Factors associated with early adolescents’ anticipated emotional and behavioral responses to ambiguous teases on Facebook

A total of 69 sixth- through eighth-grade students rated their experiences with antisocial and prosocial teases as well as their general attitudes toward teases. Subsequently, the participants read hard copies of four ambiguous teases, one at a time, posted on a simulation of “their” Facebook wall by four different, hypothetical acquaintances. After reading each tease, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire that assessed their emotional and behavioral response to the tease. Consistent with  and  cognitive (attribution)–emotion–action model of motivated behavior, path analyses revealed that the participants’ negative experiences with teases and negative attitudes toward teases were predictive of a negative emotional response to the ambiguous teases on Facebook which, in turn, was predictive of various negative behavioral responses to the ambiguous teasers. Therefore, consistent with the prior finding of a hostile attribution bias in some children’s reactions to ambiguous face-to-face teases (Barnett, Barlett, Livengood, Murphy, & Brewton, 2010), the early adolescents in the present study with relatively negative experiences with and attitudes toward teases appear to display a hostile attribution bias whereby teases on Facebook with an uncertain intent are viewed as if they were meant to be antagonistic and antisocial.     

Externalities,incentives and strategic complementarities: understanding herd behavior in IT adoption

Herd behavior arises in many instances of information technology (IT) adoption. This study examines the economic and behavioral bases for herd behavior and decision conformity. We investigate the roles of payoff externalities, observational learning and managerial incentives in influencing IT adoption decision-making. Our study underscores the benefits of viewing various drivers of IT adoption herding in a unified framework focusing on equilibrium coordination under strategic complementarities. Motivated by the recent advance in behavioral economics and behavioral game theory, our study relates IT adoption herding to a range of individual-level problems, including managerial incentives, managerial behavioral biases and limited rationality. We develop a coordination game of IT adoption within the unified framework. Our analysis of the game demonstrates that, under strategic complementarities, behavioral biases or incentive problems of a small minority of decision-makers may dramatically impact aggregate outcomes.     

Virtual Reality Interventions for Personal Development: A Meta-Analysis of Hardware and Software

Virtual reality (VR) has been repeatedly applied for personal development purposes, ranging from learning and training (cognitive outcomes), to psychological therapies (emotional outcomes), to physical rehabilitation (physical outcomes). Several factors lead to a successful VR intervention, most notably the hardware and software. In the current article, a meta-analysis is performed to test the effect of specialized input hardware (e.g motion sensors, floor pads, etc.), advanced output hardware (i.e., head-mounted displays, surround-screen displays, etc.), and game elements (i.e., score, competition, etc.) across and within the three noted applications of VR intervention. When analyzing the overall effects, only game elements had a significant impact on outcomes. When analyzing specific applications, input hardware did not have a notable impact on outcomes for any application; output hardware had a notable impact on cognitive and emotional outcomes but not physical; and game elements had a notable impact on cognitive outcomes but not emotional or physical. From these results, the current article provides direct suggestions for future research and practice. Particularly, certain mediating mechanisms are suggested to explain the impact of output hardware and game elements on VR intervention outcomes, sparking possible new directions for research and practice.     

Impacts of behavioral engagement and self-monitoring on the development of mental models through serious games: Inferences from in-game measures

The present study investigated the potential of serious games for the acquisition of complex cognitive skills by assessing learners’ mental model development, operationalized as an increase in Mental Model Accuracy (MMA). Furthermore, we assessed behavioral engagement and self-monitoring as two specific engagement types within the gameplay process and analyzed their impact on mental model development. German undergraduate students (N = 97) played a serious game developed to foster practical money skills. We obtained pre- and post-gaming measures of MMA to analyze the development of mental models by applying a structural assessment method. Unobtrusive measures of behavioral engagement and self-monitoring were obtained by computerized collection of participants’ in-game activities. Although we did not find a significant increase in overall MMA through playing, the degree of self-monitoring had a significant and positive effect on post-gaming MMA, even beyond the effect of initial MMA. Behavioral engagement had no impact on mental model development; however, it was positively related to self-monitoring behavior. The results are discussed in light of findings from research on self-regulated learning and controversial notions regarding the effect of behavioral engagement in serious games. In addition to insights into gameplay processes that affect mental model development through serious games, the present study also has practical implications in stressing the importance for game designers to provide learners with the opportunity to engage in self-monitoring behavior while playing a serious game.     

