How games can make behavioural science better
How games can make behavioural science better
How games can make behavioural science better
By Bria Long, Jan Simson, Andrés Buxó-Lugo, Duane G. Watson & Samuel A. Mehr
January 17, 2023
Summary
Gamification can help to avoid the pitfalls of conventional laboratory-based experiments by allowing researchers to study diverse populations, to conduct more-sophisticated experiments and to observe human behaviour in naturalistic environments.
We are researchers in psychology, linguistics, developmental science, data science and music who have run our own gamified experiments.
Gamification can include transforming experiments into bespoke games, embedding experiments in existing games and extracting data from ongoing ones.
Compared with lab-based research, online gamified experiments make it easier and cheaper to recruit diverse participants, including those from groups that are under-represented in scientific research.
Js, Open Sesame and psychTestR - make it straightforward for researchers to start creating behavioural experiments online.
Larger-scale experiments require cloud infrastructure that can distribute them, handle data collection and scale dynamically, so that the whole thing doesn't fall apart if your experiment goes viral.
In the United States, three-quarters of adults with household incomes below US$30,000 a year have a smartphone, according to a 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC. The fact that people from lower-income communities are more likely to connect to the Internet using smartphones than with desktop computers means it is a high priority for researchers to develop mobile-friendly experiments that work when Internet connections are slow or patchy.
Reference
Long, B., Simson, J., Buxó-Lugo, A., Watson, D. G., & Mehr, S. A. (2023, January 17). How games can make Behavioural Science Better. Nature News. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00065-6