Preferences for Individual Video Games as a Function of Their Emotional Effects on Players

Video games vary in terms of the emotional states they elicit from players. These differences in emotional reactions, in turn, help account for differential preferences of individual games. The three independent dimensions of pleasure-displeasure, arousal-nonarousal, and dominance-submissiveness were used to assess emotional impacts of individual games. In addition, a preference measure was constructed to evaluate attraction toward, versus avoidance of, specific games. In Study One, a group of subjects provided data on emotional responses to 22 common arcade video games and a different group rated their preferences for the same games. The emotional impact of video games was highly unpleasant, moderately arousing, and moderately dominance-inducing; thus, the predominant emotional response to these games was aggression, anger, or hostility. I n Study Two, subjects visiting a video game arcade were recruited and assigned to play two games each and to report their reactions to each game immediately after playing the game. Results showed that greater feelings of pleasure, and separately of arousal, while playing video games resulted in higher preferences for the games and that greater dominance (significant only for males) also led to higher preferences. It may be beneficial, therefore, to experiment with more arousing and more dominance-inducing game designs which are not necessarily unpleasant or which definitely yield high pleasure.     

Arousal-reducing effects of chronic stimulant use

A variety of studies withhabitual users of nicotine, caffeine, cocaine, and amphetamines have shown that administration of these stimulants has the paradoxical effect of lowering arousal states. Research on transmarginal inhibition shows that when subjects are presented with a succession of stimuli monotonically increasing in intensity, GSR and related arousal responses increase first and then begin to decline beyond a certain point of stimulus intensity. That is, following repeated exposure to intense stimuli, continued more intense stimulation has the effect of lowering arousal. Since stimulants subjectively heighten stimulus intensity, the transmarginal inhibition data provide a basis for explaining opposing effects of stimulants on arousal, depending on dose and frequency of use. It was hypothesized that when dose levels are low and usage is infrequent, arousal increases with stimulant intake. In contrast, when dose levels are high and frequent, arousal shows decrements with new intakes of stimulant. A new questionnaire measure of characteristic arousal was developed and correlated with subjects' reports of habitual levels of stimulant and sedative intake. Weekly total stimulant use correlated significantly and negatively with characteristic arousal level, providing support for the hypothesis. This lowered arousal of frequent stimulant users was not a confound of, or due to, concomitant frequent sedative use, since total stimulant and sedative use levels were uncorrelated.The author would like to thank Janice Schafrik for running the subjects in this study.     

Affiliation of opposite-sexed strangers

This study examined the effects of a subject's sex and affiliative tendency and the other's physical attractiveness on the cross-sexual interaction of strangers. Although previous studies showed that one's interest in an opposite-sexed other is a function of the other's physical attractiveness, the actual behavior of individuals in the presence of attractive and unattractive others had not been systematically examined. Subjects were individually placed in a 5-min waiting situation with a physically attractive or unattractive target of the opposite sex who behaved in a standard way. Conversations were recorded and subsequently analyzed; subjects also provided their impressions of the targets following the waiting period. Physical attractiveness of the opposite-sexed other did not significantly influence the subject's verbal affiliative behavior, but the combined influence of a subject's sex and affiliative tendency was predictive of cross-sexual affiliation. Although physical attractiveness did not account for differences in affiliative behavior, subjects preferred attractive over unattractive targets as potential dates or marriage partners.     

Beyond IQ: broad-based measurement of individual success potential or "emotional intelligence"

Individual-difference correlates of life success were studied using 302 participants aged 17-46 years (107 men, 195 women) and 31 individual-difference measures. Factor 1 (Relaxed Temperament) included Trait Pleasure-Displeasure (+), Anxiety (-), Depression (-), Optimism (+), Self-Esteem (+), Covert Index of Employee Reliability (+), and Functional Flexibility (-). Positively loading scales on Factor 2 (Arousable Temperament) were Trait Arousability, Emotional Empathy, Emotional Thinking, and Affiliative Tendency. Factor 3 (Disciplined Goal Orientation) included Delay of Gratification (+), Impulsivity (-), Procrastination (-), Patience (+), Integrity (+), Adaptive Coping (+), and Intelligence (+). Positively loading scales on Factor 4 (Dominant Temperament) were Trait Dominance-Submissiveness, Social Competence, Achieving Tendency, and Self-Actualization. Factors 1, 3, 4, and intelligence exhibited positive relations with all peer-rated criterion measures of life success. Trait Arousability, representing Factor 2, correlated negatively with relationship, physical, work, and overall success. Physical attractiveness correlated positively with all success measures except emotional success. When success measures were regressed against intelligence and personality scales or factors, intelligence did not account for variance beyond that explained by personality.     

Piagetian measures of cognitive development for children up to age two

This paper proposes a measure of cognitive development which is based primarily on Piaget's concepts. The choice of the particular items was determined by their assumed relation to general representational ability, including linguistic and nonverbal communication abilities. The present approach is distinguished from those of some linguists who suggest that a child's early linguistic development is not compatible with his cognitive skills and, thus, that a child's grammatical competence implies the existence of some innate set of principles for the generation of language. In contrast, the present approach hypothesizes that a child's cognitive skills during the first 2 years, particularly nonverbal representational abilities, not only precede but enhance his subsequent acquisition of language. The assumption that the items of the proposed scale together test a common ability was supported by a multidimensional homogeneity analysis of the scale, which indicated that it defines an essentially unitary ability dimension and also has strong ordinal characteristics.This study was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Grant MH 13509. This is an updated version of a paper that was presented at the International Days of Sociolinguistics, 1969, Rome, Italy.     

Some referents and measures of nonverbal behavior

This paper summarizes some of the measures of nonverbal behavior that have been found to be significant indicators of a communicator’s attitude toward, status relative to, and responsiveness to his addressee. The nonverbal cues considered include posture, position, movement, facial, and implicit verbal cues. In addition to providing criteria for the scoring of these cues, experimental findings that relate to the various cues are summarized.