From integrative to game‐based integrative peer response: high ability versus low ability

Peer response is useful to improve student writing. However, traditional peer response takes a single mode, which has some problems, such as effort for preparation of documents or ambiguous feedback. To address these problems, this study presents two peer response approaches, that is, an integrative approach and a game‐based integrative approach. Additionally, whether students with these two peer response approaches and those with a non‐peer response approach performed differently is examined in this study, where students' ability levels were also considered. The findings suggest that students with the peer response generally demonstrated better writing performance than those without the peer response. Furthermore, students with the game‐based integrative approach showed better writing quality than those with the integrative approach. Moreover, the former was more helpful in giving direct feedback on surface features and criticism than the latter. However, the usefulness of peer response approaches was associated with ability levels. More specifically, the integrative approach was beneficial for the high‐ability students to improve on their written expression in the aspect of length of composition, while the game‐based integrative approach was advantageous to enhance the low‐ability students' writing quality in the aspect of clear paragraph.     

The bright side of emotional extremity: Evidence from tipping in live streaming platform

Live streaming has enabled viewers to interact with broadcasters and peer viewers, as well as tip the broadcaster based on their emotional state. While most tips are small, a minority of viewers tip extremely large. To uncover such unique tipping patterns, we draw on the emotion literature and competitive arousal theory to examine how viewers’ emotional extremity affects tipping behavior and how broadcaster's emotional response moderates the baseline effect. This study contributes to the emerging live streaming literature by revealing the differential effects of emotional extremity on tipping amount and frequency and provides practical implications for broadcasters and platforms to steer tipping behavior.     

Power of consumers using social media: Examining the influences of brand-related user-generated content on Facebook

This study examined the influences of positive brand-related user-generated content (UGC)¹ shared via Facebook on consumer response. The model tested was derived from the S–O–R consumer response model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) that depicts the effects of environmental/informational stimuli on consumer response. Specific research objectives were to investigate whether brand-related UGC acts as a stimulus to activate consumer behavior in relation to brand and examine the processes by which brand-related UGC influences consumer behavior. Using the S–O–R model, brand-related UGC was treated as stimulus, pleasure and arousal as emotional responses, and perceived information quality as cognitive response. Information pass-along, impulse buying, future-purchase intention, and brand engagement were treated as behavioral responses. Participants (n = 533) resided in the U.S. and had a Facebook account. Mock Facebook fan pages including brand-related UGC were developed as visual stimuli and presented via an online self-administered questionnaire. SEM was used to analyze the data. Brand-related UGC activated consumers' emotional and cognitive responses. Emotional and cognitive responses significantly influenced behavioral responses. Positive brand-related UGC exerts a significant influence on brand as it provokes consumers’ eWOM behavior, brand engagement, and potential brand sales.     

What makes good games go viral? The role of technology use,efficacy, emotion and enjoyment in players’ decision to share a prosocial digital game

Serious digital games may be an effective tool for prosocial message dissemination because they offer technology and experiences that encourage players to share them with others, and spread virally. But little is known about the factors that predict players’ willingness to share games with others in their social network. This panel study explores how several factors, including sharing technology use, emotional responses, and game enjoyment, contribute to players’ decision to share the game Darfur is Dying, with others. College students played the game and completed questionnaires that assessed whether they had shared the games at two different time points: during game play and after game play. Positive emotions predicted sharing while students played the game, but negative emotions predicted whether the game was shared after initial game play. Game enjoyment predicted players’ intentions to share the game, but it did not predict actual sharing behavior. Neither players’ general use of sharing technologies nor their satisfaction related to sharing digital content predicted sharing intentions or behavior. These findings have implications for the study of viral social marketing campaigns, and serious game design and theory.     

