a good guy. Zorin Popovic at University of Washington, who also did the Foldit game, so a problem solving game. He was doing work for me on doing educational games in algebra and physics in some other areas, and also

being funded by the Gates Foundation for this. One of the things he did, which was really interesting, is he took an adapted version of Dragon Box that used some of his technology. And if you don't know Dragon Box, Dragon Box is a game that purports, you can argue about this question, to teach algebra in two hours.

But it's a Berean game, it's very engaging. But what he did is he took the game out and he did a statewide competition for the entire state of Washington. And then after that, he went out for another state and then he did the country of Norway. So including the prime minister of Norway who was playing this game. So learning algebra.

So I mean, do you see these types of things maybe being things we should be focusing on as well down the road for, or am I out of my mind and it's totally out of our ballpark? I think a lot of people, and I mentioned this in the panel yesterday, a lot of people like consumers or educators, they want that magic pill, they want that solution to end all be all. And games has a lot of promise. The drawback of that is that games take a lot of time, games take a lot of money, games take a lot of resources to do it right. And so if you don't have a team or the resources, maybe you can't do that.

And so, for example, in my research, I'm looking at an off-the-shelf $5 on Steam game. But some of those are good. No, no, exactly. And so, you know, if we're getting, obviously, it's not meant to teach algebra, something like that. But there are games, I think it's called TI something, but it's supposed to teach the basics of programming. TI 100. Yes, there you go. Thank you. You can tell how much I've played that game in my Steam library.

But games like that that are more specified, but are definitely on the surface, you can tell it's more of a game. I think hiding that instead of just having it be, this is an educational game because people may have, approach that very differently than they would a more off the shelf game. Right. And so, but no, I don't think that, I think games for learning and serious games, I think they're great. A lot of medical simulations are very, or medical games and simulate, incorporate simulations. They're great. I mean, they're useful.

They've demonstrated progress over time in teaching a certain skill, maybe in two weeks to a new surgeon or whatever it is. And they've shown great success. So I think if you have the research backing and you're demonstrating, that whatever field it is or whatever task it is, you're demonstrating learning gains. Nothing wrong with it. And what was interesting about Dragon Box too,

at least in the research, and this was an adapted version, so it was not the off-the-shelf version, but they were actually showing some kindergarten or a kindergarten kid solving the challenges in the game. Slower, obviously, than the older kids, but still, amazing that you could actually teach some at least basic algebra concepts to kids that young. young. So really a lot you can do with games. Absolutely. The one caveat though is we have to be

careful in how they are designed because certainly there's been a lot of research over the years that has demonstrated that if it's not designed in the right way, then whoever is utilizing these educational games may not actually be learning anything. Right. And they may not be motivated. Because that's one of the important elements of games is that in playing a game, there's a there's a lot of motivation from the person playing the game because it's fun. It's enjoyable. And so if they're having a lot of fun and they're actually learning something along with the fun, then there's that added benefit.

And so there has to be a careful consideration in terms of the design of that education to make sure that there is the fun driving the motivation and the education comes along with it as opposed to the education with just a little bit of fun, in which case then a lot of people say, you're trying to teach me something, aren't you? and they aren't going to follow through with it necessarily. And so video games have a very big benefit in terms of motivation in terms of continuing on. And I'll give you one example of this.

There's a statistic that was given a number of years ago by a researcher by the name of Jane McGonigal who argued that children in this day and age are spending just as much time, if not more time, playing video games then they actually spend in school. So then the question becomes, well, what are they actually learning from all of this gameplay? Yeah. And so there is potentially a lot of power in terms of the possibility for games.

And adding to that, to the McGonigal argument, they're already doing it. Right. Why would you not leverage it, you know, to some degree, leverage it in a positive way that they can relate to and are motivated by to succeed? And another good example is the psychology of failure. You know, nobody likes to fail. It doesn't feel good. But an example is the Dark Souls series is notorious for being one of the hardest game series. It is punishing.

