Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2023 Dec;29(4):725-746. doi: 10.1037/xap0000470. Epub 2023 Mar 27.
Society's most pressing problems involve social dilemmas, yet few individuals recognize and understand their core components. We examined how a serious social dilemma game used in an educational setting impacted understanding of a classic social dilemma, the tragedy of the commons. Participants ( = 186) were randomly assigned to one of two gameplay conditions or a Lesson-Only condition without the game (traditional lesson with a reading). In the Explore-First condition, participants played the game as an exploratory learning activity before the lesson. In the Lesson-First condition, participants played the game after the lesson. Both gameplay conditions were rated as more interesting than the Lesson-Only condition. However, participants in the Explore-First condition exhibited higher conceptual understanding and spontaneous transfer to real-world dilemmas than the other conditions, which did not differ. These benefits were selective to social concepts (e.g., self-interest, interdependency) explored via gameplay. These benefits did not occur for ecological concepts (e.g., scarcity, tragedy), which were taught to everyone during the beginning instructions. Policy preferences were equal across conditions. Serious social dilemma games offer a promising educational tool for conceptual development when students can explore the complexities of social dilemmas for themselves. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
社会最紧迫的问题涉及社会困境，但很少有人认识到并理解其核心组成部分。我们研究了在教育环境中使用的严肃社会困境游戏如何影响对经典社会困境——公共地悲剧的理解。参与者（=186）被随机分配到两种游戏条件之一或没有游戏的仅课程条件（传统课程加阅读）。在探索优先条件下，参与者在课程之前将游戏作为探索性学习活动来玩。在课程优先条件下，参与者在课程之后玩游戏。与仅课程条件相比，两种游戏条件都被评为更有趣。然而，与其他条件相比，探索优先条件下的参与者表现出更高的概念理解和对现实世界困境的自发转移，而其他条件之间没有差异。这些好处是针对通过游戏探索的社会概念（例如，自利、相互依存）的。对于在开始说明中教授给每个人的生态概念（例如，稀缺性、悲剧），这些好处并没有发生。政策偏好在所有条件下都是平等的。当学生可以自己探索社会困境的复杂性时，严肃的社会困境游戏为概念发展提供了一种有前途的教育工具。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2023 APA，保留所有权利）。
