Bite-Size Game-based Conspiracy Interventions

Video games are interesting methods through which to deliver psychological and educational interventions. Games are tools that help us to think systematically. They require players to take actions and to experience consequences, supporting people in ‘putting on shoes and walking around’ in the logic of a complex system. Games encourage active, embodied, experiential and reflective learning processes, where people can interact with the system, watch how different actions produce different results, form hypotheses and strategies, to try those strategies out and examine the consequences.

In the past year, a group of in Applied Psychology developed a game called Nashville P.I., which aims to encourage people to engage in critical thinking upon encountering online conspiracy theories. The game has demonstrated good results in encouraging desired digital literacy related behaviours. However, the game takes approximately 45 minutes to play and can be viewed as a once-off intervention. Recent research suggests that behaviour change interventions may have better long-term outcomes if they are engaged with on a regular basis.

The project

Inspired by games like Wordle, we wish to design and develop a relatively simple version of Nashville PI that can be played in bite-sized chunks for a few minutes every day. Your role will involve design and development of the game, in addition to carrying out iterative testing, and a summative evaluation.

References

Linehan, C., Kirman, B., Lawson, S., & Chan, G. (2011). Practical, appropriate, empirically-validated guidelines for designing educational games. In Proc ACM SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1979-1988).

O’Mahony, C., Brassil, M., Murphy, G., & Linehan, C. (2023). The efficacy of interventions in reducing belief in conspiracy theories: A systematic review. Plos one, 18(4), e0280902.

O'Mahony, C., Murphy, G., & Linehan, C. (2024). True discernment or blind scepticism? Comparing the effectiveness of four conspiracy belief interventions. Advances. in/psychology, 2, e215691.

O’Mahony, C., Linehan, C., & Murphy, G. (2024, May). The Critical Thinking about Conspiracies (CTAC) Test: Development and Validation.

Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2018). The fake news game: actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation. Journal of Risk Research, 22(5), 570–580.