Can computer games help raise self-esteem? Absolutely. In a world-first study, researchers from McGill University’s Department of Psychology have created and tested computer games that are specifically designed to help people enhance their self-acceptance.
Available for public consultation at http://www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca, the games have catchy names such as Wham!, EyeSpy: The Matrix and Grow Your Chi. All three games were developed by doctoral students from McGill’s Department of Psychology: Jodene Baccus, Stéphane Dandeneau and Maya Sakellaropoulo, under the direction and supervision of Mark Baldwin, an associate psychology professor.
The team’s first research results on Wham! will be published in the peer-reviewed journal, Psychological Science in July. Publication of research on EyeSpy: The Matrix is forthcoming in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. (Please see below for further game descriptions).
Research goals
After examining past studies on self esteem, the McGill team deduced that people’s feelings of insecurity are largely based on worries about whether they will be liked, accepted and valued by their peers and significant others.
Research has also shown that self-esteem is strongly influenced by particular ways of thinking. Self-esteem difficulties arise from people’s self-critical views concerning their characteristics and performances, along with an assumption that others will reject them. Comparatively, people who are more secure have a range of automatic thought processes that make them confident and buffer them from worrying about the possibility of social rejection.
“For people with low self-esteem, negative thought patterns occur automatically and often involuntarily,” explains Baldwin, “leading them to selectively focus their attention on failures and rejections.” The solution? People with ‘automatic’ negative personal outlooks need to condition their minds towards positive views and learn to be more accepting of themselves. The McGill team’s goal was to conduct experimental research that would enable them to develop interventions that could help people feel more secure: i.e. specially designed computer games.
The games people can play
“The three games work by addressing the underlying thought processes that increase self-liking,” explains Baldwin. “As athletes know, to learn any new habit takes a lot of practice. Our team wanted to create a new way to help people practice the desired thought patterns to the point of being automatic.”
The researchers drew on their experience playing repetitive computer games and devised novel counterparts that would help people feel more positive about themselves. In the first computer game, EyeSpy: The Matrix, players are asked to search for a single smiling face in a matrix of 15 frowning faces. The hypothesis? Repeating the exercise can train players to focus their attention on positive rather than negative feedback.
The second game, Wham!, was built on Pavlov’s well-known conditioning research. The Wham game has players register their name and birthday. Once the game is in action, the player’s personal information is paired with smiling, accepting faces. The outcome? Players have experiences similar to being smiled at by everyone and take on a more positive attitude about themselves.
For the third game, Grow Your Chi, the researchers combined the tasks of Wham! and EyeSpy: The Matrix. Players of Grow Your Chi try to nurture their inner source of well-being by responding to positive versus negative social information.
Practice improves positive outlook The McGill team has demonstrated that with enough practice, even people with low self-esteem can develop positive thought patterns that may allow them to gradually become more secure and self-confident. That’s why everyone is encouraged to sample http://www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca and to see for themselves how the online exercise can effect positive change. “We are now starting to examine the possible benefits of playing these games every day,” says Baldwin. “We plan to study whether these kinds of games will be helpful to schoolchildren, salespeople dealing with job-related rejection and perhaps people on the dating scene.”
Despite the potential benefits of these games, poor self-esteem remains an incredibly complex issue. “These games do not replace the hard work of psychotherapy,” Baldwin stresses. “Our findings, however, provide hope that a new set of techniques can gradually be developed to help people as they seek to overcome low self-esteem and feelings of insecurity.”
More on Wham!
Can self-esteem be increased by playing a computer game called Wham? The answer is yes according to a study conducted by Jodene Baccus, a doctoral student in McGill’s Department of Psychology. Baccus, the lead researcher, collaborated with McGill graduate Dominic Packer (now a grad student at University of Toronto), under the direction of associate psychology professor Mark W. Baldwin. The team explains how computer games can enhance feelings of self-acceptance in the July edition of Psychological Science.
Some 139 participants were recruited for the study, which began with a self-esteem measurement. Participants were then split into two groups: one played Wham! and another group played a placebo version. Participants who played Wham! entered into a computer some self-relevant information (e.g. first name, birthday). These identifiers would then flash on screen, be clicked (whammed) and be followed by a smiling face.
