Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and enjoy the podcast. It's my great pleasure
Speaker 1: to have Jane McGonagall on the show today. Jane is
Speaker 1: a world renowned game designer and author whose games are
Speaker 1: designed to improve real lives and solve real problems. Jane
Speaker 1: is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality Is Broken,
Speaker 1: Why Games make Us Better and How they can Change
Speaker 1: the world, and more recently, she's the author of Super Better,
Speaker 1: a revolutionary approach to getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient.
Speaker 1: Jane is also the inventor and co founder of the
Speaker 1: game super Better. More than four hundred thousand people tackle
Speaker 1: real life health challenges. Her TED talks are also immensely
Speaker 1: popular and I've got millions and millions of views. Jane,
Speaker 1: it is so awesome having you on this podcast. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys. That is that number four one thousand, right,
Speaker 1: because in an old bio you had tutor thousand, but
Speaker 1: then in the reading your book, I see you were
Speaker 1: up to four hundred. You did a study with found
Speaker 1: one thousands, So yeah, let me update your numbers. Cool
Speaker 1: when you we'orth half a million now for the Virginia
Speaker 1: And uh, that's really exciting. That is super exciting. There's
Speaker 1: so much we could potentially talk about. And you know,
Speaker 1: with this sort of with this sort of topic, it was,
Speaker 1: it's so innately interesting in me I had I have
Speaker 1: hundreds of pages of notes here, but I want to
Speaker 1: start off with something because I feel like in this
Speaker 1: society gaming doesn't always get such a good reputation, and
Speaker 1: it must drive you crazy because of all the science
Speaker 1: you've seen and you talk about in this book, as
Speaker 1: well as your own personal scientific studies, which we'll get
Speaker 1: to you later. Why aren't games a mere distraction? Well
Speaker 1: there are many reasons, whise, but enough to fill for
Speaker 1: an inferty page book. But you know, the topic that
Speaker 1: I've been most interested in probably stems from the idea
Speaker 1: that you know, we have it all wrong about games,
Speaker 1: which is that we normally think about games as being
Speaker 1: the opposite of work, right play and work or diametrically opposed,
Speaker 1: like hot and cold or day and night. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the research, and even if you look
Speaker 1: at brain scans of people playing video games, it turns
Speaker 1: out that the opposite of play is at work. The
Speaker 1: opposite of play is depression. And to me, that is
Speaker 1: the single most important idea that we need to cultivate
Speaker 1: and integrate into how we try to lead happier, healthier lives.
Speaker 1: Right so, reading your book to me felt like I
Speaker 1: was playing a game. I know that it was in
Speaker 1: part large part design that way, but I really felt
Speaker 1: like I was getting immersed in it. I was looking
Speaker 1: out that window over there, I was jumping up, I
Speaker 1: was walking, I was doing all these things. It was
Speaker 1: just really cool. I've never ever read a book in
Speaker 1: my life where I felt like I was actually like
Speaker 1: leveling up as each chapter went on. That's awesome. You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. There have been a lot of books in
Speaker 1: recent years about the idea of using game design to
Speaker 1: try to inspire people to change their lives. And I
Speaker 1: once read a book review that I thought was so
Speaker 1: insightful and incisive, which said, you know, if this author
Speaker 1: believes all these ideas, why is the book not a game.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't they be really embodying this in their book, And
Speaker 1: so I thought that was really important for me as
Speaker 1: a game designer and an author to really try to
Speaker 1: integrate the ideas if I think, if I think that
Speaker 1: that game design does inspire us to learn better and
Speaker 1: improve faster, that should be a part of the book.
Speaker 1: So I'm really glad that it actually delivered that experiential
Speaker 1: quality it did. And I really like how you are
Speaker 1: really vulnerable and bring in your personal story and how
Speaker 1: this really motivated you to want to get into Now
Speaker 1: are you sick of telling the story? But first of all,
Speaker 1: because I personally, you know, I have like my own
Speaker 1: story blah blah blah, and I'm told it so many
Speaker 1: times the past couple of years. It almost feels like
Speaker 1: not even me anymore in a way. How do I
Speaker 1: feel for you? I don't want to be yet the
Speaker 1: interviewer saying, tell me your story, you know, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I'll tell you why, you know, I always
Speaker 1: I always try to tell it a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: But what else can I share about this experience? So
Speaker 1: it's a good challenge for me and I then we
Speaker 1: should we should talk about it so it's really important.
Speaker 1: It is important. So, I mean, the basics of the
Speaker 1: story are that six years ago, while I was in
Speaker 1: the middle of writing my first book, Reality's Broken, which
Speaker 1: was about the psychology of games, I got a traumatic
Speaker 1: brain injury. And it started out a simple concussion, and
Speaker 1: I learned that many concussions do not feel in a
Speaker 1: few days or a few weeks. Mine actually took a
Speaker 1: year to really fully recover. And during that time period,
Speaker 1: I was fully concussed, couldn't think or I think clearly.
Speaker 1: I couldn't write, couldn't remember things. I was nauseous all
Speaker 1: the time, migraines every day, I barely out of bed,
Speaker 1: and like many people with concussions that stretch out for
Speaker 1: a while, I got severely anxious and depressed. And I
Speaker 1: learned later that it's not just a consequence of I'm
Speaker 1: really anxious because I can't work, or I'm depressed tin
Speaker 1: get out of bed. Actually, the brain chemistry changes during
Speaker 1: the healing process, and depression anxiety are as much symptoms
Speaker 1: of the injury as as just a emotional reaction to it.
Speaker 1: And you know, after a month, when my doctor told
Speaker 1: me that it was looking like it might be three
Speaker 1: months or longer to where I would be feeling better.
Speaker 1: I was. I sort of hit the wall, and that
Speaker 1: was when I decided to try to use all my
Speaker 1: research to help. Up until that point, I'm just kind
Speaker 1: of waiting to get better and trying to just grip
Speaker 1: my teeth and get through it. But when you know
Speaker 1: you're not telling you might be three months. If it's
Speaker 1: not three months, it might be a year. And if
Speaker 1: it's not a year to get better, you might be
Speaker 1: like this forever. Then I knew I needed a new
Speaker 1: strategy because I mean, I basically seriously just wanted to
Speaker 1: kill myself if I was going to be in that
Speaker 1: much pain and that disabled for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: And I know, I know that to many people, killing
Speaker 1: yourself or embedding a game do not seem like the
Speaker 1: two most you know, natural like options. Those those are
Speaker 1: my only two options. But but you know, I was
Speaker 1: in the middle of all that researched on games and
Speaker 1: how they make us happier and better problem solvers, so
Speaker 1: it seemed worth a shot. Yeah, And not only in
Speaker 1: this book you talk about how living a gameful wife
Speaker 1: not just helped with that traumatic brain injury, but lots
Speaker 1: of other things. Trea trained for your first marathon, you
Speaker 1: successfully could quit IVF treatment right, which resulted in the
Speaker 1: birth of your twin daughters. I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: a wowed to say that. Yeah, and that became my
Speaker 1: new super Better challenge. They were actually ten weeks to
Speaker 1: be mature. So it went EQ for two months and
Speaker 1: I wound up adopting a new secret identity, which is
Speaker 1: one of the rules of Super Better to get their
Speaker 1: unique you stay and you know, turned all the nurses
Speaker 1: and doctors into our allies. And so, yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a method that you can come back to and play.
