Mood, expertise, analogy, and ritual:
an experiment using the five-disc Tower of Hanoi
Yvan I. Russell1-4
Fernand Gobet4-5
Harvey Whitehouse1
1. Explaining Religion Project, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary
Anthropology, University of Oxford.
2. Junior Research Group “Evolution of Cooperation and Prosocial
Behaviour”, CRC Evolution of Social Behaviour, University of Göttingen,
Germany.
3. Department of Psychology, Middlesex University
4. Department of Psychology, Brunel University
5. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool
Send correspondence to: [email protected]
Word count: 10870 including references, figure legends and acknowledgements
8591 manuscript and appendices only
Keywords: Tower of Hanoi; mood; emotion; religion; analogy; thinking; ritual; anxiety
1
Abstract
We used game-playing as a proxy for religious ritual in a study of the differential effects
of euphoric and dysphoric mood – with a specific focus on expertise and analogical
reasoning. Previous research demonstrates that euphoric individuals think more broadly
and schematically, and that dysphoric individuals are more focused and details-oriented.
We investigated the effect of mood on analogical transfer in four conditions: (1) expert
euphoric, (2) expert dysphoric, (3) non-expert euphoric, and (4) non-expert dysphoric.
Mood was induced from watching a ten-minute video (a comedy excerpt to induce
euphoria; a realistic depiction of nuclear war to induce dysphoria). The Affect Grid was
used for a manipulation check. In expert conditions, participants first played the five-disk
Tower of Hanoi (TOH) game, followed by the “Bear God” (BG) task, a new isomorph of
TOH (same rules, different surface features). Participants were not told about the hidden
isomorphism. In non-expert conditions, participants played an unrelated game first.
Based on prior literature, it was possible that dysphoria could either hamper or enhance
analogical reasoning. We found evidence for the latter – superior performance in the
dysphoric BG task – but only in the expert condition. In other words, dysphoria only
enhanced analogy formation among those with prior expertise. This is consistent with
previous work showing that dysphoria can enhance analogical reasoning in settings
congruent with religious experiences.
2
Introduction
Emotional arousal plays a momentous role in defining an individual's experience
of their faith (Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Azari & Birnbacher, 2004; Azari et al., 2005;
Emmons, 2005; Hayden, 1987; Keltner & Haidt, 2003; McCauley & Lawson, 2002,
Rossano, 2006; Russell et al., 2011; Sjöblom, 2008; Whitehouse, 2004). Ecstasy and
euphoria, for example, occur periodically in the form of group-coordinated rituals
(Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Hayden, 1987; Whitehouse, 2004) and tend to occur most
commonly in annual festivals and ceremonies (Atkinson & Whitehouse 2011). When
people think about themselves in relation to their religion-specific cosmos, they are
engaging in dynamic feedback loops between their own emotional states and the
cognitivity inherent in their belief (Azari et al., 2005; see Boden & Berenbaum, 2010,
about affect-belief feedback loops in general). In other words, a person figures out their
place in their cosmos, the causes and consequences of their behaviour, and uses their
emotional state as both antecedent and consequent of their reasoning (also see Russell et
al., 2011; cf. Grim, 2006 and Sjöblom, 2008). In the growing field of the cognitive
science of religion (CSR), the prevailing strategy is to investigate small facets of religious
experience in order to gain insight into the big picture (for background on CSR, see
Barrett, 2007; Boyer, 1994, 2001; Guthrie, 1980, 2007; Ozorak, 2005; Pyysiäinien, 2004,
2013; Pyysiäinen & Anttonen, 2002; Russell & Gobet, 2013; Whitehouse, 1995, 1996,
2000, 2004; Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004; Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005; Whitehouse
& Martin, 2005). Here, we use the methodology of cognitive psychology to probe the
nexus between emotion and cognition as might be found in religious settings.
3
Psychologists have long known that emotions exert a significant influence on
cognitive processes (Chepenik et al., 2007; Clore & Huntsinger, 2007; Dolan, 2002;
Frederickson & Branigan, 2005; Isen, 1987; Storbeck & Clore, 2007; Wyer et al., 1999),
reflecting the fact that putative cognitive and emotional areas of the brain are highly
interconnected through executive control (Pessoa, 2007). In our current experiment, we
focus on longer-term mood rather than fleeting emotion. Mood refers to a “background”
emotional state that “rises and dissipates slowly” (Beedie et al., 2005, p. 871). In contrast
to emotion, mood is generally more mild, unfocused, and stable (Beedie et al., 2005; for
discussion see Clore & Huntsinger, 2007; Stevens, 2006, pp. 92-93; Storbeck & Clore,
2007; Wyer et al., 1999, pp. 5-7). According to a number of studies, people think
differently in a euphoric versus dysphoric mood (for a review, see Clore & Huntsinger,
2007). In a euphoric mood, people adopt a more global, schematic view. In other words,
people in a euphoric mood tend to look at the “big picture”. In contrast, people in a
dysphoric mood tend to be more non-schematic and details-oriented. For example, Bless
et al. (1996) found that the participants with an induced positive mood were more likely
to falsely recognise an item from a story (when the stimulus is conceptually similar but a
different word) than those in a negative mood. Participants in a positive mood appeared
to fall back on general semantic knowledge whereas the ones in negative mood
remembered the details better. Similarly, Gasper and Clore (2002) asked their
participants to draw/classify pictures they had seen before, and found that participants
with an induced positive mood focused on the global characteristics at the expense of the
details, whilst those in a negative mood did the opposite. Beukeboom and Semin (2005)
4
found the same results in a paradigm where they asked participants to choose appropriate
phrases to describe behaviours: those in a good mood thought more about “why” a
behaviour occurred, and those in a bad mood thought more about “how” a behaviour
occurred. Frederickson and Branigan (2005) confirmed the broadening effect of positive
mood in a study where they asked participants to choose which image was the most
similar to a previous one. The two choices were appropriate either for a global view
(overall shape) or a detailed view (component parts of the overall shape). Those in a good
mood chose overall shape more often.
