Beat the Bots: Exploring the Effects of Placebo Manipulation on Performance During Video Gameplay

Abstract

This study investigates placebos and video games’ usefulness as psychological research tools. One proposed underlying mechanism of the placebo effect is participants’ expectations. Such expectation effects exist in sports psychology and healthcare domains, but inconsistent findings have emerged on whether similar effects impact a participants’ cognitive performance. Concurrently, using video games as task environments is an emerging methodology relating to expertise and large-scale behavioral data collection. Therefore, this study examines the expectancy effect induced by researcher instructions on in-game performance. The instructional expectancy condition for this study is in-game successes framed using emoting (e.g., emoting under the pretense of subsequent performance increases) versus a control group. Preliminary results showed no evidence of different in-game performance between expectancy conditions. Potential mechanisms that could have led to a lack of effect were discussed.