A social-cognitive approach to online game cheating

Drawing upon social cognitive theory, the present study constructed a conceptual model to provide an in-depth understanding of the key psychosocial factors shaping the cheating behavior in online multiplayer games. An online survey approach and structural equation modeling were adopted to investigate the hypothesized relationships and to assess the fitness of the model. The findings of this study provided support for the research model and the social cognitive theory perspective on game cheating behavior. The cheating behavior was found to be influenced by both external and self-generated factors. Specifically, individual gamers’ social environment (peer influence), their own attitude towards game cheating, and evaluation of cheating outcomes played an important role in shaping this problematic behavior in online games. Game cheating self-efficacy was interestingly found to be an insignificant factor for the game cheating behavior. The study fills a gap in the current literature on games and cheating, specifically on the social cognitive mechanisms of the cheating behavior in online multiplayer games.     

The effects of interactive brand placements in online games on children’s cognitive,affective, and conative brand responses

This study investigated how persuasive messages integrated in an online game affects children’s cognitive, affective, and conative responses to the brand, as well as their attitude toward the game itself. An experiment conducted among 2453 girls between the ages of 11 and 17 demonstrated that confrontation with interactive brand placement in the game resulted in more positive attitudes toward the game, higher top of mind awareness of the brand, more positive brand images, and more favorable behavioral intentions. In addition, consistent with persuasion literature and theories on child development, this study showed that there was a three-way interaction effect between exposure to the brand placement, age, and prior brand use for behavioral intentions. The youngest girls who had no prior experience with the brand were more strongly influenced by the brand placement than the oldest girls who had no prior brand experience.     

STUDYING THE EFFECTS OF STRESS ON NEGOTIATION BEHAVIOR

Negotiation is a collaborative activity that requires the participation of different parties whose behaviors influence the outcome of the whole process. The work presented here focuses on the identification of such behaviors and their impact on the negotiation process. The premise for this study is that identifying and cataloging the behavior of parties during a negotiation may help to clarify the role that stress plays in the process. To do so, an experiment based on a negotiation game was implemented. During this experiment, behavioral and contextual information about participants was acquired. The data from this negotiation game were analyzed in order to identify the conflict styles used by each party and to extract behavioral patterns from the interactions, useful for the development of plans and suggestions for the associated participants. The work highlights the importance of the knowledge about social interactions as a basis for informed decision support in situations of conflict.     

严肃游戏中虚拟角色行为建模综述

严肃游戏是计算机游戏一个新的发展方向,可以提供形象互动的模拟教学环境,已经广泛应用于科学教育、康复医疗、应急管理、军事训练等领域。虚拟角色是严肃游戏中模拟具有生命特征的图形实体,行为可信的虚拟角色能够提升用户使用严肃游戏的体验感。严肃游戏中的图形渲染技术已经逐步成熟,而虚拟角色行为建模的研究尚在初级阶段。可信的虚拟角色必须能够具有感知、情绪和行为能力。本文分别从游戏剧情与行为、行为建模方法、行为学习和行为建模评价等4个方面来分析虚拟角色行为建模研究。分析了有限状态机和行为树的特点,讨论了虚拟角色的行为学习方法。指出了强化学习的关键要素,探讨了深度强化学习的应用途径。综合已有研究,归纳了虚拟角色行为框架,该框架主要包括感觉输入、知觉分析、行为决策和动作4大模块。从情感计算的融入、游戏剧情和场景设计、智能手机平台和多通道交互4个角度讨论需要进一步研究的问题。虚拟角色的行为建模需要综合地考虑游戏剧情、机器学习和人机交互技术,构建具有自主感知、情绪、行为、学习能力、多通道交互的虚拟角色能够极大地提升严肃游戏的感染力,更好地体现寓教于乐。     