You know, you see the text, you died every time you died, so you get that reminder every single time, and it sucks. But victory is like a little bit out of your reach. So once you're able to solve that problem ahead of you, you feel good and you're like, I want to keep going. You might die 50 more times, but you're more. but it continuously motivates you to continue to solve those problems. And so similar in a learning game, you know, obviously maybe a little less harsh. You don't need a you failed, you know, maybe necessarily up there. But if you're able to kind of get them right above their capability level

and they can be so confident once they solve it and they can just want to do more, you know, I solve this, I can do this, I want to learn more. That is what, yeah, that's incorporating that into design. Well, in having funded quite a few games, one of the big problems, which actually we could use, this is a research area in itself for psychology. It's almost impossible to create an engaging game that, if you're doing it for education, that is engaging for a wide variety of students. So I mean, it's very much preferential.

So again, how do you develop a game that goes across cultural divides and gender divides? And I have two kids with autism, so you look at neurotypical. kids. I mean, so the gameplay, the game dynamics, and the themes, I mean, it's, when you look at a game, what most people don't realize, even in the research, is that these are actually a very complex cultural entities in themselves. And it's like studying a complex, any other complex environment in psychology. I'll tell one story since we're talking education, then we'll move on. I was on the America's Army video game development team back in, this was around 2001, using a cutting-edge first-person shooter video game engine. I was very excited they wanted to do medic training.

So I was a medical service corps officer. I said this is going to be great. We're going to have fully interactive. We're going to have them down in there and you're going to be able to treat wounds and it's going to be wonderful. The Army said we want it next week. So what we end up having to do, and this is the worst use of a game platform ever, is we created a classroom and we had the players had to come into the classroom, sit down in a chair, and watch PowerPoint slides of an instructor as they were giving lectures and then pass a test. It was so painful and embarrassing. But what came out of that, we started, and again, this is another area of how powerful

these can be. About two months after we released it, we got a letter on an email from this kid that said, I saved my brother's life because I had gone through your training program and we were in an accident and he was bleeding. And I was able to stop the bleeding. So I mean, even in these cases, you know, and it was kind of a wake up call for me to see that, you know, how much the, you know,

one that you could actually get players to go in for a half an hour and hour and sit in a virtual classroom and much, and I was one of the instructors, by the way. So it was my voice, droning on at them. But very lifelike to the Army and Navy experience. But they will you do that. So, you know, these are very interesting things. So.

That's great story. So let's, okay, so we've talked for a while. There's usually an elephant in the room about gaming, and especially in these times when we have mass violence situations. And I know some of our listeners are probably asking themselves. So, you know, what are your views? We know that in 2015, the APA released a statement on video games talking about aggression.

We're currently reviewing newer literature, so we'll be discussing that at a later date, what we come out from that. But I've been answering questions here this past week on the differences between violence and aggression, which is a psychological set of constructs that the public doesn't really understand, and kind of rightfully so.

But where do you stand? So how do you think e-sports compare with other games, or what do you think the overall themes for games? What is your takeaway message from these? I think with e-sports, toxicity has always been a thing in games. As Alexis from our e-sports panel yesterday mentioned, we didn't invent trash talk. Athletes have been doing that for decades. You know, we just kind of do it in a different way, I guess.

So I think a lot of times people perceive that level of toxicity or banter as maybe condoning violence or condoning more aggression. And so I think that that is, that is an issue in e-sports, is this outward aggression. They are public figures. You know, rage directed at an individual versus rage directed at the game. In my opinion, those are very different things. You know, against an individual, you know, I'm not super knowledgeable about aggression studies, just specifically aggression and, you know, the correlation or the causation of actually

violent acts. To me, if you're directing it at an environment, kind of an inanimate thing that doesn't, you know, maybe have any effects, it's kind of one of those coping mechanisms where you go home and you have a bad day and you punch your pillow, and then you feel better, or you cry and you feel better. So I think that this debate is an important one. It's a hot topic, especially for parents. I think a lot of the issue also stems from parents maybe not being as knowledgeable about the games, industry in the field. You know, the ESRB puts out ratings for a reason. You know, a 10-year-old is not

supposed to be playing Counter-Strike, or I think Rainbow Six is also rated them, I'm not sure. But they put those out for that reasons is because they're very easily influenced. And to what degree they're influenced, the developmental psychologists can come in and step in. But I don't know. I think that the studies that have been done have been mixed. I think there was a great panel, I believe, yesterday on violence and games, and the individual went through all of the studies and said, here's how it was designed, you know, here's maybe a potential issue with the methods or how they went about doing it or their operationalization of aggression or violence.

