Psychology

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of Psychology.

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Browsing Psychology by Author "Dixon, Michael"

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    Contrasting Mind-Wandering, (Dark) Flow, and Affect During Slot Machine Play and an Auditory Vigilance Task: Implications for Gambling to Escape
    (University of Waterloo, 2020-07-31) Kruger, Tyler; Dixon, Michael; Smilek, Daniel
    Slot machines are a pervasive form of gambling in North America. In Experiment 1 and 2, we assessed gamblers for mindfulness, gambling problems, depressive symptoms, and boredom proneness. In Experiment 1, participants played both a multiline and single-line slot machine simulator and were occasionally interrupted with thought probes to assess whether they were thinking about the game or something else. After playing each game, we retrospectively assessed dark flow and affect during play. The number of “on-game” reports during the multiline game were significantly higher than the single-line game. We also found significantly greater flow and lower negative affect during the multiline game than the single-line game. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that dark flow accounted for unique variance when predicting problem gambling severity (over and above depression, mindfulness, and boredom proneness). In Experiment 2, participants played a multiline slot machine simulator and completed an auditory vigilance task. Similar to Experiment 1, participants were occasionally interrupted with thought probes and retrospective flow and affect was assessed after completing each task. Players reported greater negative affect following the vigilance task (when compared to slots) and greater positive affect following slots (when compared to the vigilance task). We also found that those who scored higher in problem gambling were more likely to use deliberate mind-wandering during the vigilance task. Using hierarchical multiple regression, we found that the number of “deliberately mind-wandering” responses accounted for unique variance when predicting problem gambling severity (over and above depression, mindfulness, and boredom proneness).
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    Examining the Physiological and Subjective Effects of Near-misses in Smartphone Games
    (University of Waterloo, 2017-10-03) Larche, Chanel; Dixon, Michael
    Like many gambling games, the exceedingly popular and lucrative smartphone game “Candy Crush Saga” features near-miss outcomes. In slot machines, a near-miss involves getting two of the needed three high-paying symbols on the pay-line (i.e., just missing the big win). In Candy Crush Saga, the game signals when you just miss getting to the next level by one or two moves. Because near-misses in gambling games have consistently been shown to invigorate play despite being frustrating outcomes, the goal of the present study was to examine whether such near-misses trigger increases in player arousal, frustration and urge to continue play in Candy Crush. Sixty avid Candy Crush Saga players were recruited to play the game for 30 minutes while having their Heart Rate, Skin Conductance Level, subjective arousal, frustration and urge to play recorded for three types of outcomes: wins (where they level up), losses (where they don’t come close to levelling up), and near-misses (where they just miss levelling up). Near-misses were more arousing than losses as indexed by increased heart rate and greater subjective arousal. Near-misses were also subjectively rated as the most frustrating of all outcomes. Most importantly, of any type of outcome, near-misses triggered the most substantial urge to continue play. These findings suggest that near-misses in Candy Crush Saga play a role in player commitment to the game, and may contribute to players playing longer than intended.
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    The influence of near-miss outcomes on the physiological and subjective experience of scratch card gambling
    (University of Waterloo, 2017-04-25) Stange, Madison; Dixon, Michael
    Scratch cards are an omnipresent gambling form in the Canadian marketplace that contain a special type of outcome called a near-miss. A near-miss is an outcome that appears to come close to a large win, but falls short (e.g. uncovering 2 of the 3 needed jackpot symbols). In slot machine research, these outcomes have been shown to have negative effects on the player. Despite this, there is a paucity of knowledge about the effects of near-misses in scratch cards. We investigate the physiological experience of various scratch card outcomes, by measuring heart rate and skin conductance changes during gameplay (Experiments 1 and 2), and subjective appraisals of various outcome types (losses, wins, and near-misses) following the completion of game play (Experiment 1) and individual outcomes (Experiment 2). Our results indicate that near-misses are highly arousing (both physiologically and subjectively), frustrating, and negatively valenced outcomes that paradoxically increase the urge to gamble. Implications for the study of near- misses in gambling research and gambling motivation are discussed.
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    The Player and The Machine
    (University of Waterloo, 2017-08-24) Graydon, Candice; Dixon, Michael
    Modern multiline video slots are popular games with high fidelity sounds and salient graphics, which allow players to wager on multiple lines at once. Interestingly, on multiline slots, many small wins actually amount to less than one's spin wager (e.g., bet a dollar and win back a quarter). These outcomes, however, are accompanied by flashing lines and winning sounds, disguising the negative gains that they truly are. Dixon, Harrigan, Sandhu, Collins, and Fugelsang (2010) termed these outcomes losses disguised as wins, or LDWs. Research has shown that players physiologically (Dixon et al., 2010), behaviourally (e.g., Dixon, Graydon, Harrigan, Wojtowicz, Siu, and Fugelsang, 2014a), and verbally (e.g., Jensen et al., 2013) miscategorize LDWs as wins rather than correctly categorizing LDWs as losses. We have also shown that LDWs lead players to overestimate how often they won during a playing session (e.g., Jensen et al., 2013), leading to what we referred to as a LDW-triggered win overestimation effect. In Chapter 2, we showed that a short educational animation could lead players to correctly categorize LDWs as losses, thus eliminating the LDW-triggered win-overestimation effect. In Chapter 3, using resistance to extinction paradigms, we showed that LDWs could behaviourally reinforce players, leading them to continue to gamble despite financial loss. In Chapter 4, we showed that LDWs could affect players' game preferences and game selection, leading them to choose games with LDWs over games without LDWs. We discuss that these results are disconcerting, because players choose games with reinforcing negative gains, which could lead to distorted memory of how much they won or lost, potentially leading to increased gambling despite financial loss - a hallmark of problem gambling. Finally we discuss future research on LDWs.