A Game-based Assessment of the Effects of Rejection on Young Adults

Anouk Tuijnman; Marloes Kleinjan; Shengnan Chen; Rutger C.M.E. Engels; Isabela Granic

doi:10.1145/3474681

A Game-based Assessment of the Effects of Rejection on Young Adults

Anouk Tuijnman, Marloes Kleinjan, Shengnan Chen, Rutger C.M.E. Engels, Isabela Granic

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Rejection consists of a range of behaviors from ignoring another to explicitly excluding someone from an encounter. Currently available experimental tasks have shown that rejection has strong emotional, behavioral, and physical effects, but the tasks have some limitations. We argue that video games can address these limitations and have developed a new experimental task (ScrollQuest) to show the potential of video games as rejection research tools. The primary goal of the present study was to explore the effects of ScrollQuest. We analyzed data from 116 young adults who played both ScrollQuest and the rejection experimental task Cyberball. Playing ScrollQuest had more negative effects on mood, more negative interpretation effects were observed after playing ScrollQuest, and ScrollQuest was perceived as more enjoyable, compared to Cyberball. Our findings suggest that ScrollQuest might be an effective new experimental task to study rejection in a digital environment, but more work is needed to improve ScrollQuest.

Original language	English
Article number	254
Pages (from-to)	1-27
Journal	Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Volume	5
Issue number	CHI PLAY
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3474681
Publication status	Published - Sept 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We have no conflicts of interests to disclose. This work is part of the research programme “Development, testing and dissemination of video games that prevent and treat anxiety and depression in children and adolescents” with project number 314-99-115, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Pluryn (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and GGZ Oost Brabant (Boekel, The Netherlands). The development of ScrollQuest was funded by the Committee for Children (Seattle, WA, USA). We want to thank Josh Whitkin for co-designing ScrollQuest with us; Marek Vymazal, Mathieu Allaert and Erik van den Berge for their programming work on ScrollQuest; Patrick Aartssen for giving ScrollQuest a background story; and Liz Duistermaat, Katja Mysliwitz and Merel Bloemers for being confederates in the study.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 ACM.

Funding

We have no conflicts of interests to disclose. This work is part of the research programme “Development, testing and dissemination of video games that prevent and treat anxiety and depression in children and adolescents” with project number 314-99-115, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Pluryn (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and GGZ Oost Brabant (Boekel, The Netherlands). The development of ScrollQuest was funded by the Committee for Children (Seattle, WA, USA). We want to thank Josh Whitkin for co-designing ScrollQuest with us; Marek Vymazal, Mathieu Allaert and Erik van den Berge for their programming work on ScrollQuest; Patrick Aartssen for giving ScrollQuest a background story; and Liz Duistermaat, Katja Mysliwitz and Merel Bloemers for being confederates in the study.

Keywords

experimental task
mental health
rejection
video game

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1145/3474681

3474681Final published version, 1.08 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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abstract = "Rejection consists of a range of behaviors from ignoring another to explicitly excluding someone from an encounter. Currently available experimental tasks have shown that rejection has strong emotional, behavioral, and physical effects, but the tasks have some limitations. We argue that video games can address these limitations and have developed a new experimental task (ScrollQuest) to show the potential of video games as rejection research tools. The primary goal of the present study was to explore the effects of ScrollQuest. We analyzed data from 116 young adults who played both ScrollQuest and the rejection experimental task Cyberball. Playing ScrollQuest had more negative effects on mood, more negative interpretation effects were observed after playing ScrollQuest, and ScrollQuest was perceived as more enjoyable, compared to Cyberball. Our findings suggest that ScrollQuest might be an effective new experimental task to study rejection in a digital environment, but more work is needed to improve ScrollQuest. ",

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note = "Funding Information: We have no conflicts of interests to disclose. This work is part of the research programme “Development, testing and dissemination of video games that prevent and treat anxiety and depression in children and adolescents” with project number 314-99-115, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Pluryn (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and GGZ Oost Brabant (Boekel, The Netherlands). The development of ScrollQuest was funded by the Committee for Children (Seattle, WA, USA). We want to thank Josh Whitkin for co-designing ScrollQuest with us; Marek Vymazal, Mathieu Allaert and Erik van den Berge for their programming work on ScrollQuest; Patrick Aartssen for giving ScrollQuest a background story; and Liz Duistermaat, Katja Mysliwitz and Merel Bloemers for being confederates in the study. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 ACM.",

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A Game-based Assessment of the Effects of Rejection on Young Adults

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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