As I said earlier, it's a very complex social environment. Exactly. And so I think that that, what the APA is doing right now and going through all of the the studies and being able to make a statement. I think as researchers and as people, we need to be skeptical and we need to question those methods and we need to say, okay, so you use this why? Did you justify it? What theory or what research is this based in?

So you can be confident in that. But I think to the public, I think we need to be better about how we're disseminating that information because people may only read one line and that may be the line they remember, that's not your takeaway line. That's not the bottom line up front or whatever it is that you want them to remember. So it's very easy to misinterpret research, especially if you're not projecting it or presenting it in a way that maybe is not able to be understood by a wide audience or misinterpreted. So I think that as a community, maybe we need to do a better job with research,

being able to disseminate it more clearly with the message that they need to take away from whatever it is, an article or a paper. Right. Well, in addition to that, we're talking about a very complex issue. I mean, it's, but everybody wants a simple answer, right? Is there a connection between violence and video games? And they're looking for yes or no. It's a lot more complicated than that.

And what we need, you know, we're talking about this as science. It needs to be tied back to empirical information that can lend support to which direction. this answer comes from. And then being able to convey it in a meaningful way to the public is really important. There's also issues in terms of not only the content of the games and behaviors that occur, but it's very difficult as psychologists to measure it. There are certainly ethical issues of looking at this kind of topic because as researchers, we can't go into somebody's house and say, hey, play this video game,

and two hours later we'll see if you want to punch the dog. We can't do that ethically. No. Right. So we have to use these other measures that make it much more difficult to answer that question. But it still needs to be grounded in that research. And the other thing that I find interesting too is that oftentimes a lot of these discussions revolve around a specific genre of games, namely first person shooters.

And one of my arguments that I always make that I find it, interesting is that, for example, I play a wide variety of games. Right. So, for example, I may play a fantasy game. So if I am learning how to be violent from that, and the game is on dragons, does that mean tomorrow I'm going out there and being violent against dragons? They don't exist. So how do we map the kinds of activities and behaviors that come from games onto these outcomes that are seen.

It's an extraordinarily complex problem. Yeah, and I'll just end it with the caveat that, you know, research-wise, we have, some of the research we've seen does purport small increases in aggression, not a huge effect size, but we have not seen any research that actually relates games to violence, to extreme violence. And I think that's the take of them. And their correlational studies typically, not causal. And to that point, I think, you know, it's easy to talk about the negative, very easy to talk about the negative and ignore the positive.

Right. You know, there have been studies that I've looked at where they actually have found an increase in pro-social behavior, such as interacting with individuals of different cultures, going out into the community and volunteering, civilian or civic activities, an increase, and obviously these are self-report. You know, they're not going out stalking people, but self-reported increase in, these types of pro-social behaviors or attitudes or feelings. And so that, you know, those are, those types of studies need to be continued, but they're also being kind of pushed down by this, you know,

we're in a culture of violence and a lot of hate, you know, in the world. And so that's very easily overshadowed. You know, it is an issue. You know, violence is definitely an issue. You know, maybe even more important than potentially, you know, pro-social behavior, increasing pro-social behaviors. but maybe there's a mitigating factor there. Maybe there's something we're missing

that we can leverage in games that are promoting that, potentially preventing some of these things that happens. I think that's a perfect place to stop, so I'll ask one more question, and this is a short answer essay, or not even an essay. What's your favorite game?

Oh, you're killing me here. Can we just end it now? It's going to be hard. Love Portal, but mine's actually a tie. Super Metroid and Castlevania Symphony of the night because of the same style of gameplay. Okay. Are we talking current or past?

Your entire life. That's not possible. That's like asking a book reader. Okay, current. I play a lot of Heroes of the Storm. I love that game. I also love the persona series and the Fire Emblem series. So, yeah, go out and buy them.

No, I'm not sponsored by any of these companies, but they're excellent game. And persona is based in psychology. Those of you that know what a persona is, I want to know about yourself. But there are lots of great games that are good research platforms. Absolutely. Curbel Space Force is often overlooked. But there's lots to be done in this area. So we really encourage everybody who's listening to kind of go out, learn more about these areas, not just in e-sports, but games overall.

Because there are some really fascinating research areas across the spectrum of psychology that you can really pursue. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your informative discussions. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you.