We will focus on religious ritual as an integral component of religions that are
simultaneously emotional and functional (for a review, see Bell, 1997). In our experiment
below, we investigate the role of a person's mood on their ability to transfer a skill from
one context to another. We regard this as roughly equivalent to a religious person
learning about their religion, and then needing to apply these principles out in the real
world (e.g. see Jarvis, 2008, on the purposes of religious teaching). Let us think more
about the definition of religious ritual in order to justify our presumption. Bell (1997)
identified six defining characteristics of ritual: (1) formalism (following conventional
rules), (2) traditionalism (staying with traditional methods), (3) invariance (elements and
ordering of ritual must stay the same), (4) rule-governance (actions constrained by pre-
specified rules), (5) sacral symbolism (acts have supernatural significance), and (6)
performance (theatrical aspect). We use game playing as a proxy for conducting a
religious ritual. Obviously, game playing is not the same as a religious ritual, primarily
because they lack the “sacral symbolism” aspect. Nonetheless, if we can find mood
5
effects on game playing (cf. Stevens, 2006) – which do incorporate aspects like
“invariance” and “rule governance” – then we can find ourselves in the position to reason
inductively towards real religious rituals. Here, for our game-ritual proxy, we utilise the
Tower of Hanoi (TOH) problem, a tricky game involving the transfer of disks over three
pegs (for details, see Simon, 1975 and Gardner, 2008). Participants begin with a set of
disks on the leftmost peg (see Figure 1), which are stacked from largest at the bottom to
smallest at the top. The object is to move all of the disks to the rightmost peg (in the same
order), but there are two rules: (1) you can only move one disk at a time, and (2) you
cannot put a larger disk atop a smaller disk. The more disks in the game, the more
difficult the game is (we will choose the five disk version in our study because it is
moderately difficult). There is only one optimal solution (Simon, 1975). The five-disk
version is soluble in a minimum of 31 steps. Less expert players are likely to play many
more than 31 steps, and in playing they might adopt a non-optimal solution such as a
simple rote strategy (following the basic rules without a longer range plan). However, a
rote strategy can only go so far. When there are more than four disks, the rote strategy is
sub-optimal (ibid.). In order to succeed at the five-disk game, a more expert player should
adopt a goal-recursion strategy wherein a person must think about subgoals nested within
an overall plan (ibid.).
Mood affects performance in a variety of domains outside of religion. For
example, in sports performance (Stevens, 2006) and school examinations (Thelwell et al.,
2007), a person's background mood feeds into an assessment of the task (how well they
6
can perform according to expectations) to produce a coping strategy. The extent of a
person's expertise in the task makes a difference here too. If a task overwhelms a person's
abilities, and success appears unlikely, then the mood might become depressed and
performance might suffer; but if the task seems doable, then mood might contribute to
success (see discussion in Stevens, 2006; Thelwell et al., 2007). However, Pe et al.
(2008) failed to find an advantage of mood in playing the TOH (and another game)
although game success did improve mood afterwards. Similarly, Spering et al., (2005)
failed to find an advantage of good mood in a complicated business simulation game.
However, positive mood does appear to have an advantage when the participant has prior
experience of the game. Brand and Opwis (2007) asked participants to teach themselves
(in dyads) to play the three-disk TOH and then afterwards asked them to play similar
types of games (five-disk TOH and two others). Participants in good moods performed
better in these later games (as measured by solution time) than those with poorer moods.
Conversely, Brand et al. (2007), using a similar paradigm with the same games, found
that participants in a sad mood did worse in playing the later games. Presumably, those in
a worse mood are less able to think schematically and therefore worse in analogical
transfer.
Below, we will investigate differential effects at a cognitive level in both euphoric
and dysphoric situations in ways that are analogous to situations that occur in religions.
Our study will expand on the above studies of analogical transfer by factoring the role of
prior expertise (compared to other studies where experts have thousands of hours of
practice, in this study we use the term "expertise" in a rather loose sense, see
7
Didierjean & Gobet, 2008, and Gobet et al., 2011, about expertise). Hence, the
independent variables are expertise and mood in four conditions: (1) expert euphoric
(EE), (2) expert dysphoric (ED), (3) non-expert euphoric (NE), and (4) non-expert
dysphoric (ND). Mood will be induced using film clips (see Methods). Expert
participants will play the TOH first and then play a TOH isomorph, a version of the TOH
game where the surface features have been substantially altered, but which has precisely
the same rules (e.g. see Simon & Hayes, 1976, Figure 1 therein, or Clément & Richard,
1997, Figure 1 therein). Despite the fact that a TOH isomorph can be solved in exactly
the same way as the TOH game, players often find it exceedingly difficult to solve the
isomorph even after they have learned the original game (see Clément & Richard, 1997,
Kotovsky et al., 1985). In our procedure, the isomorph is called the “Bear God” (BG)
task (inspired by the “tea ceremony” isomorph by Hayes & Simon, 1974). In our study,
experts will have an opportunity to transfer their TOH skill to the BG task. Non-expert
participants will play the Missionary Cannibal (MC) game (a.k.a. Hobbit and Orcs; see ;
Greeno, 1974; Thomas, 1974): a simpler “river crossing” game where the participant
needs to move three cannibals and three missionaries across a river in a two-person boat
– restricted by the rule that cannibals can never outnumber missionaries at either side (or
else the cannibals eat the missionaries). This is not only a simpler game, but has a
different type of solution from the TOH game. Therefore, those who play MC prior to the
BG task will not have an opportunity to transfer their skill. In the transfer context,
individuals need to apply previously learned principles to a new context. A very
important point here is that the participants will not be told that the BG task is an
isomorph.
8
Although we would expect experts to perform better than non-experts in the
transfer task (Gobet et al., 2011) previous literature motivates contradictory hypotheses
with regard to the effects of mood. Based on the aforementioned literature showing that
euphoria is conducive to lateral thinking (e.g. Brand & Opwis, 2007) we would predict
that global thinkers will be better able to spot the analogical similarity between the BG
task and the previously learned TOH game and then apply their TOH skills in the BG
task (cf. Brand & Opwis, 2007). By contrast, based on his ethnographic work,
Whitehouse (1996) has predicted that dysphoria should enhance analogical reasoning as
part of a process of ‘spontaneous exegetical reflection’ (SER) on religious rituals
(Whitehouse, 2004; also see Richert et al., 2005). This prediction is congruent with later
experiments (not related to SER) showing that, at least for simple visual displays,
analogical reasoning is enhanced by experientally-induced anxiety (e.g. Hristova &
Kokinov, 2011; Feldman & Kokinov, 2009; Feldman et al., 2010 and references therein).
