Today is World Kindness Day, an international observance dedicated to promoting kindness, understanding and helping among people. To illustrate the importance of kindness and prosociality, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you something about the 'social brain hypothesis', a theory that posits that social needs are even more essential to human beings than any other physical need, and that our brains reflect this.
In the first installment of our bi-monthly Game Day we explore if we can make a player engage challenging situations confident that other players would help them personally. We chose the MMORPG Guild Wars 2 to examine how its unique combat system, map exploration and character progression could create a context for the player to experience personalized social support.
November is upon us, and so is this month's theme: kindness and prosociality, centered around World Kindness Day taking place on November 13th. The coming two months will form a diptych about social relationships, with November addressing their bright side - kindness and prosociality, and December addressing loneliness, when social relationships are lacking.
The GEMH Game Lounge is open for students at Radboud University, every day between 12.30-13.30h. Students can relax by playing from a variety of video games including but not limited to VR, Playstation and mobile app games that relieve stress and anxiety. Click here to see what games are available this month!
In this blog, I will provide you with some (scientifically proven) steps and techniques to change your behaviour.
In September, Mariska Kool and Erna Terpstra visited the GEMH Lab. Mariska and Erna are involved in a very special project; they teach children by using Live Action Role-Playing (LARP) games.
This month's theme is smoking cessation and behavior change. We are looking forward to share our activities and thoughts and to start a discussion with the community.
This month's theme is smoking cessation and behavior change. We are looking forward to share our activities and thoughts and to start a discussion with the community.
This (academic) year we will discuss one theme each month. We started in September with the topic "Anti-Bullying". In this post I'll give a quick overview of all online activities this month surrounding the theme and reflect on how GEMH Lab will keep paying attention to it in the future.
The study of the benefits of playing video games may be relatively new, but the positive function of play more generally has been an important field of study for a long time in developmental psychology.