Priming With Games

I came to know about the term priming while reading Malcolm Galdwell’s award winning book, Blink. I read it a long time ago and I found it quite inspiring. The idea behind psychological priming is to influence the behaviour of a subject without the latter’s conscious awareness so as to get him (or her, for that matter) to do something or to behave in a certain way. It is completely a subconscious tapping tool. As suggested earlier this means that the subject is motivated to act in certain ways without his conscious awareness of the influence being exerted. The idea is to affect the subconscious mind slightly so as to achieve desired results about human behaviour. Read about priming in Malcolm’s own words.

http://gladwell.com/blink/blink-reading-guide-chapter-two/

If you want to develop a bit more clarity about the concept of priming, read the following article. Specifically, read the experiment of “two Dutch researchers” (just do a CTRL+F in that article and paste “two Dutch researchers” in the search field, without quotes, and hit enter).

http://www.varsityfaith.com/2012/03/prime-example-of-priming.html

It turns out that priming can be a greatly beneficial as well as a dangerous tool. However, we want to leverage a little bit from its beneficial side.

The idea is to create (a) game(s) for pupil that implement ideas about priming in a meaningful sense. This can lead to a plethora of ideas. For one thing, a game player can be influenced to become better at learning physics without the latter’s conscious awareness and motivation. Similarly, a student can be influenced to behave well through playing a game, again with his conscious awareness or desire to behave well. Here is an excerpt from a nice book that explains how priming in children is achieved through games.

https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=jFDP3hJVfbUC&lpg=PA48&ots=obT63-KnT0&dq=priming%20with%20games&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q=priming%20with%20games&f=false

Although priming is a well known idea, you might still have found it somewhat arcane. If you still haven’t gotten a clue about what all this priming stuff means, read the following article. It will surely help you conceive priming properly.

Priming, Consistency, Cheating, and Being a Jerk

How can developers of multiplayer games get their players to behave, cooperate, play their role, and not be such incredible jerks? I have an idea. Psychology is involved. You probably guessed this….

It also turns out that the video gaming industry is already benefiting from psychological priming to develop more engaging games that also influence human behaviour.

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So how do you think about developing a game or two that influence some aspect of a child’s behaviour in a positive way? You could, for instance, develop a game that subconsciously motivates a child to learn Physics. Similarly, you could develop another way that motivates a child to behave well in social settings, or speak more eloquently. It is really worth a try.

Photo by joannapoe