Moreover, Whitehouse (1996, 2004) has conjectured that dysphoric rituals might trigger
‘flashbulb memory’ (Luminet & Curci, 2009): the phenomenon whereby people have
unusually vivid recollection of circumstances surrounding emotional/traumatic events
(more on this topic later). The experiment below will attempt to adjudicate between these
two competing predictions: whether euphoria or dysphoria enhances analogical thinking.
9
Methods
Participants
A total of 67 adults were tested at Brunel University, UK. All had replied to
posters offering £10 (GBP) to participate in a study called “Playing Games”. The mean
age was 23.6 years (SD = 3.9). There were 30 males and 37 females. Religiously, the
group was 43% Christian, 21% Muslim, 15% non-religious, 12% Hindu, 4.5% Sikh, and
4.5% Buddhist.
Apparatus
The computer games were programmed specifically for this study in Visual Basic
(see Acknowledgements). The three games were: (1) Tower of Hanoi (TOH), (2)
Missionary Cannibal (MC), and (3) Bear God (BG) task. Each game had a graphical
interface featuring cartoon characters (drawn by YIR) or objects that could be moved
using the mouse. Figure 2 is an image of the BG task at the beginning of the game.
Anytime a game was played, it generated a data file showing all moves made by a
participant. The games were played on a laptop computer (19 cm 30 cm screen). Mood
induction was conducted by showing video clips to the participant (see Westermann et
al., 1996, on the relative merits of different types of mood induction techniques; cf.
Feldman et al., 2010). The mood induction video clips were watched on a separate
computer screen (27 cm 34 cm) using full size headphones for audio.
For a manipulation check, we used the Affect Grid (Russell et al., 1989), an undisguised
single-item scale consisting of a 9 9 matrix (81 squares) wherein the participant marks
10
an “x” in the single square that indicates their current mood (see Figure 3). This is from a
class of emotion measures called “self-reports of subjective experience” (for reviews of
types of measures, see Larsen & Frederickson, 1999; for background on the Affect Grid,
see Russell, 1980; Russell et al., 1989; Killgore, 1998; Russell & Gobet, 2012). The
Affect Grid was chosen for two reasons: (a) it is very quick to administer, and (b) it
simultaneously measures two dimensions, happiness/sadness (horizontal dimension) and
arousal (vertical dimension).
Procedure
Table 1 illustrates the procedure (normally 1 hour in duration). Bold items
indicate where the four conditions (EE, ED, NE, ND) differed. To avoid biasing the
participants, participants were told that this was a study about “how games make you
feel” (opposite to the actual purpose of the study). After signing the consent sheet (step
1), participants were given a questionnaire listing 15 different games (step 2). They were
asked to estimate the number of times (in total, over lifetime) that they had played each
game. One of the items was the “Tower of Hanoi” (TOH) and the other 14 games were
distractors (irrelevant to the study). The purpose of the questionnaire was to ascertain
whether the participant had played TOH before. If they had played the game at least
once, then they were assigned randomly to only one of the two expert conditions. If they
had never played, then they were assigned randomly to one of the four conditions (two of
which are expert and two of which are non–expert).
11
After completing the questionnaire, the participant was shown the Affect Grid and
the experimenter explained how to use it. The participant was asked to mark an “x” in the
one square that indicates “how you feel at this moment” (step 3). The Affect Grid was
given a total of four times during the study (steps 3, 6, 8, 10). After step 3, the participant
was given the mood induction by watching a video clip (step 4). However, they were not
told that it was a mood induction. Instead they were told that this was a memory test.
They were asked to watch the video closely because afterwards they would need to recall
the contents of the video. The experimenter gave the participant a set of headphones,
darkened the room, and then played the video for 10 minutes (with no interruptions).
After 10 minutes, the experimenter switched on the lights, and then proceeded to ask the
participant a series of prepared recall questions about the video clip (step 5). These 15
questions were not relevant to this study, but were included as part of the cover story.
If the participant was in one of the euphoric conditions (EE, NE, see Table 1),
then they watched the first ten minutes of a “Mr. Bean” TV episode (“The Trouble with
Mr. Bean”, Curtis et al., 1992). If the participant was in one of the dysphoric conditions
(ED, ND), then they watched ten minutes of the British dramatic film about nuclear war
called “Threads” (Jackson,1984). A middle portion of the movie was shown (approx.
43:40-53:40), depicting an unpleasant but realistic sequence of events whereupon a
nuclear explosion occurs near a major British city, causing panic, a firestorm, and then
widespread suffering, and death (for more details about this film, see Bartlett, 2004).
12
After watching the video clip (step 4) and answering the sham memory questions
(step 5), the participant was asked to fill out the Affect Grid again (step 6). Then, they
were introduced to the first game. If the participant was in one of the expert conditions
(EE, ED), then they played the five-disk TOH game (step 7). The experimenter provided
instructions (even if they had played before). The participant was asked to play for 15
minutes. If the participant finished a game before the time limit, then they were asked to
start again and continue playing repeated games until the 15 minutes was up. There was
no limit to the number of games they were allowed to complete within the 15 minute
session. When 15 minutes had passed, the experimenter stopped the game regardless of
the participant’s progress. If the participant was in one of the non-expert conditions (NE,
ND), then they played the MC game. Here, they were also allowed to solve as many
games as possible within a 15 minute limit.
After playing the first game (step 7), the participant was given the Affect Grid
again (step 8). Then, the participant was given the BG task (the TOH isomorph). Figure 2
is a screenshot of the BG task (at the beginning of the game). The experimenter did not
inform any participants that the BG task should be played exactly the same way as the
five-disk TOH. Instead, it was described as a new game. The experimenter read a story
(see Appendix 1) to introduce the characters of the game, and provide instructions for
play. The story was deliberately written to be confusing and to obfuscate the parallels
between the TOH and the BG task. However, as shown, the participants were made
aware of the rules, which parallel the rules of the TOH. The first rule was that “the more
serious ritual could not be entered in a box wherein a less serious ritual already was”.