Emotional Dynamics and Coping Mechanisms to Generate Human-Like Agent Behaviors

Emotion mechanisms represent an important moderating factor of human behavior. Thus, they are necessary to produce realistic behavioral simulations. This work addresses this challenging issue by incorporating emotional processes into an agent model. We intend to show the potential of emotions and coping mechanisms to produce fast and human-like emotional behaviors, particularly, in emergency situations. We focus on the interplay of emotions and goals and its impact on agent behavior. Emotions constitute heuristics to agent decision making. They induce emotion-specific goals that orient agent goal adoption mechanisms and fasten its behavior selection.     

A framework for implicit human-centered image tagging inspired by attributed affect

In this paper, a framework for implicit human-centered tagging is presented. The proposed framework draws its inspiration from the psychologically established process of attribution. The latter strives to explain affect-related changes observed during an individual’s participation in an emotional episode, by bestowing the corresponding affect changing properties on a selected perceived stimulus. Our framework tries to reverse-engineer this attribution process. By monitoring the annotator’s focus of attention through gaze-tracking, we identify the stimulus attributed as the cause for the observed change in core affect. The latter is analyzed from the user’s facial expressions. Experimental results attained by a lightweight, cost-efficient application based on the proposed framework show promising accuracy in both the assessment of topical relevance and direct annotation scenarios. These results are especially encouraging given the fact that the behavioral analyzers used to obtain user affective response and eye gaze lack the level of sophistication and high cost usually encountered in the related literature.     

辅助社交训练严肃游戏中虚拟角色行为表现的不确定性模型

目的 建立行为可信的虚拟角色能够使严肃游戏更加有趣,提升用户使用的体验感。尽管严肃游戏的图形渲染技术已经日趋成熟,但现有的虚拟角色行为表现方式多采用确定性模型,很难反映虚拟角色行为表现的多样性。方法 本文构建了符合辅助社交训练的严肃游戏剧情,采用智能体来描述虚拟角色,赋予虚拟角色视觉、听觉双通道感知。基于马斯洛动机理论,采用食物、休息、交流和安全等动机来描述情绪的产生,利用大五（OCEAN）个性模型来描述虚拟角色的不同个性差别。用外部刺激和内部动机需求来计算情绪强度,利用行为树描述虚拟角色的行为。运用正态云模型处理虚拟角色行为表现的不确定性,并以行走方向、社交距离、交流时身体朝向3个典型的行为表现给出了具体处理方法。结果 在所实现的游戏原型系统中,对于虚拟角色的自主行为和行为表现的不确定性进行了用户体验测试。结果表明,在场景探索任务中,虚拟角色的自主行为模型能减少用户探索场景所耗费的时间,并且可以促进用户与虚拟角色交流;在行为表现测试中,本文模型的自然性评价要高于确定性模型。结论 本文虚拟角色行为模型在一定程度上可提升用户的体验感,有望为建立行为可信的虚拟角色提供一种新的途径。     

Body in the interactive game: How interface embodiment affects physical activity and health behavior change

Does the delivery platform for a health behavior game contribute to its effectiveness? With the growing popularity of interactive video games that combine physical exercise with gameplay, known as “exergames,” there has been a burgeoning interest in their impact on users’ exercise attitudes and behavioral outcomes. This study examines how the level of user interface embodiment, the degree to which the user’s body interacts with the game, affects the user’s experience, game behavior, and intention for behavior change. We conducted a between-participants experiment in which participants (N = 119) played an exergame under one of the three levels of user interface embodiment (low, medium, and high). Our results revealed a significant positive main effect of user interface embodiment on user experience (i.e., the sense of being in the game, “presence,” and enjoyment); level of energy expenditure (change in heart rate); and intention to further engage in exergame-play exercise but not necessarily to increase exercise in the physical world. A further analysis revealed the mediating roles of user experience in the association between user interface embodiment and intention to repeat exergaming and a potential link between heart rate change and level of presence in the game. We conclude that type of interface is a key variable in this health communication environment, affecting user experience, behavior, and some intention for behavior change.     

