=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2055/paper7
|storemode=property
|title=On the Development Process of ReApp, an Emotion Regulation Training Mobile Game, in the Context of Gamification and the Creation of Games for Wellbeing
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2055/paper7.pdf
|volume=Vol-2055
|authors=Vered Pnueli,Benjamin Cook
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/chiplay/PnueliC17
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==On the Development Process of ReApp, an Emotion Regulation Training Mobile Game, in the Context of Gamification and the Creation of Games for Wellbeing==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2055/paper7.pdf
On the development process of ReApp, an Emotion
Regulation Training Mobile Game, in the context of
Gamification and the creation of Games for Wellbeing.
Dr. Vered Pnueli Benjamin Cook
Ramat Gan, Israel Ramat Gan, Israel
vered_pnueli@shenkar.ac.il benjytcook@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Author Keywords
ReApp is a mobile, multiplayer game aimed at training
Emotion regulation; Cognitive Reappraisal; Behavior
people in emotional regulation, specifically in cognitive
change for Health; Games for wellbeing ; Purposeful
reappraisal (CR). The game was produced as part of an
Games; Gamification.
interdisciplinary research between a group of researchers
from the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at IDC - ACM Classification Keywords
Prof. Eran Halperin, Lihi Harel, and researchers from the K.4.1. Computers and Society; Public Policy Issues –
Game Design Program at Shenkar College for Engineering Computer-related health issues; K.8. Personal Computing;
and Design - Dr. Vered Pnueli, Benjamin Cook, Adi Galili Games.
and Mor Mendelevi. The process of CR involves the INTRODUCTION
reinterpretation of situations in a manner that changes our This research is a collaborative interdisciplinary effort
emotional responses to them. In this process an individual aimed at developing a tool that will train people to use
learns how to control her emotions and express less Cognitive Reappraisal (CR), a valued strategy for Emotion
negative and more positive emotions. CR is an antecedent Regulation. Emotion Regulation is the process by which
focused strategy for emotion regulation as it concerns the people learn how to control their emotions, their intensity,
things we do before our emotion response tendencies have and how to express them. [1] People who are not trained in
become fully activated and influence our behavior. By Emotion Regulation or who are unable to match emotion to
contrast to other emotion regulation technics, such as the situation, are more exposed to extreme psychological
Suppression for instance, CR trains people to reappraise problems and social dysfunction. [2] Emotions are
situations first and following this to control their emotional generated when a person appraises a stimulus emotional
response. Suppression, on the contrary, is a response – significance, which triggers an effective psychological and
focused strategy. People who suppress reappraise their behavioral response. [3-4]There are several ways to
emotional response. CR is widely valued as a more regulate emotions. Regulation can be intrinsic – of personal
productive process for emotion regulation that benefits feelings, extrinsic – regulating the emotions of other, it can
from less side-effect, such as memory loss. This paper be automatically, or controlled, consciously or
focuses on the process of developing a game that will serve unconsciously, and may affect one or more stages of the
as a training tool for people who are interested in practicing emotion generation process. [5] The two major emotion
CR. It describes the challenges we faced in our attempt to regulation strategies used in the field study of emotions are
implement a psychological model into a fun driven Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression.
environment, whilst keeping the game effective in its However, researchers in the study of emotions see clear
psychological goal. ReApp is still a work in progress. benefits for using CR over Suppression. Following James
Future research raises questions related to the use of user-
generated-content to increase players' scope of training and
sense of playfulness, and the employment of AI to have a
better monetization on players progression in CR.
Positive Gaming: Workshop on Gamification and Games for Wellbeing
A CHI PLAY ’17 Workshop
October 15, 2017, The Netherlands
© 2017 Copyright held by the authors/owners.