13
This was equivalent to the TOH rule where you could not put a larger disk atop a smaller
disk. The second rule was that “you can only remove the least serious ritual out of the
box”. This was equivalent to the TOH rule where you could only remove the smallest
disk out of a pile. A third rule was that ‘you could only remove one ritual at a time’. This
was equivalent to the TOH rule of moving only one disk at a time. After reading the story
and instructions (duration: about 3 min.), the participant was asked to play the BG task
for 15 minutes (step 9) and asked to start again if they had finished the game prior to 15
minutes. After finishing the BG task, the participant was given the Affect Grid one last
time (step 10). Finally, they were given a brief demographic questionnaire (step 11),
debriefed (step 12), and then paid £10 GBP (step 13).
Results
Affect Grid data were assessed in order to check that the mood induction was
effective. Because we were interested in a longer-lasting effect (“mood” rather than
emotion), we obtained the mean score of all four measures per participant (steps 3, 6, 8,
10). In both the designed “euphoric” (EE, NE) and “dysphoric” (ED, ND) conditions,
Table 2 (rows 2–5) shows the scores for the horizontal (H) dimension (happy-sad
spectrum) and the vertical (V) dimension (degree of arousal). For the H dimension, the
individuals were significantly happier in the euphoric than dysphoric conditions (t65 =
2.924, p = .005). For the V dimension, there was no significant difference (t65 = 0.920, p
= .361). We explore alternative ways to measure sequential Affect Grid scores in a
separate paper (Russell & Gobet, 2012).
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There were two dependent variables: (a) number of times BG task solved, and (b)
mean duration of game (if only one game, then duration = 900 seconds). Looking first at
the number of games solved, we see that the solution of the BG task (like the TOH) is all-
or-nothing: the goal is either reached or not. The number of steps needed to reach the
goal can vary greatly in this game (especially if participants make a mistake and then
need to backtrack in order to reach the goal), and therefore there is no useful measure of
partial completion. All analyses were conducted with PASW Statistics 18.0, except for
the Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression, for which we used STATA (see Appendix 2).
Scores for all conditions are shown in Table 2 (row 6). Figure 4 is a boxplot of the
number of times games played compared across the four conditions. On the left are the
two expert conditions: euphoric expert (EE) and dysphoric expert (ED). On the right are
the two non-expert conditions: euphoric non-expert (NE) and dysphoric non-expert (ND).
As expected, expert individuals (those who played TOH prior to BG) solved significantly
more games than the non-expert individuals (Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 9.125, p = .003). We
also analysed the two euphoric conditions lumped together (EE, NE) and the two
dysphoric conditions lumped together (ED, ND). Two participants who had earlier been
assigned to the ND condition later realised they had played the TOH games in the past
(under a different name), so these two people were reclassified into the ED condition for
all results. Surprisingly, there was no significant differences for mood (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2
= 0.198, p = .657) across the four conditions. Moreover, there was no significant
differences between EE and ED (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2 = 1.291, p = .256) or between NE and
ND (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2 = .018, p = .892).
15
Why was the result not significant despite the apparent pattern in Figure 4?
Possibly, it was because the data were highly skewed and therefore non-normal, in
particular due to the large number of zeroes (i.e. people who never solved the game at
all). Table 2 (rows 7–8) shows the proportion of zeroes for each condition and the
skewness statistic (for solved BG task) for each condition (0 = normal distribution). As
shown, the non-expert conditions (NE, ND) are highly skewed, the EE condition is less
skewed, and the ED condition is the least skewed. Due to these problems, we used the
ZIP regression, a test specifically designed for zero-heavy data (see Appendix 2 for
explanation). To begin this analysis, we used a chi-square test on the difference of log
likelihoods, and found that the ZIP model was a statistically significant fit against a null
model (χ 2 = 20.32, p < .001). We also compared the ZIP model against a normal Poisson
model using the Vuong test and found that the ZIP model fitted better than the normal
Poisson (ZIP > Poisson, Vuong statistic = 1.67, p = .048). The euphoric (EE) condition
was not a significant predictor of number of games solved (z = 0.93, p = .352). In
contrast, the dysphoric (ED) condition was a highly significant predictor (z = 3.19, p
= .001). Neither of the two non-expert conditions (NE, ND) were significant predictors (z
= -0.73, p = .464). Also, there were no significant effects of age (z = 1.09, p = .275) or
sex (z = -0.49, p = .624).
Another potential issue is prior skill (Table 2, row 8). A person’s pre-existing
talent at playing games seemed a weighty determinant of success in the BG task. TOH
players (n = 32) solved a mean of 2.9 games (SD = 2.48). MC players (n = 35) solved a
16
mean of 3.2 games (SD = 3.43). There was no significant difference between the number
of solutions in the TOH versus the BG task (Kruskal Wallis χ 2 = .716, p = .397). There
was a correlation between TOH solutions and BG task solutions (Spearman’s ρ = .613, p
= .001) but not significant between MC solutions and BG task solutions (Spearman’s ρ
= .197, p = .257) (the two reclassified individuals are excluded from the above correlation
but included in the “prior skill” variable). The TOH and MC scores were combined into a
“prior skill” score for duration. There seemed to be a higher score for the ED than EE
condition, but this was not significant (Kruskal Wallis χ 2 = 1.504, p = .220).
Table 2 also shows the mean duration in all four conditions. The maximum
amount of time to play a single game was 900 seconds (15 minutes). Therefore, longer
durations indicate less skilled play (e.g. someone who never solved the game at all scores
900 seconds, whereas someone who solved 1 game after 500 seconds and then played an
unsuccessful game at 400 seconds would attain a mean score of 450 seconds). The
duration data were normally distributed, and therefore we conducted a univariate
ANOVA with “game duration” as the dependent variable and mood and expertise as the
fixed factors. Results are shown in Table 2 (rows 9–11). There was a significant main
effect of expertise (F1,66 = 9.958, p = .002), but the effect of mood was not significant
(F1,66 = 1.357, p = .248). There were no significant interactions. The mean duration of
TOH games was 358.9 seconds (SD = 252.8). The mean duration of MC games was
432.0 (SD = 317.3). There was a significant correlation between “prior skill” (Table 2)
and average solution time in the BG task (Pearson r = .368, p = .002). There were no
17
significant differences between conditions on these durations. Also, there were no age or
sex differences found in our analyses.
