Latest Expert Witness News

Psychology experiment uses video game

A psychology expert is using the Nintendo Wii computer game to investigate how people think and make decisions. American Psychology expert Dr Rick Dale is to give a public lecture at the National University of Ireland, Galway on 12 November on how he has adapted the popular video-game console to explore the relationship between the mind and the body.

His findings are that people who use the device have a ‘truth bias’.

Many psychologists concluded that thinking and acting were managed by relatively separate subsystems in the human mind. This was reflected in the way that, when we make decisions, most of us feel as if we think and then act.

The research showed the systems that control thinking and those that control action are actually deeply intertwined. The results showed that it took longer for participants to decide that a statement was false, rather than true. In many cases, the cursor travelled first toward the yes, and then curved over to no. For the researchers, this indicated two things. Firstly, the body was in motion before the cognitive processing was completed.

Secondly, the participants really wanted to believe most of the statements were true, even though they decided quickly that some of them were not.

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