Effects of computer games on real-life collaboration.

Present study examines the effect of collaborative and competitive online games on group outcomes in the physical world. Participants first played an online game that is designed to be collaborative, competitive or individual. They were then grouped in a three-person group to work on two real-life tasks: a puzzle solving task and a group creativity task. Results show that both competition and collaboration group did better than the control group in the puzzle-solving task, albeit an insignificant result. On the other hand, control group generated significantly more creative ideas than the competition group in the group creativity task. Present research suggests several variables that might mediate the conventional collaboration and competition effect and proposes some important implications.Bachelor of Art