Discussion
We found that dysphoria led to better performance in the analogical reasoning
task. As stated earlier, we tested three predictions. The first was that experts (which we
defined as persons who played the TOH prior to the BG task) would outperform non-
experts (who played MC prior to the BG task). This prediction was confirmed. The
second prediction – that euphoria would enhance analogical reasoning – was not
confirmed. Our third prediction (which was incompatible with our second hypothesis)
stated that dysphoria provides an advantage – was supported (e.g. Feldman & Kokinov,
2009; Feldman et al., 2010, Hristova & Kokinov, 2011; Richert et al., 2005). We found
that expert dysphoric (ED) individuals outperformed the euphoric expert euphoric (EE)
individuals when using the measure of “number of games solved” in the “Bear God”
(BG) task (a TOH isomorph). Zero-heavy data necessitated the use of a ZIP regression
(see Appendix 2), which confirmed that the ED condition represented a significant
predictor. There was also an ostensible effect of prior skill (i.e. their presumed natural
abilities prior to training), but the effect was ambiguous. Interestingly, dysphoria
provided no advantage in the non-expert conditions, suggesting that mood alone is not
enough to complete a complicated task. There needs to be some knowledge behind it.
This has interesting implications for the issue of expertise and religion. Dysphoria only
18
helps the knowledgeable person conducting a ritual. Without a previous level of
procedural expertise, mood seems to be irrelevant.
Why was our third prediction (dysphoria leads to better performance) confirmed but not
the second (euphoria leads to better performance)? As mentioned in the introduction,
previous studies appear to support the idea that euphoria should be superior in analogical
reasoning because it is conducive to breadth of information processing. Part of the reason
for our results might lie in methodological differences between the current study and
prior studies. The study we emulated the most closely was that of Brand and Opwis
(2007), who trained participants in learning three-disk TOH prior to asking them to solve
three subsequent games that varied in how closely they resembled the first one (namely,
five-disk TOH, Missionary-Cannibal game, and “Katona card task”). In that study,
euphoria produced superior play (as measured by duration of game to solution).
Rethinking the study, we note that their paradigm was quite different to ours in possibly
some crucial ways. These differences might explain our results. One important contrast
might be that Brand and Opwis trained their participants in dyads. Participants were
paired and then asked to figure out the three-disk TOH together until they had mastered
the game. In contrast, our study simply gave participants a five-disk TOH (which is more
difficult than the three-disk version) and left them to figure out the solution solo. Another
difference lay in the transfer tasks. As Brand and Opwis (2007) admit, transfer
“performance may have been facilitated by first presenting… the task with very similar
surface features” (p. 62). In other words, the fact that they presented the five-disk TOH
after teaching them the three-disk was likely an obvious clue that the participants needed
19
to transfer their skills from one game to another. The participants in our study lacked this
clue. All of these factors mentioned above may have made the task much easier for the
participants in the Brand and Opwis (2007) study. Still, this might be other reasons for
why their results differ from ours. One might be in the way that euphoria and dysphoria
affect cognition differently. As noted in our introduction, euphoria has been described as
having a “broadening effect” on cognition (Frederickson & Branigan, 2005) and
dysphoria as having a “narrowing effect” (cf. Feldman & Kokinov, 2009; Feldman et al.,
2010). In other words, euphoria opens up your attention to the wider array of stimuli,
whereas dysphoria restricts one’s attention to the most salient details. Prior to conducting
this research, we thought that the “big picture” orientation of euphoric individuals would
naturally incline them to spot the analogy between the BG task and the five-disk TOH.
The idea was that the euphoric individuals were more schema-oriented rather than
details-oriented, and that this euphoria would facilitate transferring the principles better.
We were mistaken about this prediction. It seems that the “narrowing of scope” of
dysphoria was actually an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, because it focused
attention on the rules of the game. If so, then perhaps the euphoric state (“widening of
scope”) was less successful because the euphoric participants were too distracted by the
cover story (Appendix 1). More research is needed in order to uncover the mechanism
behind our results (cf. Hristova et al., 2011). The question is whether dysphoria helped
the participant to think analogically (cf. Richert et al., 2005) and apply the rules from a
previous game, or whether it helped them to figure out a problem that they thought was
novel, even if analogical reasoning was impaired (cf. Feldman & Kokinov, 2009).
20
The manipulation check (Affect Grid) appears to have worked as intended, but
only in one dimension. Individuals in the euphoric conditions did indicate higher scores
in the “happiness/sadness” (horizontal) dimension than those individuals in the dysphoric
conditions. However, this was not true for the “arousal” (vertical) dimension. This
suggests that the mood induction did not influence excitement level as strongly as it
influenced the character of their moods (for discussion about the circumplex model of
emotion, see Russell, 1980; Russell et al., 1989). Another independent variable was game
duration (which has been used successfully in previous studies, e.g. Brand & Opwis,
2007). Here, the only notable result was that expertise was a significant predictor of short
game durations. As mentioned earlier, shorter durations reflect quicker solution times,
whereas longer durations indicate lengthy, less skilled games (some of which were not
solved at all).
Our results prompt this question: does positive affect create a disadvantage? As
Frederickson and Branigan (2005) write: if “positive emotions do not share with negative
emotion this hallmark feature of promoting and supporting specific action, then what
good are they?” (p. 314). The answer, they write, is that positive affect is probably useful,
but for much different purposes than that of dysphoria. Negative affect is useful for the
“attack” and “flee” situations, whereas positive attack is about “play, explore, savour and
integrate” (p. 314). Accordingly, it is best to regard euphoria and dysphoria as
complementary processes with different purposes. Emotions are valuable because they
constitute an "index [of] occurrences of value" (Dolan, 2002, p. 1192): people pay
attention to the emotional and remember it better afterwards. According to Levenson
21
(1999), the human emotional system (consisting of automatic core processes partially
subject to voluntary control) is extremely useful in that it "helps us to engage in adaptive
voluntary behaviors" (p. 497; also see Hayden, 1987; Bless et al., 1996; Wyer et al.,
1999, §3). Levenson (1999) further claims that negative emotions "are optimal for the
short-term needs of actively dealing with threatening environmental challenges" (p. 492),
whereas positive emotions have a "soothing function" (p. 494). Fiedler et al. (2003)
claimed that positive mood facilitates "assimilative" tasks (where you need to think top-
down, be creative and attend to a wide range of stimuli), while negative moods facilitate
"accommodative" tasks (where one needs to think bottom-up, and attend closely to the
most important stimuli for the task) (also see Spering et al., 2005; Feldman & Kokinov,
2009; Feldman et al., 2010). Why is there a cognitive difference between positive and
negative affect? According to Isen (1987), the difference might be motivational (people
want to escape a sad mood but remain in a happy one), or else structural (happy
memories are better integrated than sad memories). A third view (Bless et al., 1996) is
that negative mood is a signal of urgency to act in response to a problem, whereas
positive mood is non-urgent (also see Wyer, 1999, pp. 38-40; Feldman et al., 2010).