Gross’ classic model for emotion regulation strategies, CR engaging game mechanic that also appeals to people who
trains people how to change the trajectory of emotional are not looking for emotional therapy.
responses by reinterpreting the meaning of the emotional
response stimuli. [1] In contrast to suppression, which is a
response strategy for emotion regulation, CR is an RELATED WORK: COGNITIVE REAPPRAISAL IN
antecedent focused strategy for emotion regulation that GAMES
concerns the things we do before the emotion response As notably observed by Richard M.Ryan and Edward L.
tendencies have become fully activated and have changed Deci in their study of self Determination, there are two
our behavior responding. Studies have suggested that types of motivations which call people to action: intrinsic
individual who habitually reappraise experience and and extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation refers to doing an
express less negative and more positive emotions. activity, primarily, because it leads to a separable outcome
Moreover, they show that across a variety of negative or an instrumental value. Intrinsic motivation occurs when
emotions, such as disgust, anger, sadness and distress, CR
the activity itself is interesting and spontaneously
effectively decreases negative emotional experience
without substantial psychological costs. [6] satisfying. When intrinsically motivated, people display
Expressive Suppression, on the other hand, is defined as the curiosity, explore novel stimuli and work to master optimal
attempt to hide or reduced ongoing emotion and generally challenge. [8] In recent years, the process of Gamification
is perceived as less effective than CR due to side-effects has widely grown to be an effective method for creating
such as memory loss. [7] intrinsic motivation in people. By adding game elements to
Figure1: A scheme by Gross and John of Cognitive non-game activities and platforms, the use of Gamification
Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression emotion regulation has the ability to create a participation-and-reward system
processes [1]
that shapes user behavior and increase her motivation to
continue engaging with the activity. [9] Indeed, recent years
have seen a rise in the development of games and gamified
systems for therapy. In the specific field of Emotion-
focused therapy, there are several examples. For instance,
Aurora (2011), [10] is a gamified systems aimed to promote
emotional reflection and social sharing of emotions. Users
of Aurora can archive their emotions and share it with
others. Yet, while the system corresponds with some game
aspects, such as personalization, archiving and sharing, this
mobile app is not a game per se, as it lacks aspects of
Our goal in the development of ReApp was to create a progression, competitiveness and skill development that we
training tool for people practice CR on a daily basis. We sought to include in the development of ReApp. Another
chose to begin with a digital adaptation to a training method mobile app in this category is iCouch CBT. [11] The app
that was regularly used in the research lab of the Baruch teaches users to think “better thoughts” In regard to
Ivcher School of Psychology at IDC that study CR. In this upsetting situations through filling out guided questions that
method, testers were asked to write their interpretations for ask them to re-evaluate and select the distortions that may
situation that were exposed to then via images. They needed be negatively influencing their feelings. Similar to Aurora,
to specifically choose an emotion that expresses their this app is focused on archiving feelings and introspection.
feeling toward the situation presented in the picture. After A different approach to training people in positive
writing down their interpretation and subsequent feeling psychology via mobile technology is introduced in the app
e.g. Angry, Happy, Disgust, they were asked to reappraise Live Happy. [12] Live Happy offers tips and ideas to
their interpretation of the situation, and then write again meaningful lives through a moderated system of interviews
how they feel about it. Testing sessions usually lasted with positive psychology professionals. There are various
twenty minutes, in small groups and over two weeks before activities that are set to help users boost their happiness,
showing initial results. Our task was to create a tool that including a 'Gratitude Journal' and a 'Strive Journal' for
would enable a larger scope of people to train in CR on a designed to aid users to achieve happiness goals.
daily basis. Furthermore, we wanted to produce a product However, while such examples and similar others fall into
that people would use over time during their leisure time. the category of gamification, there are very few examples
Therefore, we decided to create a game that would adopt for games that implement positive psychology principles
the principles of CR, and at the same time will have an into their game mechanics. A unique example is Good
Blocks. [13] The game mechanic is based on swiping players switch roles every round, and thus both are trained
positive emotions or thoughts towards you (downwards), in reappraisal in both forms: The ability to reappraise a
and negative ones away from you (upwards). Unlike the situation, and to regulate their emotional response to it.
aforementioned examples, in Good Blocks there is a clear
winning and losing framework and a clear progression
mechanic. Similarly to Good Blocks, ReApp belongs to the
category of Purposeful Games - Games that intend to fulfil THE DESIGN FLOW
a purpose beyond the self-contained goal of the game itself. Figure 2: ReApp design scheme
[14] Yet, purposeful games’ biggest challenge is to
demonstrate the transfer of learning, and at the same time,
remain engaging and entertaining, i.e, to be games.