Baccus found that pairing a person’s personal information with the game’s positive social feedback helped enhance self-acceptance. “After playing Wham! for 10 minutes, the automatic and unconscious thoughts of participants was measured,” she says. “The result showed that players of Wham! had higher self-esteem than participants who played the placebo game.”
More on EyeSpy: The Matrix
The McGill scientists designed EyeSpy: The Matrix to help change the habits of people with low self esteem, who often seem to expect rejection. In a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, Stéphane Dandeneau, a doctoral student, and Mark W. Baldwin, an associate psychology professor, explain how EyeSpy: The Matrix was created to train people to reduce their focus on non-acceptance.
“We designed the game to teach players to seek the smiling or approving person in a crowd of frowning faces,” explains Dandeneau, who with Baldwin recruited 64 participants for the study. The researchers begun by measuring the self-esteem of each participant. Half of participants were then asked to play EyeSpy and half competed a placebo task. Using an attentional bias measure called the Rejection Stroop, the researchers demonstrated that the bias toward rejection among people with low self-esteem – versus subjects who completed a placebo task – was significantly lower for participants who completed EyeSpy.
“We found that EyeSpy: The Matrix teaches people, especially those with low self-esteem, the habit of looking for acceptance and ignoring rejection,” explains Dandeneau. “This could serve as an antidote to their usual habit of consistently looking for rejection information in their environment.”
To sample Wham! or Eyespy: The Matrix, please consult http://www.selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca.
I’ve identified 12 of the life patterns which cause us to trip up – and make the same mistakes again and again. To discover which of the 12 patterns you have been the victim of and how to eliminate self-sabotage in your life (or those of your clients) you can pick up the CD program and workbook, LIFESTORMS: The Paradox of Overcoming Self Sabotage to Achieve Love, Power, Money and Happiness.
Lifestorms: 12 Obstacles to Achievement: The Paradox of Overcoming Self Sabotage to Achieve Love, Power, Money and Happiness.
3 CDs in this program – and it comes with a BIG WORKBOOK! And now, get a free Lifestorms DVD presentation with your order!
Discover why life often brings you exactly what you don’t want…and how self sabotage can hide around every corner. Some people have guessed at the bizarre nature of self sabotage. Guess no more. Self sabotage is very real in everyone’s life. It is completely devastating and 100% resolvable!
- Do you ever know you should start on a project but don’t?
- Do you have projects that you have started but never finished?
- Do you ever say the one wrong thing at the wrong time?
- Have you ever had things going well in life only to have everything blow up in a day?
- Have you tried to be so careful not to make a mistake that you were shocked when you made a truly costly one?
- Have you ever promised yourself to stay out of trouble in some way only to find yourself in the same trouble or worse again?
Now you can discover your own life patterns so you can eliminate unconscious self sabotage immediately. This program will break the heavy chains that hold you from your dreams and your goals.
This program is the first program ever made public that shows you how to identify specific self sabotaging behaviors and negative life patterns. Better? You can ultimately erase those life patterns and rewrite new “schemas” into your brain that will allow you to meet your goals and experience fulfilling relationships.
Here is what you will learn:
- How to identify which of the 12 negative life patterns you live.
- How to find the triggers of the lifestorms that you just can’t believe you experience.
- How to change the self sabotage into success, happiness or something productive.
- How to remove almost all obstacles between you and your goals.
- How to understand those around you so you don’t push their buttons.
- How to predict your behavior and that of others.
- How to actually achieve your goals so they are more than just a dream.
No one anywhere has ever put such a program on CD. There is not one person anywhere who can’t utilize every minute of this insightful information. These three CD’s are packed with the most powerful tools for getting past life’s roadblocks and personal sabotage ever imagined. Anyone can utilize this information and I personally guarantee that if you follow the instructions you will not experience self sabotaging behavior anymore. Your goals become reality at speeds faster than you ever imagined.
Learn More About Lifestorms or to order