Supporting this view is the study of Gable and Harmon-Jones (2010), whose experiment
manipulated the motivational intensity of the task in the negative dimension, finding that
low intensity situations (e.g. sadness) created attentional broadening and high intensity
situations (e.g. disgust) caused attentional narrowing. This implies that intensity is a more
important factor than valence. We can echo Frederickson and Branigan (2005) above and
ask a question about euphoria and dysphoria in religion: what good are they?
22
If you view religion as an "adaptive complex" in evolutionary terms (sensu
Alcorta & Sosis, 2005, Rossano, 2006, Kydd, 2008, etc.), then you might consider the
differential usefulness of each (Russell et al., 2011). Accordingly, we can adopt the view
that religions themselves are evolutionary units of replication (Whitehouse, 2008): they
survive by gaining adherents; they die out by losing adherents; and they can be identified
as possessing traits which that are causally related to their survival (also see Whitehouse,
2004). In other words, they can be adaptive or maladaptive in a given ‘religious
marketplace’. Why would we call it a marketplace? It is because a defining characteristic
of modern religion is that people can defect from one religious affiliation to another quite
easily (e.g. see report by Pew Research Center, 2008). In a competitive religious
marketplace, only those traditions that maximize both the emotional appeal of rituals and
the salience of authorised teachings while minimizing ‘tedium’ are likely to thrive
(Whitehouse, 2004). Some of the most successful traditions, such as fast-spreading
evangelical Christian traditions, cultivate and sustain euphoric states through the uses of
sensory 'pageantry' (e.g. rhythmical singing and swaying, moving instrumental music,
impassioned speech-making, etc.). This leads to another question: if euphoria is such an
advantage, then why do some religions sometimes do things which provoke fear and
dysphoria (Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Whitehouse, 1995, 2007) – the antithesis of euphoria –
amongst their members? Stories of hell are a good example (Bowker, 1982; Kvanvig,
2007), including that of the American “Hell House” tradition (Jackson, 2007), where
followers are deliberately put into a terrified state.
23
The question of dysphoria in religion might make the most sense if you put
religions into the context of modes theory (Whitehouse, 2004). Social scientists have long
recognized that rituals play a role in building social cohesion and collective identity and
have noted striking correlations between certain characteristics of rituals and particular
patterns of group formation and between-group competition. For instance, extensive
comparison of ethnographic case studies around the world (Whitehouse & Laidlaw,
2004) and longitudinal evidence from history and archaeology (Whitehouse & Martin,
2004) has shown that high-frequency but emotionally low-arousal rituals are typical of
large-scale but diffusely cohesive religious traditions whereas low-frequency but
emotionally very arousing rituals are typical of small but highly cohesive cults. A recent
survey of 645 rituals selected from a sample of 74 cultures (Atkinson & Whitehouse,
2011) confirmed that high-frequency rituals typically evince relatively low levels of
arousal whereas the vast majority of very low-frequency rituals entail intensely dysphoric
elements – traumatic ordeals involving physical and/or psychological tortures (ibid.;
Whitehouse, 1996, 2007). These two types of ritual correspond to distinct patterns of
group formation, respectively known as doctrinal and imagistic modes of religiosity
(Whitehouse, 1995, 2000, 2004). The doctrinal mode appears to be an evolved cultural
adaptation to large-scale societies with a complex division of labour, where trust and
cooperation among relative strangers requires standardized coalitional markers and a
common orthopraxy. The imagistic mode prevails in small groups engaging in high-risk
activities (such as warfare or the hunting of dangerous animals) where temptations to
defect in the face of danger are exceptionally strong. The intense intra-group cohesion
generated by the imagistic mode appears to be an evolved cultural adaptation to these
24
general circumstances, groups lacking such practices tending to be wiped out or absorbed
by neighbours who maintain the ‘right’ kinds of rituals. Much research has also been
devoted to investigating how variable frequency and arousal in ritual performances affect
the way rituals are remembered and interpreted (e.g. Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005),
since these and other related psychological factors are thought to impact the quality and
intensity of trust and cooperation within groups and rivalry and hostility between groups.
Euphoria and dysphoria might have different functions in religious transmission
(Russell et al., 2011). Euphoria might not promote intense philosophical queries or
precise implementation of rituals, but instead might be valuable for motivating
participation, stimulating social cohesion, and ensuring continued adherence to the faith
(cf. Hayden, 1987; Russell et al., 2011). In contrast – given that every religion carries a
range of stipulations about how to live, how to behave, and what to believe – we suggest
that dysphoria might be most useful for ensuring that adherents pay closer attention to the
meaning of rituals, the analogical connections between them, and their salience in
everyday life. More research is needed to confirm this possible functional distinction
between euphoria and dysphoria (see Russell et al., 2011). In terms of (cultural)
evolutionary success (Whitehouse, 2008), we can speculate that the most successful
religions (in terms of the capacity to attract followers, keep them, and spread into new
territories) are likely to be those that offer an optimal combination of euphoria and
dysphoria (see Whitehouse, 2004). However, in the mind of a ritual participant, there is
likely a complex interplay between pain, pleasure, and the socio-cognitive meaning of the
ritual (cf. Bell, 1997). For example, Xygalatas et al. (2013) found that real-life Hindu
25
participants in a painful and high-arousal ritual had higher levels of prosociality (as
measured by charitable donation) than those who participated in low arousal rituals. This
illustrates a different – non-euphoric – causal path to group cohesion, perhaps where
dysphoria facilitated the correct implementation of the ritual which in turn led to group
benefits. Future research should investigate a diversity of games as stand-ins for rituals
and using different levels of mood induction (cf. Richert et al., 2005).