Behavioral diversity, choices and noise in the iterated prisoner's dilemma

Real-world dilemmas rarely involve just two choices and perfect interactions without mistakes. In the iterated prisoner's dilemma (IPD) game, intermediate choices or mistakes (noise) have been introduced to extend its realism. This paper studies the IPD game with both noise and multiple levels of cooperation (intermediate choices) in a coevolutionary environment, where players can learn and adapt their strategies through an evolutionary algorithm. The impact of noise on the evolution of cooperation is first examined. It is shown that the coevolutionary models presented in this paper are robust against low noise (when mistakes occur with low probability). That is, low levels of noise have little impact on the evolution of cooperation. On the other hand, high noise (when mistakes occur with high probability) creates misunderstandings and discourages cooperation. However, the evolution of cooperation in the IPD with more choices in a coevolutionary learning setting also depends on behavioral diversity. This paper further investigates the issue of behavioral diversity in the coevolution of strategies for the IPD with more choices and noise. The evolution of cooperation is more difficult to achieve if a coevolutionary model with low behavioral diversity is used for IPD games with higher levels of noise. The coevolutionary model with high behavioral diversity in the population is more resistant to noise. It is shown that strategy representations can have a significant impact on the evolutionary outcomes because of different behavioral diversities that they generate. The results further show the importance of behavioral diversity in coevolutionary learning.     

The influence of violent video game enjoyment on hostile attributions

Although catharsis theory as applied to violent media has been repeatedly refuted in the literature, scholars have recently proposed methods by which a cognitive form of catharsis might occur for people who utilize games to manage negative affect. Drawing on these ideas, the current study tests how video games are used to manage feelings of frustration and boost one’s sense of competency. It also explores how these emotional processes influence game enjoyment and hostile attribution bias (HAB). We frustrated half of 82 participants prior to randomizing them to play a violent or nonviolent game. Our results showed that frustrated participants were motivated to progress farther in a video game. This in-game performance decreased their feelings of frustration, boosted their sense of competency, and increased their enjoyment of the game. However, for those who played a violent game, this enjoyment predicted hostile attributions: high enjoyment of violence increased HAB, while low enjoyment of violence decreased HAB. These findings have implications for how video games are used to manage negative feelings.     

考虑平台网络外部性的分享经济中三方演化博弈分析

以使用权分享为主要特征的分享经济打破了原有经济系统的平衡,改变了参与者的决策行为.针对参与者(平台、所有者和分享者)行为决策对分享经济系统稳定性产生的影响,基于平台的网络外部性、参与者行为的交互影响以及有限理性的假设条件,构建由“平台-所有者-分享者”3个博弈主体组成的演化博弈模型,运用演化博弈理论和李雅普诺夫判别法分析模型均衡点的渐近稳定性及系统的演化稳定策略.最后探讨平台的网络外部性、参与者机会主义成本以及平台监管力度等对此动态系统稳定性的影响,为参与者的行为决策提供理论参考.     

Defining the virtual self: Personality,behavior, and the psychology of embodiment

Although researchers have discussed the existence of a virtual self, or embodiment of human characteristics within an avatar, little known about how the virtual self influences a player’s behavior within a virtual environment. To better understand this relationship, World of Warcraft game players were asked to complete personality-rating scales for both themselves and their avatars. In addition, in-world behavior was recorded and then analyzed using a behavioral assessment checklist. Results suggested a relationship between personality and behavior within the domain of agreeableness. Based on these findings, the researchers discuss implications for the construct known as the virtual self, as well as the inclusion of psychological systems design into the overall game design process.