Last week a colleague referred me to some of the research of Jayne Gackenbach, Ph.D, who does experimental psychology research related to gaming. She's attending a conference I'll be at in June so I started to read up. Turns out she did a study on video games, dreams, and 'threat simulation'.Antti Revonsuo (A Cog Sci Prof from Sweeden) developed a new theory of dreams in 2000. He believes our dreams serve a very real and practical purpose from an evolutionary standpoint. According to his theory (according to Gackenbach), dreams serve to simulate threatening situations that might be encountered in the real world within the safety of the virtual dream space. There is a survival advantage in this idea, dreams basically allow us to face out fears and develop avoidance skills in a safe environment. It follows that these skills would likely be accessible in the waking (real) world, and in turn increase chances of survival.
From this perspective there is a delightful amount of overlap between the 'virtual world' of dreams, and the constructed virtual worlds of video games. The majority of violent video games could easily be re-coined 'threat simulators' -- essentially allowing us to experience frightening situations, such as storming the beaches at Normandy, without putting ourselves in real danger. Gackenback has found in earlier research that gamers experience higher levels of lucidity in dreams, in other words, greater self awareness and control.
So how should playing video games, especially violent video games, effect the player's dreams? It's generally assumed that experiencing violent media, like a horror film, or FPS, will 'give you nightmares', basically filling your subconscious with hypothetical fears. Why are my dreams then, always so, well, fun? My own experiences didn't make sense to me until I read some more of Gackenbach's research.
Her research has found, that 'hard core' players of violent video games experience 'misfortune' in dreams less frequently than the norm, and actually experience aggression less frequently as well. Not what I expected either. Her recent findings show that by experiencing 'threat simulation' during waking hours through video games, hard core players need not rely on their dreams for this purpose. By experiencing greater amounts of practice with threatening situations through video games, players actual are able to resolve threatening situations in dreams more pro-actively.
Awesome. So here's my thought. Clearly, playing violent video games alters how we think, possibly for the better in some contexts (such as dreams). What does this have to do then with our non-virtual (dream or otherwise) behaviors and world view? I can only speak from personal experience, but I feel my game playing, and in turn my dreams, correlate with a heightened sense of confidence (perhaps false) and empowerment...
One fall I spent a lot of hours playing snowboarding games, I had gotten a new (real) snowboard for my birthday and I was pumped to use it come winter. For those of you who snowboard, you know that careening down an icy slope can be frightening, in a way a threat to one's safety. Looking back on it now, I think I virtual simulated whatever fears I may have had to a point where, when the day finally came, riding up on the chair lift I felt totally fearless.
So, when board hit snow, was I the champion rider I envisioned myself to be? Hell No. I took one hard fall and my vision started to quickly fade. I spent most of the season on the virtual slopes, where I really was a champion. Conclusion? Maybe it's possible to create a rift in our sense of self through virtual experiences. Perhaps that's not such a bad thing though, if you're of the mindset that one's beliefs have a very direct effect on their experience of reality, then maybe there is something to be said for believing yourself to be something more than you are.
An interesting test of this hypothesis on my horizon, next weekend I'm planning on going to a shooting range for the first time with a gun owning friend of mine. Having fired more virtual bullets than I care to guesstimate. I have to say, I think of myself as somewhat of a marksman. I'll report back on next time on whether I even know how to turn the safety off...Sweet Dreams!
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2 responses:
Yes-- it is possible to affect one's sense of self through virtual reality. In "the biz" we call it learning. Basically it is thought that we go through everything virtually to practice going through with it--in real everyday life. Before we do any action our brain has already done it.
All episodic memory-that is memory for events-is made up of self and scene building. There's no reason why things have to be "real" to be learned from. We learn by watching people all the time. Why shouldn't we learn from virtual reality. Learn things about ourselves-even when the scene isn't quite accurately representative of the real world.
In fact it may even be this key (of the difference between real and imaginary threat)that means the difference between having fear with the real gun in your hand or having confidence. Though for my work, I wonder if simulated video games could give hope and confidence to depressed and pained.
I've got a friend who has an ability to lucid dream pretty much whenever he wants to. He can also fall asleep in about 10 seconds - regardless of the surroundings. Anyway, after realizing that he's totally in control of his dreams and having some fun with it :), he now uses it as a sort of therapy - he puts himself into situations he's afraid of in the dream and then tries to deal with and see what happens. If what he did doesn't work, he tries a different thing next time until he's happy with the result. I imagine that if we had a video game platform that would give us an absolute freedom to create new content, we could do the same.
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