As mentioned earlier, Whitehouse (1996, 2004) proposed that ‘flashbulb’ memory
could play a role in the memory processes related to religious rituals; and this would be
most pertinent in rituals that provoke extreme emotion (e.g. in Xygalatas et al., 2013; cf.
Whitehouse, 2007). In a recent review of the ‘flashbulb’ phenomenon, Luminet and Curci
(2009) found that the best models of flashbulb memory (FBM) show a link between the
importance and emotionality of the dysphoric event, which inevitably leads to mental
rehearsal of the pertinent events – which ultimately leads to a vivid recollection that is
difficult to forget. Furthermore, they found that social identity was an important variable.
For example, Americans participants processed their memories differently to the 9/11
terror attacks than did European participants: the memory of American FBMs were also
affected by the novelty and surprise of the event; whereas European FBMs were affected
by their attitudes towards the United States. The implication of this for religion would
seem obvious: flashbulb memory should be highly consequential in how an individual
processes the memory of the high-arousal dysphoric ritual. If dysphoria generates
spontaneous exegetical reflection (SER) (Whitehouse, 2004; Richert et al., 2005), then a
member of the pertinent religious in-group – someone with expertise of one’s own
26
religion – will be able to generate their own theologically correct analysis of the meaning
of the ritual (the “sacral symbolism” aspect, Bell, 1997); which should, in turn, lead to an
enhanced motivation to perform the task correctly (i.e. conform to the other dimensions
that Bell, 1997, mentioned: formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance,
performance). The need to perform correctly should not be understated: dysphoric rituals
play a crucial role in the formation of the essential personal self and can have major
consequences for group alignment (Swann et al. 2012; Whitehouse and Lanman, in
press). The performance aspect of a dysphoric ritual thus has two sides of its
performance: an expert semantic memory about the significance of the ritual (facilitated
by dysphoria-induced SER and FBM) and an expert procedural memory (and recall that
our results showed an advantage for dysphoria only in the expertise condition). We
should also note that the complexity of the task itself can play a role in the dysphoria-
expert advantage (Hristova et al., 2013). As we know, religious rituals vary enormously
in their complexity and emotionality (Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011), and the cognitive
consequences of the full range of rituals should be explored in the context of the recurrent
forms of religion (cf. Whitehouse, 2012).
Finally, we will ask a methodological question: is the usage of the TOH game
actually useful for understanding religion? Let us think about what Azari et al. (2005)
show in their brain study: that the emotional experiences of religion – positive and
negative – emerge from the highly cognitive processes of needing to understand causal
relations within a religious belief system (cf. Hristova & Kokinov, 2011). This would
seem to justify our use of games as a proxy for religious ritual, because all game play is
27
based on understanding causal relations within the game (see below about ecological
validity). Here, we have used methodology from cognitive psychology hitherto not
applied to religion. This is a valid approach because, as Pyysiäinen (2013) says, “the very
existence of religion requires... cognitive mechanisms that also function outside of
religion” (p. 11) (also see Azari et al., 2005 and Ozorak, 2005). Although our games-as-
proxy approach may seem remote from religion in the real world, it is neither possible
nor desirable to accurately simulate the conditions of real-life religious occasions (see
Cole et al., 1997). There are two validity issues here (Brecht & Glass, 1968): (a)
“population validity” (issue of whether test population can be justifiably used to
generalise about larger non-test populations), and (b) “ecological validity” (issue of
whether the same results would be obtained in a different setting). Regarding the
population issue, we have deliberately sampled individuals from various religions and
cultural backgrounds. This was done for generalizability of our results across cultures
and religions (cf. van de Vijver & Leung, 1997); in other words, we sought “human”
rather than culturally-specific data. Because there is no real-life “generic” religious ritual,
our “Bear God” task was useful in its cartoonish neutrality. An alternative approach, for
future studies, might be to compare and contrast individuals on a group level (e.g.
compare different faiths). On the issue of ecological validity, we must highlight the
staggering diversity of religious experiences that exist in the world (e.g., see Bell, 1997;
Boyer, 1994, 2001; Davis, 1989; Grim, 2006; Jackson, 2007; Kvanvig, 2007; McCauley
& Lawson, 2002; Pyysiäinen & Anttonen, 2002; Swann et al., 2012; Stark, 1965;
Whitehouse, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007; Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004; Whitehouse &
Martin, 2004; Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005). It is simply not possible to create a
28
“generic” ritual setting that carries the same meaning(s) for all participants. For example,
it is not possible to create “sacral symbolism” (Bell, 1997) unless you test individuals of
the same faith (although this might create a politically sensitive situation for the
experimenter). However, other aspects of rituals (ibid.) – formalism, traditionalism,
invariance, rule-governance, performance, etc. – could be tested (in isolation or together,
in game-form or otherwise) against mood and emotion paradigms in order to find reliable
effects and to evaluate which aspects of ritual are important for the way that people
cognitively process their religious rituals. Our approach in this paper was to find an effect
rather than create a facsimile of a real ritual. As Brecht and Glass (1968) suggest, the
aforementioned problem of ecological validity can be surmounted by conducting future
studies which entail “varying ecological settings to determine what aspects of the
treatment are causing the effect” (p. 453). If we take this approach to the cognitive
science of religion using the well-developed techniques of psychology, then we can
ultimately piece together the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to religious movements
around the globe.
29
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Acknowledgements: We thank Alain and Tobie Gobet for programming the computer
games, 67 students at Brunel University, and to the organizers of CEM09 in Tunisia
(especially Dr. Masmoudi). For administrative support, we thank Barbara de Bruine,
Dr. Claire White, Dr. Jon Lanman, Sarah-Jane White, Dr. Jesse Bering, Shane
Gavaghan, Tricia Lock, Shereen Sinclair, and Dr. Karen Johnson. Thank to you to Dr.