Correspondingly, in the development process of ReAPP we
opt to create a game that will translate our desire to train
people in emotional regulation, yet at the same time, it was
very important for us that the game will appeal to people
who seek to connect through competitive play, regardless
any emotional therapy needs. We hoped we could entice
more people this way to gradually train in CR.
METHODOLOGIES
In the initial brainstorming of the main mechanic of Reapp,
we immediately seized upon the idea that the game must be
multiplayer. The practicing of regulating emotions and
dealing with stressful situations is best done while facing
another human, who can understand the full depth and
complexity of a situation. Inspired by other turn based
games, such as Draw Something, [15] we determined that
we should use the editing of images to allow our players to
reappraise their partner's emotions.
The game flows as follows:
1) Judge receives a picture and is asked to input her
emotional response on the “emotional wheel”.
2) Editor receives Judge’s picture, her initial
response, and a “challenge”. The challenge is to
get Judge to react in a different way to the picture
(example: reduce Judge’s sadness towards the
situation). Editor has tools to modify the picture,
such as adding a caption or speech bubble.
3) Judge receives the modified picture and again is
asked to input his emotional response of the wheel.
4) Based on Judge’s response and how close Editor
was to her given challenge, the players receive a During the development process we made sure to conduct
score. Based on this score, items and behaviors in play-testing at every milestone: Ensuring both the game
the progression will unlock. remains light hearted and fun, while interesting and actually
valid to Cognitive Reappraisal. Initial play testing was
taken at stages of paper prototype. Students were modifying
By modifying the original picture, the Editor helps the other images on paper to validate the initial game design.
player to reappraise her emotions regarding the picture, Following playtests were taken with the actual game on
decreasing or increasing her initial emotional reaction. The smartphones. In addition to the participants answering
surveys about their experience, the app itself records in the game could enrich its value as a training tool for CR.
analytics and was used to measure long term effects. In a In this version of the game, users are encouraged to
survey conducted by Lihi Erhael that tested the compete over photos offered to them. While there is a
effectiveness of ReApp on users to reduce political button for uploading pictures, the feature is not promoted in
conflicts, the following findings were found: “Results the game as a primary activity. We would like to test
indicated that ReApp is successful in training participants whether the promotion of the 'upload button' as a primary
to use reappraisal. Participants who played ReApp feature can 1- encourage people to use the game, 2-
(compared with the control condition) reported more enhance their ability to reappraise situations related to their
frequent usage of reappraisal when responding to conflict- personal views and solve personal problems.
related images. Moreover, participants who played ReApp
B) We want to examine the effects of an artificial
reported fewer negative and more positive emotional
intelligence system on the effectiveness of training in CR.
experiences when reacting to conflict-related images;
We consider the development of an AI system that tracks
specifically, anger, disgust and sadness were reduced, Joy
players' progress and, accordingly, match tasks and
was increased, and fear was not significant”. [16]
competitions according to her abilities and interests.
However, a possible side-effect for this AI system is that
players will expose less to subjects they do not know and
Figure 3: ReApp screen samples
will operate in a limited range of fields.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank all the volunteers, play testers and all publications
support and staff, who wrote and provided helpful
comments on previous versions of this document. Dr. Vered
Pnueli and Benjamin Cook gratefully acknowledge the
grants from Shenkar College headed by Professor Yuli
Tamir and from the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at
IDC headed by Prof. Eran Halperin, which enabled us to
conduct this research. .
REFERENCES
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3. Scherer, K.R 2001. Appraisal considered as a process of
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