Speaker 1: Like any good game, you should be able to play
Speaker 1: at different times with different people with different strategies, and
Speaker 1: so I have used it for lots of different things
Speaker 1: in my life for more half a million users. The
Speaker 1: top five most common uses, though, are in disorder. Number
Speaker 1: one most common is depression to his anxiety. Three is
Speaker 1: a chronic illness of some kind, Number four is chronic pain,
Speaker 1: and number five is PTSD. So people really are using
Speaker 1: it to tackle challenges much more serious than you might
Speaker 1: imagine could be effectively tackled with a game or a
Speaker 1: gamefule mindset. Now you mentioned PTSD and my friend and colleague,
Speaker 1: Anne Marie Ropke, who is your coibrator on a study,
Speaker 1: and it's so cool to see you mention her in
Speaker 1: your book. I think she she really deserves, you know,
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention. I write about her a
Speaker 1: lot of in my in my own upcoming book on
Speaker 1: creativity because her research is terrific. Post a static growth,
Speaker 1: there are these different there's all these other forms of
Speaker 1: of of of so there's post of static growth, there's
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth right itself, and these things which in
Speaker 1: the field of polity psychology which I work in, and
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about that in the book, and
Speaker 1: how how gaming can can be used to for both
Speaker 1: these things. Could you just explain a little bit for
Speaker 1: the audience what post a static growth is and what
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth is. Sure, but we'll start with post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth because that's the one that's been studied, as
Speaker 1: you know, more extensively, and it's related to post traumatic
Speaker 1: stress disorder. It's not the opposite of post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 1: which it sounds like, because many people who have post
Speaker 1: traumatic growth also experience post traumatic stress disorder. First, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a as they wrestle of the trauma, but scientific
Speaker 1: literature suggests that it's actually fairly common for people to
Speaker 1: go through traumatic experience and come out on the other
Speaker 1: side feeling stronger in some way. Maybe they feel like
Speaker 1: they understand their own resilience better, they feel better understood
Speaker 1: by their friends and family. Maybe they feel like they
Speaker 1: can change their priorities now to lead a life that's
Speaker 1: truer to what really matters to them, maybe less about
Speaker 1: what others expect of them. These sort of positive outcomes
Speaker 1: where they take a terrible and traumatizing experience and use
Speaker 1: it to kind of become a stronger, braver, and often
Speaker 1: in many ways happier version of themselves even though they
Speaker 1: went through this terrible thing. And so some researchers, as
Speaker 1: you know, have been wondering, is there any way to
Speaker 1: get these benefits without a trauma, because obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: know all those books, Yeah, nobody would wish to go
Speaker 1: through these things that, even if they yield these amazing
Speaker 1: life changing benefits. So Amory Rippy was one of the
Speaker 1: first people to really look for other kinds of life
Speaker 1: experiences that are usually identified as positive experiences but seem
Speaker 1: to share some of the qualities of traumatic experiences that
Speaker 1: help us grow, and she was really looking at things
Speaker 1: that force you to dig deep, sail a lot, maybe
Speaker 1: even suffer a lot as you're trying to reach your
Speaker 1: goal or or embrace the experience. The things like training
Speaker 1: for a marathon, becoming a parent for the first time,
Speaker 1: writing a book. By the way, I did all three
Speaker 1: things last year. So I am the most post ecstatic
Speaker 1: growth person on the planet. Can you od ecstasy? I know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm living it. I'm living it, but as
Speaker 1: I post a static growth is the term that she
Speaker 1: coined to describe this, and it's not I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about standing on a mountaintop and having a rave.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just ecstasy. It's doing things that
Speaker 1: you've chosen, that you are excited about, that you are
Speaker 1: happy to be doing, but they're going to be a
Speaker 1: significant enough challenge to your resources, to your skills and
Speaker 1: capabilities that you are going to be forced to wrestle
Speaker 1: with what you're capable of. Really reach out to friends
Speaker 1: and family for help in many of the same ways
Speaker 1: that you do with the trauma, and it turns out
Speaker 1: that you can experience a lot of the same benefits.
Speaker 1: So with super better, which seems to be pretty effective
Speaker 1: at generating post traumatic growth. We've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: people try to, you know, do this sort of sneak
Speaker 1: in this back door to those benefits by using it
Speaker 1: for exactly those kinds of things, writing books, trying to
Speaker 1: start their own company, training for Iron Man events, and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I would say, so far, our
Speaker 1: data suggests that it's weirdly, it may be easier to
Speaker 1: get these benefits from trauma that it is from from
Speaker 1: these things that you choose for yourself. And and that's
Speaker 1: something I'm interesting exploring further in our research to see
Speaker 1: if there's anything we can do about that, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of when you're forced to confront
Speaker 1: something that you didn't choose for yourself that it really
Speaker 1: does bring out something different in terms of the sort
Speaker 1: of starkness as you complok at yourself and look at
Speaker 1: the world and figure out, you know, what you're made
Speaker 1: of and what you want to which when you get
Speaker 1: back to the world. It's like the famous philosophy experiment
Speaker 1: with the experience machine. You know, you could be you know,
Speaker 1: if you give people the option to have simulate pleasurable
Speaker 1: experiences every second of their entire life. Very few people
Speaker 1: take it. They would rather have authentic, challenging experiences than
Speaker 1: a whole life of simulating pleasure. Well, you know, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting because one of my favorite philosophers gentlemen by
Speaker 1: the name of Bernard Suits. He's a Canadian philosopher who
Speaker 1: passed has passed away just recently. Friend is a Canadian philosopher,
Speaker 1: so maybe they sed to hang out and PLoP about.
Speaker 1: He wrote my all time favorite book on games, which
Speaker 1: was called The Grasshopper on Utopia playing games, and his
Speaker 1: follows philosophical premise was that if we achieved utopian society,
Speaker 1: no hunger, no poverty, no war, that the only thing
Speaker 1: we would be able to do to avoid going crazy
Speaker 1: and killing ourselves would be to play games. That we
Speaker 1: would have to invent these obstacles, right, it calls them
Speaker 1: unnecessary obstacles to bring a sense of meaning and purpose
Speaker 1: to our lives. If all the real problems are solved,
Speaker 1: we would need games to fulfill our desire to be
Speaker 1: challenged and to connect. And I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: I agree too, it is that the challenge part is
Speaker 1: very essential. You know, we could sit there eating bond
Speaker 1: bonds and watching reality TV, and yeah, maybe a pleasurable experience,
Speaker 1: but people that go through that don't report any personal
Speaker 1: growth at all. They don't report any increase in meaning. Yes,
Speaker 1: definitely not so clearly there's more of that. You know,
Speaker 1: you just made me think when we talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of challenge, it's so strongly tied to the flow literature.
