Video Games Can Make Us More Creative

FiReaNGeL commends to us a study by Penn State researchers looking at the effect of video game play on creativity. "[Subjects] were asked to play a popular video game, Dance Dance Revolution, at various levels of complexity. The students took a standard creativity test after playing. The researchers also took readings of the players' skin conductance and asked players if they were feeling either positive or negative after the game ... [T]he study appears to indicate that after playing the game, happy or sad people are most creative, while angry or relaxed people are not. The findings suggest that either high or low arousal is key to creativity. In other words, medium amounts of arousal are not conducive to creativity."

Comments

Questionable study

[ATestR]

Of course I haven't RTFA, but I wonder if the test is measuring what the title of the article says it is measuring. Are the results due to playing the video game, or could they be from the physical exercise involved in DDR (considerable). There is probably room for a number of different control groups.

Video games or physical activity?

[bsDaemon]

When I think of video games, I don't think of DDR. DDR is a plot to get nerds to work out by making them think they're scoring points instead of burning calories.

How about doing a study about how creative people are after going to the gym? It gets the blood flowing, oxygen circulating -- no wonder they think better.

Likewise, happy and sad emotions making people more creative than neutral or angry? Duh. Anger makes me want to break things -- or play DOOM. Frankly, DOOM doesn't make me solve problems better afterwards.

I always think better after having worked out, or done something outside. Just an observation.

Highly questionable study

[globaljustin]

You raise a good point, one of several problems with this silly study. I read TFA and this portion tells us all we need to know:

The researchers also took readings of the players' skin conductance and asked players if they were feeling either positive or negative after the game... [T]he study appears to indicate that after playing the game, happy or sad people are most creative, while angry or relaxed people are not. The findings suggest that either high or low arousal is key to creativity. In other words, medium amounts of arousal are not conducive to creativity.

Skin conductance? "Feeling positive or negative"? Dance Dance Revolution? Not to mention how they measure creativity...it's basically a self assessment.

There are so many problems...skin conductance is a meaningless measurement. All we know is that is changes...we don't know why with any reliability. The rest is Freudian/behaviorist psychology bullshit. It's not pseudo-science...it's worse...it's a fraud. These experiments do not come close to proving any sort of hypothesis.

I can say from personal experience that *some* video games substantially increase my brain activity, but having some sort of statistical proof is a long way off. We simply do not understand the human brain and creativity enough to draw these kind of conclusions from this shitty data.

I'm not anti-video game by any means, I'm anti-behaviorist psychological bullshit peddlers who do this work and call it "science".

Re:Highly questionable study

[globaljustin]

I'm going to link to the wiki articlefor you

they use either self reported feelings or perceptions or a scored test. both are highly problematic.

1. self reported feelings and perceptions of creativity: this is kinda ridiculous, like asking someone if they have cancer vs doing a biopsy.

2. scored test: obviously, this is biased by who is scoring the test. Is some psychologist qualified to determine what is 'creative'? What about a panel of experts? not a chance...how would they choose an example of creativity? what's popular?

we're nowhere near being able to 'measure' creativity.

Re:I Knew It!

[Xeirxes]

Well, there IS a difference between intelligence and creativity, but if you think about it, there probably isn't a link between any of these things and video games. I haven't met any fuming angry people who I saw at their height of creativity. Nothing new.

Also, although I run the risk of sounding arrogant, I do consider myself to be fairly intelligent. However, I play video games nearly every day. I know a lot of people who don't really show that they are intelligent (whether or not they really are), and they do the same. I just don't think that there is a "link" or a "relationship" between games and something.

Video games are like a tool that you can use. Not everyone receives the same effects from it.