While reading Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, I was primarily looking for how people form first impressions and how (or whether) they know what they know. I want to know how I can manipulate those impressions with smart game design. I want to know how I can get information from playtesters accurately.
Definitions
Adaptive unconscious -- "The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions." 11
Rapid cognition -- Making snap judgments.
Thin-slicing -- "A critical part of rapid cognition. The ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience." 23
Priming
If a white student from a prestigious private high school gets a higher SAT score than a black student from an inner-city school, is it because she's truly a better student, or is it because to be white and to attend a prestigious high school is to be constantly primed to with the idea of "smart"? 57
[The students] would always say [...] something like "You know, I just don't think I'm smart enough to be here." 58
They weren't smarter or more focused or more serious. They were simply in a "smart" frame of mind, and, clearly, associating themselves with the idea of something smart, like a professor, made it a lot easier -- in that stressful instant after a trivia question was asked -- to blurt out the right answer. 56
The way we think and act -- and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment -- are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize. 58
Priming is a powerful concept, similar to Affirmations. However, while affirmations generally come from within, priming may be primarily external (as with the different schools encouraging students to have different expectations of themselves). If you accept that a primary motivator for players of MMOs is to construct a positive identity for themselves in which they can feel safe and competent, priming could be a key component of that. What are some ways that priming is already designed into games?
Preempting Rapid Cognition
He created the conditions for successful spontaneity. 117
Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly [...] enables rapid cognition. 119
When you write down your thoughts, your chances of having the flash of insight you need in order to come up with a solution are significantly impaired. With a logic problem, asking people to explain themselves doesn't impair their ability to come up with an answer. In some cases, in fact, it may help. But problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules. 121
This has major implications for the way we game designers conduct playtesting and usability sessions. If you ask the player to explain what he or she is doing or thinking, that makes the whole process conscious for the player and undercuts the ability to think insightfully through rapid cognition. Rather, we game designers should probably just observe and analyze silently. Gladwell does say that this shortcoming applies only to insightful thinking, a byproduct of the adaptive unconscious, and not to logical thinking.
Arousal leaves us in mind-blind. 229
What Gladwell means here is that whenever our bodies are in a state of arousal (e.g. fight or flight) we lose the ability to read expressions on other people's faces and interpret their emotional states. In effect, we become autistic temporarily. I'm not sure video games ever induce a state and players sufficient to cause this temporary autism. I think sports probably do, but they can involve actual physical peril.
Confusing Ourselves by Overwriting the Truth
We have, as human beings, storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for. 69
People are ignorant of the things that affect their actions, yet they rarely feel ignorant. 71
In the earlier discussion, however, I was referring to things that impair our ability to solve problems. Now I'm talking about the loss of a much more fundamental ability, namely the ability to know our own minds. Furthermore, in this case we have a much more specific explanation for why the introspection's mess up our reactions. It's that we simply don't have any way of explaining our feelings. We know unconsciously. We come up with a plausible-sounding reason for why we might like or dislike something, and then we adjust our true preference to be in line with that plausible-sounding reason. 181
This is something to keep in mind, especially when reading research that relies on interviews or questionnaires. It has to be very well designed. People have a tendency to fool themselves, to say what they want to think, or what they think the questioner wants to hear, or anything to keep from the humiliation of admitting they don't know what they think they should know. In the process, they may even convince themselves what they're saying is the truth. And scarily, they may have a high confidence about their accuracy. So, what are the best ways to get answers from people without asking them and inducing this confusion?
Creating Feeling
Ekman is saying [...] "the information on our face [our expressions] is not just a signal of what is going on inside our mind. It is what is going on inside our mind." The beginnings of this insight came when Ekman and Friesen were first sitting across from each other, working on expressions of anger and distress. "We felt terrible. What we were generating were sadness, anguish. As I do it, I can't disconnect from the system. It's very unpleasant, very unpleasant." 206-7
Would it make sense to apply this face-reading science to playtesting and usability? It might be more work than it's worth, but it could sidestep confusing the players by asking them questions.
Taking Control of Rapid Cognition
Too often we are resigned to what happens in the blink of an eye. It doesn't seem like we have much control over whatever bubbles to the surface from our unconscious. But we do, and if we can control the environment in which rapid cognition takes place, and we can control rapid cognition. 252-3
Actually, I would argue that video games have always been proof that we do have control over rapid cognition. Many games involving fast action responses and multiple stimuli force us to make educated decisions faster than we can logically sort everything out. And yet, if the games give players the right stimuli, players can sort it out quickly. This has been a process of trial and error (finding the right stimuli and the right timing), but Blink makes me think that we could unpack this more methodically and bring data to bear on the design decisions.