Speaker 1: And I know that you've told me, you know, in
Speaker 1: our correspondence that the gaming community is really big at
Speaker 1: admirers of MEI, chickset me I as research. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, his model of flow is that there should
Speaker 1: be you know, the challenge should be not completely matched,
Speaker 1: it should be just a little bit harder than your
Speaker 1: current skill level. And so when you're designing games, do
Speaker 1: you or in general, when game designers design games, how
Speaker 1: much do they take into account, like the average ability
Speaker 1: level of the player? I mean, it's so tricky because
Speaker 1: there's such individual variation, right of people playing these games.
Speaker 1: And when you're designing, you're designing it for Are you
Speaker 1: designing it for the average? Who are you design it for?
Speaker 1: You know? Right? Well, I mean one of the good
Speaker 1: things about games is that typically every new player of
Speaker 1: a game is bad at it because they don't know
Speaker 1: how to play. They never played it before. And so
Speaker 1: in a way, you don't actually have to worry about
Speaker 1: people's individual skills and abilities. Games are pretty equalizing early on.
Speaker 1: You know, if you've played the game for a thousand hours,
Speaker 1: you may be amazingly better than someone else's played it
Speaker 1: for a thousand hours, because you have natural gifts and
Speaker 1: talents or previous experience that you can draw on. But
Speaker 1: but most people, when we start playing games, we're terrible.
Speaker 1: We don't know how they work. It's total trial and error.
Speaker 1: We're learning it. So I mean most game designers, actually
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to you have you every player who
Speaker 1: comes to your game for the first time is essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a blank slate. So that's
Speaker 1: one way to look at it. I mean, another way
Speaker 1: to look at it in the kinds of games that
Speaker 1: I designed. A lot of the games that I've designed,
Speaker 1: which are meant to achieve real world goals, I am.
Speaker 1: I am thinking about how do I get that challenge
Speaker 1: curve to the right spot that someone can experience flow.
Speaker 1: I think they may already have a challenge in mind.
Speaker 1: And my job as a game designer is to figure
Speaker 1: out what I need to do to get them up,
Speaker 1: get their skills and ability levels up to the point
Speaker 1: where they can meet that challenge. Just to give you
Speaker 1: an example, I had the chance to design a game
Speaker 1: for the New York Public Library a few years ago,
Speaker 1: and they were like, what do you want. I don't know,
Speaker 1: do whatever you want with the game, but we want
Speaker 1: it to be at the library. And I decided that
Speaker 1: the goal of the game should be to write a book.
Speaker 1: Because almost ninety percent of young people in the United
Speaker 1: States say they want to write a book someday. So
Speaker 1: I thought, Okay, let's start working with a real goal
Speaker 1: that people have. Okay, that's a challenge, write a book.
Speaker 1: As a game designer, my job is to figure out
Speaker 1: what does the average person need in the way of support, resources, allies,
Speaker 1: power ups to make it possible for anybody to write
Speaker 1: a book within a certain number of hours of engaging
Speaker 1: with a game. They need inspiration, they might need peer editors,
Speaker 1: line editors, you know, they need a structure. You know,
Speaker 1: I should create a structure that any author can come
Speaker 1: in and play with it. So I mean I'm a
Speaker 1: little bit different from a video game designer. That way.
Speaker 1: I do think about flow a lot, but I think
Speaker 1: about I think a lot about my job as real
Speaker 1: world game designer is to improve people's skills and abilities
Speaker 1: so that they can meet the challenge that they've already
Speaker 1: decided to embrace. That's so good. You know, you talk
Speaker 1: a lot in your book about and I see analogus
Speaker 1: to the deliberate practice literature. You know, Chay anders Ericson
Speaker 1: argues that it's not so much the amount of hours
Speaker 1: of deliberate practice that are important, it's the quality of
Speaker 1: those hours, always on the edge of your ability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so I see analogues to the kinds of things
Speaker 1: you're talking about in your book when you talk about
Speaker 1: why you need a good balance between game pursuits and
Speaker 1: real world goals, and you you say that people play
Speaker 1: video games, and you say about three hours a day
Speaker 1: tend to reap the benefits of play. So you would
Speaker 1: probably argue that, really, you know, it's the quality of
Speaker 1: those game full experiences that that matter more than just
Speaker 1: share hours. You know, are you getting in flow? Are
Speaker 1: you challenging yourself? Are you pushing yourself? You also make
Speaker 1: a distinction between playing to escape versus playing with purpose yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought I wonder if you could talk a little
Speaker 1: more about that. Sure, well, I mean, the good news
Speaker 1: for people who don't want to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time playing games is that when you look at the
Speaker 1: peer reviewed literature studies that have found benefits like decreased depression,
Speaker 1: decrease anxiety, improved mood, improve relationships with the family. In
Speaker 1: reverview play with they have family benefits for as little
Speaker 1: as twenty minutes, three times a week, so you can
Speaker 1: make a difference. And even you know, for studies where
Speaker 1: they're looking at video games as like a cosmative vaccine
Speaker 1: against PTSD, I'm sure you've seen the Oxford University studies
Speaker 1: that playing Tetris for ten minutes within twenty four hours
Speaker 1: of the traumatical experience Tetris. Yeah, everybody should have it
Speaker 1: on their phone because if you see a trauma, experience
Speaker 1: a trauma, you play it for ten minutes within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours, and it diverts the mind's eye basically to
Speaker 1: have flashbacks of the game instead of the trauma. It's
Speaker 1: been shown to decrease flashbacks and symptoms of BTSD and
Speaker 1: that's just ten minutes a gameplay. So as you say,
Speaker 1: it's really about what is the what is the right
Speaker 1: game at the right time, and you're not You don't
Speaker 1: have to be playing for hours a day, although if
Speaker 1: you are playing for more than three hours a day,
Speaker 1: the research literature suggests there are opportunity costs, and we
Speaker 1: do see some of the negative effects that have been
Speaker 1: associated with video games, like being more depressed, being more anxious,
Speaker 1: being socially isolated from people who aren't playing the same game. Uh,
Speaker 1: and even worse, you know, worse performance at work or school.
Speaker 1: That's just because there's only so many hours in a day,
Speaker 1: and if you tend to be playing more than three
Speaker 1: hours a day, it's just mathematically impossible to put the
Speaker 1: necessary effort and time into physical activity, maintaining relationships outside
Speaker 1: the game, school and work, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So that seems to be a little bit of a
Speaker 1: tipping point. I did a meta analysis of every study
Speaker 1: that's looked at addiction and negative impacts, and no study
Speaker 1: found negative impacts at under twenty hours a week, whereas
Speaker 1: many studies did at somewhere at twenty hours a week
Speaker 1: somewhort thirty hours a week. So but it does seem
Speaker 1: pretty clear that there's a safe cut off point. If
Speaker 1: you're under twenty hours a week, nobody's finding negative impacts.
