Mitigation of Cognitive Bias with a Serious Game

Abstract

One of the benefits of using digital games for education is that games can provide feedback for learners to assess their situation and correct their mistakes. We conducted two studies to examine the effectiveness of different feedback design (timing, duration, repeats, and feedback source) in a serious game designed to teach learners about cognitive biases. We also compared the digital game-based learning condition to a professional training video. Overall, the digital game was significantly more effective than the video condition. Longer durations and repeats improve the effects on bias-mitigation. Surprisingly, there was no significant difference between just-in-time feedback and delayed feedback, and computer-generated feedback was more effective than feedback from other players.

Retention and Transfer of Cognitive Bias Mitigation Interventions: A Systematic Literature Study

“…Effects were observed up to 12 weeks after the training interventions, with relatively large effect sizes (e.g., Clegg et al, 2015;Morewedge et al, 2015;Rhodes et al, 2017). The largest effect sizes were observed in studies that involved repeated game playing (Dunbar et al, 2014(Dunbar et al, , 2017Clegg et al, 2015). This agrees with the finding that repetitive training increases retention (Cepeda et al, 2008).…”

“…Secondly, most studies involved only one training session, while repetition of training has been shown to increase retention effects in many different tasks and learning situations (e.g., Ausubel and Youssef, 1965;Cepeda et al, 2008). The present review found three out of the four studies with multiple training sessions indicating that playing the game twice resulted in more bias reduction than playing the game only once (Dunbar et al, 2014(Dunbar et al, , 2017Clegg et al, 2015). Lastly, there could be an effect of testing.…”

“…The article on retention by Dunbar et al (2017) investigated the effectiveness of the MACBETH debiasing game (Dunbar et al, 2013) played either once or twice for 30 or 60 min in a single-or multi-player mode with either immediate or delayed feedback on biases, and a control condition in which a bias training video was presented. The game and video both aimed to mitigate the fundamental attribution error and the confirmation bias.…”

“…Overall, serious games were by far the most successful interventions. Studies that specifically compared the effects of game-based with other kinds of interventions (eight in total) showed that games were more effective than video interventions (Veinott et al, 2013;Clegg et al, 2014Clegg et al, , 2015Dunbar et al, 2014Dunbar et al, , 2017Morewedge et al, 2015;Rhodes et al, 2017;Shaw et al, 2018). The authors of these studies often suggest that the interactive and engaging nature of games might be the essential factor explaining this difference.…”