Michael Buhrmester and anonymous reviewers for comments. This research was
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funded by a research grant from the European Commission (EC-FP6 EXREL project
43225). Yvan Russell was partly funded by the German Initiative of Excellence of the
German Science Foundation (DFG). This work was also supported by an ESRC
Large Grant (REF RES-060-25-0085) entitled “Ritual, Community, and Conflict”
(Whitehouse).
Appendix 1 Deliberately obfuscatory oral instructions for “Bear God” task (TOH isomorph)
The Legend of the Bear-God
In a remote northern region of the arctic, the Bear-God is a spirit who protects the “Go-bay” people from predators and fierce weather. But the Bear-God must be persuaded to continue providing supernatural protection through the performance of a series of sacred tasks. There are always two (and only two) spiritual practitioners in a Go-bay tribe. One is the Leader Shaman. The other is the shaman-in-training. The Leader Shaman performs all five tasks. However, pleasing the Bear-God is a complicated task and the Leader Shaman and the shaman-in-training need to work together.
The five tasks are ranked in order of their seriousness. Ranked from 1 – 5, they are:(1) Kill a bear and offer it as a sacrifice
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(2) Cut down a rare type of tree and use its timber to prepare a burnt offering(3) Make food offering (corn)(4) Recite a prayer(5) Put hand on your heart and close your eyes
Before performing any of these tasks, a person must turn towards the sun, close their eyes and say "I humbly offer to faithfully do the task of…” [insert ritual here]. The person must then choose which ritual to take on. However, there are two strict rules here.
(1) The person must only take over the lowest-ranked task that the other is doing. Therefore, at the beginning of the ritual, the person can only take over task #5 ("put hand on your heart and close your eyes").
(2) The person can only take a task which is lower ranked than one that they are already doing. Therefore, if a person is already doing task #3, then they cannot also take task #2 – but they can take task #4.
Sometimes the Leader Shaman and shaman-in-training have difficulty with this task. If so, they can appeal to the Bear-God for pity and ask that He treat the task as having been done. But the Bear-God can only grant such a request for a task which is lower ranked than the request that he has last granted. In addition, the Bear-God will grow impatient if he is asked to grant such favour too frequently, so the Leader Shaman and the shaman-in-training must strive towards accomplishing all the sacred tasks with as few requests for pity as possible.
Appendix 2 Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression
The Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression (see Böhning et al., 1997, 1999) is a
mixed-model variant on the usual Poisson regression, where the curve is fitted according
to two classes: if the value is zero, then that part of the distribution has a single point at
zero; if the value is more than zero, then that part of the distribution resembles the usual
Poisson distribution. In the case of zero-heavy data, the ZIP regression curve can be used
to provide a closer fit to data than possible with other, more standard, regression curves
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(e.g. see Karazsia & van Dulmen, 2008). We used the statistical program STATA
(version IC 11.1) in order to use to ZIP regression. Here, the data were entered in the data
file in a different way. Columns held data as follows: number of BG games solved,
condition 1 (EE), condition 2 (ED), condition 3 (NE), condition 4 (ND), age, male, and
female. When running the ZIP regression, the STATA program omitted one of the gender
categories due to collinearity (i.e. female = “yes” is dependent on male = “no”).
Therefore, we report the effect of sex even though we run only one of the genders in the
analysis (i.e. the predictor of ‘male’ or ‘female’ will come out the same in the analysis, if
you exclude one or the other). Unexpectedly, the STATA program also omitted condition
4 due to being collinear with condition 3. This meant that the effects of the two non-
expert conditions would be identical (to confirm this, we ran the test twice, once
excluding condition 3 and once excluding condition 4). Therefore, we simply report the
‘non-expert conditions’ instead of referring to them individually.
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Figure 1 Five-disk Tower of Hanoi
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Figure 2 Screenshot of the “Bear God” task
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Figure 4 Number of times that TOH isomorph solved by condition
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Step Expert euphoric (EE)
Expert dysphoric (ED)
Non-expert euphoric (NE)
Non-expert dysphoric (ND)
1. Sign consent sheet2. Games questionnaire3. Affect grid4. Mood induction
(“Mr. Bean”)Mood induction (“Threads”)
Mood induction (“Mr. Bean”)
Mood induction (“Threads”)
5. Sham memory test6. Affect grid7. Play Tower of
Hanoi (TOH) Play Tower of Hanoi (TOH)
Play Missionary Cannibal (MC)
Play Missionary Cannibal (MC)
8. Affect grid 9. Play Bear God (BG) task10. Affect grid11. Demographic questionnaire12. Debriefing13. Payment (£10 GBP)
Table 1 Experimental procedure
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Row Measure: Expert Euphoric (EE)
Non-expert Euphoric (NE)
Expert Dysphoric (ED)
Non-expert Dysphoric (ND)
All conditions
1 First game played TOH MC TOH MC TOH or MC
2 Horizontal score (happy-sad) on affect grid (range 1–9)
6.24(1.11)
6.07(1.14)
5.55(1.03)
5.29(0.98)
5.77(1.11)
3 6.15(1.11)
5.40(0.99)
4 Vertical score (arousal) on affect grid (range 1–9)
5.90 (1.43)
5.95(1.40)
5.70(1.17)
5.57(1.41)
5.77(1.34)
5 5.93(1.39)
5.62(1.29)
6 Number of times BG solved: Mean (SD)
0.88(0.92)
0.31 (0.60)
2.13 (2.53)
0.42 (0.96)
0.90 (1.55)
7 Proportion of zeroes 47% 75% 40% 79% 61%
8 Skewness statistic (BG games solved)
0.256 1.890 1.016 2.347 2.375
9 “Prior skill”: number of times TOH or MC solved: Mean (SD)
2.36 (1.50)
3.06(3.99)
4.13(3.60)
2.89(2.60)
3.07 (3.03)
10 “Prior skill”: mean duration (seconds) TOH or MC: Mean (SD)
371.49 (247.18)
440.99 (247.18)
347.99 (275.31)
424.09 (320.50)
397.74 (285.98)
11 Game duration (seconds) of BG game (including non-solutions): Mean (SD)
611.97 (281.16)
786.79 ( 202.94)
500.09 (346.98)
744.09 (240.79)
666.14 (286.66)
Table 2 Dependent variables and affect grid scores across conditions for BG (Bear-God), TOH (Tower of Hanoi), and MC (Missionary-Cannibal) games.
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