Speaker 1: So well, there's one exception to that, which I do
Speaker 1: talk about in the book, which is, you know, you
Speaker 1: can play twenty hours a week trying to kill strangers
Speaker 1: online and that does seem to create a kind of
Speaker 1: testosterone poisoning effect. That's so good. Yeah, yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: like that's what I like about your book because you
Speaker 1: have this, you have this nuance about these specific features
Speaker 1: of gaming that are important. I mean it, you know,
Speaker 1: saying a blanket statement like games will improve your social life,
Speaker 1: you know, increase your social connection. I mean just a
Speaker 1: blanket statement like that is not as meaningful as actually
Speaker 1: being able to say, what are your exact features that
Speaker 1: you know will increase social affiliation and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean that's one of my goals in writing
Speaker 1: this book. Is there are more than I mean, there're
Speaker 1: more than a thousand studies that have done a really
Speaker 1: good job of trying to figure out what are the
Speaker 1: features of different games that produce different benefits, but they're
Speaker 1: all behind academic firewalls. And and either way, if you
Speaker 1: ever need anything that's kind an academic. You know, I
Speaker 1: have a friend, I have a friend academy. That's good.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you can be my friend in the academy.
Speaker 1: That's great a friend. I mean, I do have friends
Speaker 1: that I'm constantly emailing people for PDFs of scientific artic
Speaker 1: I have another friend that does all the time. She
Speaker 1: says to me a long list of articles. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know I should be admitting that on public
Speaker 1: is that No? No, that's like, I mean, that's we Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like almost like an academic civil rights movement. We
Speaker 1: need people to do that. We need civil disobedience, or
Speaker 1: we just freely spread our research so that people can
Speaker 1: access it. But yeah, so anyway, you know, we have
Speaker 1: one point two three billion people on this planet who
Speaker 1: spend on average hourday playing video games. What percentage of
Speaker 1: them can access the scientific papers. I don't know, less
Speaker 1: than one percent. So I'm really trying to help make
Speaker 1: sure people have access to the really practical findings that
Speaker 1: can help them lead happier, healthier lives. Absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: I study the psychology of creativity and I study the
Speaker 1: psychology of play. But when I say that, it's funny
Speaker 1: because the whole research of scientific literature and the science
Speaker 1: of not my time, my gaming, the science of play. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like not one study about video video games. It's
Speaker 1: all about like pretend play. Don't get me started. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. I mean people are always I want to
Speaker 1: be fair because my mentor, my mentor and grad schal
Speaker 1: Jerome Singer is a pioneer in the field of pretend play.
Speaker 1: So he's done a lot of really good, important work.
Speaker 1: But it kind of stops there. Right, It's a good start.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it must say it must drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: People are always sending me books and articles by people
Speaker 1: is that he play, saying oh you must love this person,
Speaker 1: must love this research. Be like, oh maybe I do.
Speaker 1: They say play is good, great, let me look at it,
Speaker 1: and inevitably they say something negative about video games that
Speaker 1: it doesn't qualify as the right kind of play. It's
Speaker 1: too structured, it's too goal oriented, it's too much screen time.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the great books on play to
Speaker 1: come out un last I don't know, decade play, like
Speaker 1: not video gameplay. But there has to be a certain
Speaker 1: special kind of make believe you play Gray, Peter Gray,
Speaker 1: I would say, by Stuart Brown, I think it's just
Speaker 1: called play right. Oh my god. People are always saying
Speaker 1: you must love that book, but there's a whole chapter
Speaker 1: on how sad empathetic video gamers are, and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, besides how incredibly damaging it is to shame
Speaker 1: an entire generation of young people and has all kinds
Speaker 1: of consequences for their self esteem and their ability to
Speaker 1: actually benefit from these games. It's I actually think there's
Speaker 1: something very special about goal oriented play that builds a
Speaker 1: different kind of resilience, because in order to be resilient,
Speaker 1: you have to have a goal that you're focused on,
Speaker 1: you know, and maqu leave play you're constantly shifting and changing.
Speaker 1: Because everything's free, you can always accommodate whatever new idea
Speaker 1: or direction it goes in. There's no need for resilience,
Speaker 1: and we know, I mean, I believe if you look
Speaker 1: at literature, the number one benefit people get from playing
Speaker 1: games is resilience in the face of setbacks. The ability
Speaker 1: to stay focus on a goal and say optimistic and
Speaker 1: recruit allies and try different strategies have that psychological flexibility.
Speaker 1: And so I think the goal orientation nature of gameplay,
Speaker 1: to me, it is personally, you know, as a special relevance.
Speaker 1: If we're trying to improve people's real life, it's different
Speaker 1: from creativity. But I wanted to ask you a question.
Speaker 1: If I can turn the tables, I'll interview. Of course,
Speaker 1: So people are trying to study the impact of games
Speaker 1: on creativity, which if really in kids, and it would
Speaker 1: be helpful to me when I talk to the public
Speaker 1: about some of the studies to get an expert opinion
Speaker 1: on some of the measures they're using. So what is
Speaker 1: your expert opinion on the Torrents Test of creativity? Well, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that's the best we have right now. And you know,
Speaker 1: the big thing we're doing the imaginations too, is were
Speaker 1: We just gave out three million dollars to create a
Speaker 1: new imagination scale that actually uses We just recently announced
Speaker 1: our winners of sixteen innovative approaches to studying imagination from
Speaker 1: virtual reality worlds. Oh that's yeah. So to you know,
Speaker 1: looking at narrative creativity to we really need the field
Speaker 1: needs to get new measures. The Torrents test was a
Speaker 1: good start, you know, just like just like pretend play
Speaker 1: with a good start an understanding play, we really do
Speaker 1: need to evolve, evolve. The field needs to evolve, So
Speaker 1: it has. You know that these charges of how many
Speaker 1: uses for a brick are there? How many coming up
Speaker 1: with all these things on this spot are It's only
Speaker 1: the very small part of I'm terrible metaphors. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to say a small part of the iceberg even make
Speaker 1: any sense. That doesn't make sense though, right the tip
Speaker 1: of the Yeah, that's good. So it's not it's not useless.
Speaker 1: It's not useless. It correlates with real world creative achievement
Speaker 1: thirty forty years later. But the thing it's interesting, and
Speaker 1: this you might find this interesting, is that Paul Tarns,
Speaker 1: by the way, is one of my intellectual heroes, and
Speaker 1: he initiated this, this monumental longitudinal study of over and
Speaker 1: they're still following up these these adults. Now you know,
Speaker 1: they start off as elementary school kids with tarrents in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, and they fought and they're still
Speaker 1: following them up. And they found that the best predictor
Speaker 1: of lifelong creativity personally meaningful as well as publicly recognized
Speaker 1: was was not his Tarns tests. It was not any test.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the IQ tests or the standardized test. It
Speaker 1: was something much simpler and yet complex at the same time.
Speaker 1: It was the extent to which the kids fell in
Speaker 1: love with the future image of themselves when they were
Speaker 1: when they were really young. He found that far and
Speaker 1: away that one variable predicted thirty It's the only thing
Speaker 1: that stood the test of time, you know, like thirty
Speaker 1: forty years later, where where Iq and his divergent thinking
Speaker 1: tests like lost their predictive power dramatically. So they would
Speaker 1: imagine themselves in their sort of dream role. What are
Speaker 1: you doing, what are you creating? What are you contributing?
Speaker 1: Is that the sort of Yeah, so a lot of
Speaker 1: them fell in love with the future image on themselves,
Speaker 1: but then a lot of them just fell in love
Speaker 1: with something. So he has a beautiful journal article towards
Speaker 1: the end of his life he wrote called the Importance
Speaker 1: of Falling in Love with Something. It is my favorite
Speaker 1: articles ever and he shows how this. You know, even
Speaker 1: at a very young age, people tend to show themes
Speaker 1: of what they're going to be someday in life if
Speaker 1: we just listen to them. And the thing I like
Speaker 1: about Torrance is he really took the time to listen
Speaker 1: to people. He did create the most used creativity test
Speaker 1: of all time. But what people don't realize is he
Speaker 1: also discovered lots of other variables that were equally predictive.
Speaker 1: Another really predictive variable was the extent to which you're
Speaker 1: happy being a minority of one. So the extent to
Speaker 1: which you are happy having idea and holding on to
Speaker 1: that idea even if everyone's ridiculing you or telling you, hey,
Speaker 1: well i'm a good that that explains a lot of
Speaker 1: mind success. I think there's been a lot a long
Speaker 1: time being the only person curiotically. Well, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: Uh well, a couple of live a couple of thoughts
Speaker 1: to that. So I think our audience might be interested
Speaker 1: to know that there have been studies looking at using
Speaker 1: the Torrents test, the creativity to see a video gameplay
Speaker 1: has an effect on scores on that test, and it does,
Speaker 1: according to the studies that have been published, that the
Speaker 1: kids who spend more time playing games have an increase
Speaker 1: in score. There's no core, there's no causation. It's not
Speaker 1: a causation thing. I mean, they've just found that they
Speaker 1: didn't like give kids video games to play for six
Speaker 1: months and see if their score went up. There's just
Speaker 1: kids who happened to spend a lot of time playing
Speaker 1: video games seem to score significantly higher. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: can you imagine the kids like you, they'd be like
Speaker 1: lining up the door to you know, I get to
Speaker 1: play more video games for six months. Yeah, that's my
Speaker 1: students psychology class if any. Yeah. But so that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And one thing that the researchers really pointed out with
Speaker 1: that is it was any genre of game that wasn't
Speaker 1: just you know games that we associate with increasing creativity
Speaker 1: like Minecraft. It was even playing you know, shooter games,
Speaker 1: which we have all sorts of anxiety about. So that
Speaker 1: was interesting. Now, can I tell you a personal story
Speaker 1: about myself based on what you just were sharing? This
Speaker 1: idea of that early childhood, like the things that we
Speaker 1: fall in love with, can give us glimpse into where
Speaker 1: our biggest achievements and contributions to society might be some day.
Speaker 1: When I was when I just graduated from college, I
Speaker 1: was living in a tiny little apartment with a roommate
Speaker 1: in New York City and we had, like I wish
Speaker 1: we had like forty mice that would like an habit department.
Speaker 1: And I was just miserable, and I like, one day
Speaker 1: I went to put on my running shoes and there
Speaker 1: was a dead mouse in the shoe, and that was
Speaker 1: just sort of for me a little point. I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to change my life. I was working at
Speaker 1: a dot com company at the time, and I called
Speaker 1: my sister and she's like my twin sister, Kellen mcdonagall,
Speaker 1: who many people will know. She teaches psychology at Stanford University.
Speaker 1: She's written all the amazing books about willpower and stress,
Speaker 1: so of course she's my own personal guru. At the time,
Speaker 1: she was doing her PhD at Stanford, and she gave
Speaker 1: me this this exercise out of a book that was
Speaker 1: supposed to help you figure out what you want to
Speaker 1: do with your life. So she gave me this exercise
Speaker 1: that was supposed to help you figure out what you
Speaker 1: should do to make a more meaningful contribution. And the
Speaker 1: exercise was think about what you were really drawn to
Speaker 1: when you were the youngest age you can remember, and
Speaker 1: what people you know praise you for being good at
Speaker 1: better than average. And so I'm like, well, what was
Speaker 1: I doing back then? And the two things came to mind.
Speaker 1: One was that I always was making up games, like
Speaker 1: games for the playground. I'd be like, let's am in
Speaker 1: a new playground game, or I'd make giant board games
Speaker 1: on our basement floor, you know, not DIGITALI this is
Speaker 1: before we had computers at home, So that was one
Speaker 1: thing I was like, well, okay, I was like making
Speaker 1: up games. And another thing was I was always like
Speaker 1: giving speeches. I'd like stand up on a chair in
Speaker 1: kindergarten and give a speech, or you know, i'd like
Speaker 1: write an essay and give it in front of the
Speaker 1: school auditorium or something. So it's like, okay, well, obviously
Speaker 1: some kind of career involving making up weird games and
Speaker 1: giving speeches. But at the time, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: an editor for a dot com website. I had, was
Speaker 1: not applied to grad school or anything yet, And I
Speaker 1: just think it's really funny that at the time I
Speaker 1: was like, well, there's no career that involves making up
Speaker 1: weird games and giving speeches like fast forward, you know, fifteen,
Speaker 1: that's your life. Later that was, in fact the best
Speaker 1: career for me to pursue. I just it took them
Speaker 1: took more than a decade to actually kind of make
Speaker 1: up a career like that. So that's that's the evidence
Speaker 1: that you know, one of your your intellectual hero mentors
Speaker 1: what he talks about perfect Yeah, yeah, you know, these
Speaker 1: themes are there if we choose to see them, we
Speaker 1: choose to get in touch with them, and we may
Speaker 1: not know what they mean right away, you know, because
Speaker 1: because what I mean, that's the true creativity. You may
Speaker 1: have had a couple of things that you fell in
Speaker 1: love with as a kid that no else has fall
Speaker 1: in love with the same way, and you're going to
Speaker 1: have to invent a career, invent a role in society.
Speaker 1: That I mean, that's that's the true creativity. I think. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more with that. Actually, absolutely. To make
Speaker 1: sure we talk about your game super better. You know,
Speaker 1: I have it on my iPhone and uh, I'm not
Speaker 1: that good, but I'm trying. I'm trying. How can you
Speaker 1: not be good? I mean, the only way to not
Speaker 1: be good at it is to ignore it, I would think.
Speaker 1: But I mean, let's let's let's it's really interesting because
Speaker 1: the word game is something I've been I've been struggling
Speaker 1: with to describe this, so now now I just call
Speaker 1: it a method because when we put in the app store,
Speaker 1: actually the first sentence in the app Store description was
Speaker 1: super better is not a game because I have designed
Speaker 1: a lot of games, and this is not a game
Speaker 1: in the way that other things I've designed have been gained.
Speaker 1: And I've come toabil is that this is really I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a mindset intervention that uses some of the tropes
Speaker 1: of gaming, but really what we're doing is we're teaching
Speaker 1: you to think like a game designer. We're we're teaching
Speaker 1: you the strategies that game designers use to help their
Speaker 1: players achieve more audacious goals, to be more resilient in
Speaker 1: the face of setbacks, to be better able to learn
Speaker 1: and improve. So I've been I've been really I'm really
Speaker 1: really careful trying to think about how do I explain
Speaker 1: these people, because I don't want you to download app
Speaker 1: and think you're going to be playing a game like
Speaker 1: Tetris or Candy Crash Saga. It's it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: more like a it's like a class. It's like a
Speaker 1: course in in mastering all of these amazing superpowers that
Speaker 1: game designers have and you just are learning to unleash
Speaker 1: them in your own life. You know, what does it
Speaker 1: take to design a good power up? What does it
Speaker 1: what does it mean to to identify a bad guy
Speaker 1: and have all the five different strategies for tackling it.
Speaker 1: You know that what is a good quest you that
Speaker 1: you can design for yourself. So that's that's a small
Speaker 1: nuance that I'm trying trying to play around with. What
Speaker 1: is the definition of a game? Well, my definition of
Speaker 1: a game is most influenced by that wonderful philosopher I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Bernard's Suits. He said, a game is an
Speaker 1: unnecessary obstacle that we volunteer to try to overcome. So
Speaker 1: if you think about golf, this is a classic example.
Speaker 1: In golf, your goal is to get a small ball
Speaker 1: and a small hole. And if you were not playing
Speaker 1: a game, how would you do that? You would walk
Speaker 1: up to the hole and put the ball in, and
Speaker 1: you'd be like, yes, I did it. But because it's
Speaker 1: a game, you allow there to be this totally unnecessary
Speaker 1: obstacle in your way. You have to stand really far
Speaker 1: away from the hole. That is an unnecessary obstacle that
Speaker 1: provokes curiosity, you know, can I do it? It provokes creativity,
Speaker 1: what's the best way? Let me try different strategies. It
Speaker 1: promotes learning an improvement because you're going to have never
Speaker 1: done this before, so you have to learn and improve
Speaker 1: and not to mention using a club, which is also
Speaker 1: a totally inefficient way to achieve this goal. So so
Speaker 1: for me, a game is really it's just leaning into
Speaker 1: these voluntary obstacles that provoke curiosity and creativity and give
Speaker 1: us the experience to learn and improve. I like that
Speaker 1: definition a lot, and your game super better. You're still
Speaker 1: going to call it. I call it a method. It's
Speaker 1: a method that. Yeah, it's a method that you can
Speaker 1: learn through the book, or you can learn it through
Speaker 1: the app or the web platform, or you can you know,
Speaker 1: learn it just by listening to a podcast. Really, I
Speaker 1: mean because it's really just a way of it's a
Speaker 1: systematic way of tackling challenges in everyday life through the
Speaker 1: eyes of as if you were a game designer and
Speaker 1: you paired up with Annie to do the study and
Speaker 1: you found that it significally reduced symptoms of depression, anxiety,
Speaker 1: increased optimism, social support, and self efficacy, which is basically
Speaker 1: self confidence for our listeners. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: study was with people who meant the criteria for clinical depression,
Speaker 1: so not just anybody, but people with the significant amount
Speaker 1: of depression that they were experiencing. And one thing that's
Speaker 1: interesting about the study is, you know, we had people
Speaker 1: participating who were not receiving any treatment. We had people
Speaker 1: who were on prescription medication for the depression, and we
Speaker 1: had people who were in therapy or counseling, and all
Speaker 1: three groups improved at similar rates. The sort of distance
Speaker 1: that they moved on the depression scale was similar whether
Speaker 1: they were no treatment, medication, or therapy. So that was
Speaker 1: really kind of awesome to see that this can help
Speaker 1: no matter what you're doing to try to get better,
Speaker 1: that this this creates, that this adds a layer of improvement,
Speaker 1: and it also they felt significantly happier and more satisfied
Speaker 1: with their lives. So this is really it would count
Speaker 1: as a positive intervention. You know, you have lots of
Speaker 1: psychological interventions that are designed to get you from like
Speaker 1: negative fifteen to zero, but this is really a good
Speaker 1: example of what we put what we I would consider
Speaker 1: in the class of positive interventions, which are designed to
Speaker 1: get from negative fifteen to positive fifteen. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean I do think I mean when I as you know,
Speaker 1: from the start of the bar, when people first started
Speaker 1: using the same method after I made some videos about it,
Speaker 1: and they would write me and say that they were,
Speaker 1: you know, playing a version of the game for really
Speaker 1: significant traumas, things much worse than me. A young man
Speaker 1: in his twenties who had just gotten a terminal cancer diagnosis, untreatable,
Speaker 1: that's it. You know, a young father with two daughters
Speaker 1: and of the age of ten who just gotten an
Speaker 1: als diagnosis. You know, people who are grieving for the
Speaker 1: loss of a beloved spouse, you know, twenty years of
Speaker 1: marriage and then suddenly to lose them. And they were
Speaker 1: talking about how this, this game or this method was
Speaker 1: helping them be happier and stronger, braver. That was when
Speaker 1: I realized that there was something weird going on here.
Speaker 1: But it's not just like about treating depression or anxiety.
Speaker 1: And that was actually how I found the literature on
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth. So I do think that this is
Speaker 1: it's not just about typical resilience and getting back to normal.
Speaker 1: And that's actually where the name super Better comes from.
Speaker 1: This is it? I don't I don't know if I
Speaker 1: don't know if I talk about this, I don't often
Speaker 1: talk about this. The name super Better was inspired by
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, when you have any kind
Speaker 1: of traumatic brain injury, you don't really know how much
Speaker 1: better you're going to get in the sense of will
Speaker 1: I get back to normal? And everybody's telling you get
Speaker 1: better soon, and what they mean is, please get back
Speaker 1: to normal and be the exact same level of cognitive
Speaker 1: ability that you were before, and you don't know if
Speaker 1: you're going to get there. And so I thought every
Speaker 1: time some would say that, I wanted to tell them,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm going to get better. And
Speaker 1: I was mentally preparing for having to come up with
Speaker 1: a different life plan that had a different career and
Speaker 1: a different situation for my family. So I thought to
Speaker 1: myself a lot, I may not get better in the
Speaker 1: sense of being back to normal, but maybe I can
Speaker 1: still become a better version of myself. So I won't
Speaker 1: be the old Jane. I'll be a new Jane that's
Speaker 1: come through this and just being more of a just
Speaker 1: a badass version of myself for having gone through this.
Speaker 1: And so that was to me, that's where they super
Speaker 1: better came from. So I can't get better, but I'll
Speaker 1: get super better. It'll be like beyond what I was before,
Speaker 1: because I may never be just the same person I was.
Speaker 1: And so that idea of going beyond getting back to normal,
Speaker 1: having that positive impact that that is that goes even
Speaker 1: above resilience or normal coping. You know, positive coping. Sound
Speaker 1: like such a positive psychologist. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I am. You know, ieio I did add
Speaker 1: that to my bio. Yeah, that that I mean. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had that really funny experience with Marty Seligman earlier
Speaker 1: in my career. Tell me about that one. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out why Well, I was
Speaker 1: looking at the psychology of games. Why when people play
Speaker 1: games do they seem to not suffer? That was sort
Speaker 1: of a question I was really interested in, And why
Speaker 1: why do they feel so optimistic and engaged and they
Speaker 1: seem to derive meaning and purpose from an activity that
Speaker 1: other people see as meaningless and purposeless, But they were
Speaker 1: going to be so much meaning and purpose. So it's
Speaker 1: sort of breaking down what a games do effectively more
Speaker 1: than other things in our lives. And I came up
Speaker 1: with thisteria of four things. And that was the same
Speaker 1: time that Marty was working on his new perma scheme.
Speaker 1: You know, what are the what are the things necessary
Speaker 1: for meaningful and purposeful life. And you know, you've got
Speaker 1: the P for positive emotions, for engagement, our relationships, and
Speaker 1: for meanings, so connecting from my bigger than themself. And
Speaker 1: then he added a controversially for like achievement and accomplishment.
Speaker 1: And so we were both sort of doing this separately.
Speaker 1: And the first time I met him, you know, started
Speaker 1: to share my research, I was just like, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's a perfect match. You know what I've figured out
Speaker 1: that games do so well and what you've identified as
Speaker 1: a criteria for a meaningful and purposeful life. And I
Speaker 1: was lucky definitely was like, oh, very interesting. Let me
Speaker 1: take you under my wing and help me figure this
Speaker 1: out more so that I mean, that's been really I mean,
Speaker 1: that was you know, ten years ago now, but that, uh,
Speaker 1: seeing that connection between what great researchers and psychology we're
Speaker 1: saying yielded these important emotional and mental benefits and what
Speaker 1: I could clearly see game designers were doing purposefully and elegantly,
Speaker 1: that was that was one of the big aha, light
Speaker 1: bulb moments, you know, of my life to make me think, well,
Speaker 1: there's something going on here with game design. It's not
Speaker 1: just escapist activity. It's not just entertainment, it's not just
Speaker 1: way to pass the time. That we're really activating core needs,
Speaker 1: core psychological needs. And and you know, it would be
Speaker 1: great if we could translate that also to other aspects
Speaker 1: of our lives. Yes, and I love how in your
Speaker 1: book you have these personal stories that shows such diversity
Speaker 1: of ways that people have showed this growth through, you know,
Speaker 1: like curing insomnia and grief, people wanting to be sexier.
Speaker 1: You know, oh and it's sexiert well, I love right.
Speaker 1: One of the women in the book, Joyce Kirwin, had
Speaker 1: just retired. She wanted to be sexier for has been
Speaker 1: which was I mean, it worked apparently so she was
Speaker 1: very happy or even just finding a new spark in
Speaker 1: life or something. Yeah. I really like that. You know.
Speaker 1: You you have this whole section of your book on
Speaker 1: all these rules of super better to help get the
Speaker 1: most out of each day, and you know, I want
Speaker 1: people to buy the book and to go through that,
Speaker 1: so I won't I won't read all the rules and things,
Speaker 1: but I found them really personally helpful to me. A
Speaker 1: lot of these exercises really good. I like the mind
Speaker 1: reading machine, like I just liked all the ones that
Speaker 1: I really like a lot. I like coming up with
Speaker 1: a secret identity. I think I did that a lot
Speaker 1: as a kid, just as a creative kid who wasn't
Speaker 1: too happy with my own identity as a wording disabled.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was really good to come up
Speaker 1: with the secret identity where I was this like you know,
Speaker 1: computer hacker, you know, or something. I'll tell you that's
Speaker 1: a whole other story. I know. Well, I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: it's one of the most wonderful things that you can
Speaker 1: do in super Better is to share your good identity
Speaker 1: with someone. I mean, it turns out to be amazingly gratifying.
Speaker 1: People really enjoy coming up with secret identity. But when
Speaker 1: somebody tells you their secret identity, it's such a window
Speaker 1: into you know, who they want to be right now.
Speaker 1: You know what they're looking forward to becoming, trying trying
Speaker 1: to create in their lives. And I just love it.
Speaker 1: I mean when even it just like book signings this month,
Speaker 1: people come up to me and have me sign it
Speaker 1: for their secret identity, and you know, I'm like, like
Speaker 1: last night in Portland, I met somebody who his secret
Speaker 1: identity was sidekick Man, and I'm like sidekickman, Like that
Speaker 1: doesn't even who wants to be a sidekick? Doesn't everyone
Speaker 1: want to be Batman? Not Robbins. I was immediately intrigued,
Speaker 1: you know what. I'm like, what what are sidekicks? You know?
Speaker 1: Man superpowers? Because like I've never heard of that kind
Speaker 1: of superhero. He's like, Oh, you know, I'm just right now,
Speaker 1: I'm taking a like a sort of backseat to my
Speaker 1: wife's career. And I'm like really being like a primary parent,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's my job is to really be
Speaker 1: there for my wife right now and give her career,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of primary role. And I don't know
Speaker 1: that he was. Instead of thinking about it as being
Speaker 1: a kind of i don't know, lower status functioning in
Speaker 1: the family hierarchy, he was looking at it as as
Speaker 1: a superpower. Yeah, it's really you learn a lot about
Speaker 1: people and what's in their hearts. And I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to tell me your secret identity.
Speaker 1: You'll have to you know, that should be that should
Speaker 1: be like in the notes for this episode at the
Speaker 1: very bottom, like an easter egg people, I'll listen to
Speaker 1: the whole episode. They get a little seal totally going
Speaker 1: to do it and make a note to do secret identity. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just making notes of stuff. So what does an
Speaker 1: epic win? Well, uh, in super better terms and epic
Speaker 1: wing is it's a moment or outcome where you feel
Speaker 1: it truly represents that you have gotten super better but
Speaker 1: you are you have sort of transcended some old ability
Speaker 1: or limitations on yourself, and you feel like this represents
Speaker 1: a stronger graver, a happier version of yourself. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these epic winds are not plannable at the
Speaker 1: start of your journey. I mean, obviously for me, when
Speaker 1: I started playing this game, which I called Jane the
Speaker 1: Concussions Layer, my goal, if you'd ask, my goal was
Speaker 1: just to be able to work again. I think you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to finish, go back to finishing my book.
Speaker 1: I wanted I wanted to be able to go back
Speaker 1: to running if I could do my first you know,
Speaker 1: five kg and little little winds. But the real epic win,
Speaker 1: of course, was inventing something that could help people, you know,
Speaker 1: experienced post traumatic growth. And I would never have expected
Speaker 1: that when I first got a concussion. Right, So we
Speaker 1: try to help people see these new windows, right, you
Speaker 1: know that old saying door closes and a window opens,
Speaker 1: which we know is one of the psychological skills associated
Speaker 1: with the ability to experience post My growth is looking
Speaker 1: for these positive outcomes that weren't possible before. So that's
Speaker 1: we we try. You know, those are the kinds of
Speaker 1: epic wins that I get most excited about. People kind
Speaker 1: of divert their classical orientation towards celebrating things that are
Speaker 1: you know, more meaningful to them than than they would
Speaker 1: have been able to identify before they started. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I love how you talk about how living you know,
Speaker 1: orienting your whole life towards get like beating your personal record,
Speaker 1: and how that can you get allows yourself to give
Speaker 1: yourself especially like you say, you encourage people to give
Speaker 1: yourself permission to do what matters most to you today,
Speaker 1: like right now, like there's nothing stopping me from looking
Speaker 1: out my window, and you know, like you know, like
Speaker 1: I really, Oh you keep mentioning looking at your windows.
Speaker 1: I should say for for listeners, we you know, we
Speaker 1: just try to get you to do things to provoke
Speaker 1: different positive emotions. And looking at your windows a way
Speaker 1: to provoke curiosity because those for me, you don't know
Speaker 1: what you might see, but I love that. And you
Speaker 1: can also look in windows is the other technique that works,
Speaker 1: but you have to be careful which windows you look
Speaker 1: into for a legal and for you know, variety's sake. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: you just made me activated something, so like a lot.
Speaker 1: There is a form of therapy for people who have
Speaker 1: suffered from social anxiety where they try to treat life
Speaker 1: as a game. It's actually a well known therapy and
Speaker 1: it's been applied in lots of techniques in some what
Speaker 1: argue dodgy ways. So there's a whole community called the
Speaker 1: pickup artists. Are you familiar with that? Are you familiar? Yes?
Speaker 1: And they call it the game, which is exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh you know what's wrong with that? Right? You know
Speaker 1: why it's not a game because one of the principles
Speaker 1: rules of games. Besides, there are four things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a voluntary obstacle, you get feedback, there's a clear
Speaker 1: win condition. But the fourth condition of a game is
Speaker 1: participation is voluntary and conscious. You can't play a game
Speaker 1: if you don't know you're playing a game. You've chosen
Speaker 1: freely play it. So the pickup artist, the person who
Speaker 1: is a pickup artist is playing a game with people
Speaker 1: who don't know there's a game, have not voluntarily or
Speaker 1: consciously entered into the game, So it's not a game.
Speaker 1: So that is, you know, something we must keep in
Speaker 1: mind when we use game as a metaphor. It is
Speaker 1: not an effective or since youre metaphor, if you're talking
Speaker 1: about people who aren't consciously choosing to play. I think
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense. You love your super
Speaker 1: Better community, right, I mean you've studied them and you've
Speaker 1: noticed that there's a lot of diversity amongst them, right,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's not just like your Super Better
Speaker 1: community is like they're just one type of person, right right? Yeah? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean if you look at the demographics for people
Speaker 1: who done the digital version that we've been able to
Speaker 1: collect data from, it's you slightly female, I think, depending
Speaker 1: on when we measure it, as much as sixty percent female.
Speaker 1: But you know, ages range from thirteen to i mean
Speaker 1: super old, almost almost centenarians, and people who have say
Speaker 1: they've never played a video game, although I don't believe
Speaker 1: them because usually those people play solitaire constantly on their
Speaker 1: you know, PCs or their phone. So, but people who
Speaker 1: say they've never played a video game to people who
Speaker 1: play all the time, and so it is a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a different group because everyone has a
Speaker 1: game that they love. It might be bridge, it might
Speaker 1: be poker, it might be golf, it might be basketball,
Speaker 1: you know, pandemic whatever. Even not a video gamer, there's
Speaker 1: some game that you love that you naturally adapt, adopt
Speaker 1: and practice as gameful mindset. And so it seems to
Speaker 1: be pretty easy for people to get into the super
Speaker 1: better mindset. Cool, and you say you have a goal
Speaker 1: in life to see a game developer win a Nobel
Speaker 1: Peace Prize. Yeah, you know, I'm thinking it might. Medicine
Speaker 1: might be a more effective strategy. You know, when I
Speaker 1: first said that, I think I said the year twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three as the year that I predicted it would happen.
Speaker 1: That was using my future forecasting skills. So we've still
Speaker 1: got eight years left to rally the troops to work
Speaker 1: on games that are worthy of a Nobel Prize. And
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, talk about on the book
Speaker 1: games being used to treat severe pain, anxiety, depression more
Speaker 1: effectively than pharmaceuticals, with fewer side effects and certainly less expensively.
Speaker 1: I feel like that is a realistic proposition. You know,
Speaker 1: if we can use games, I would be ready to
Speaker 1: give a Nobel Prize to the inventor Tetris right now
Speaker 1: already just you know me too. But it seems to
Speaker 1: be the best video game we have in terms of
Speaker 1: its potential therapeutic uses for anxiety depression and PTSD. So
Speaker 1: you know, if the Noble Committee would ask me, I'd
Speaker 1: give it to that guy. I'm going to end here
Speaker 1: because you know, we've talked so much about all these
Speaker 1: benefits of living a game full life, and I want
Speaker 1: to just repeat a quote that I love from your book.
Speaker 1: You said, the biggest benefit of getting stronger, happier, and
Speaker 1: braver is finding the courage and means to live a
Speaker 1: life truer to your dreams right now, no matter what
Speaker 1: obstacles you face along the way. And I personally can't
Speaker 1: think of any better reason to do anything in this world.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for all the great work
Speaker 1: you do and for chatting with me today, Jane, Thank
Speaker 1: you Bett. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with
Speaker 1: doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this episode
Speaker 1: just as informative and thought per booking as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or here past episodes, you can go to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast dot Coming BA