Abstract
Exergames appear to have great potential in releasing anxiety and two ubiquitous elements of exergames are competition and cooperation. However, less is known about effects of competition and cooperation in exergames on anxiety state. Thus, the aim of this study was to examine and compare possible anxiolytic impacts of the two game modes in male university students. Twenty-four healthy male students were recruited and randomly assigned to competitive exergame, cooperative exergame or control conditions. All participants’ state anxiety, trait anxiety or skin conductance were accessed before and after the interventions. During the experiment, the competition and cooperation groups played the exergame in different modes respectively, while the control group was asked to do traditional exercises. Results showed that cooperative exergame significantly improved the state anxiety as well as the physiological behavior. No significant changes of self-report anxiety or physiological response occurred in the competition and control group. Exergames, especially played cooperatively, can be an effective tool for anxiety management.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Stubbs, B., Koyanagi, A., Hallgren, M., Firth, J., Vancampfort, D.: Physical activity and anxiety: a perspective from the world health survey. J. Affect. Disord 208, 545–552 (2017)
SigfĂşsdĂłttir, I.: Physical activity and sedentary behavior among university students: association with anxiety and stress (Doctoral dissertation) (2019)
Viana, R.B., et al.: Anxiolytic effects of a single session of the exergame Zumba® fitness on healthy young women. Games Health. J. 6(6), 365–370 (2017)
Hill, M.D., Gibson, A.M., Wagerman, S.A., Flores, E.D., Kelly, L.A.: The effects of aerobic and resistance exercise on state anxiety and cognitive function. Sci. Sports 34(4), 216–221 (2019)
Xu, F., Liu, W., Rose Chepyator-Thomson, J., Schmidlein, R.: Relations of physical activity and stress vulnerability in university students. Coll. Stud. J. 52(1), 65–73 (2018)
Siefken, K., Junge, A., Laemmle, L.: How does sport affect mental health? An investigation into the relationship of leisure-time physical activity with depression and anxiety. Hum. Mov. 20(1), 62–74 (2019)
Marker, A.M., Staiano, A.E.: Better together: outcomes of cooperation versus competition in social exergaming. Games Health J. 4(1), 25–30 (2015)
Ryan, R.M., Deci, E.L.: Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. Am. Psychol. 55(1), 68 (2000)
Song, H., Kim, J., Tenzek, K.E., Lee, K.M.: The effects of competition and competitiveness upon intrinsic motivation in exergames. Comput. Hum. Behav. 29(4), 1702–1708 (2013)
Feltz, D.L., Forlenza, S.T., Winn, B., Kerr, N.L.: Cyber buddy is better than no buddy: a test of the Köhler motivation effect in exergames. Games Health Res. Dev. Clin. Appl. 3(2), 98–105 (2014)
Staiano, A.E., Abraham, A.A., Calvert, S.L.: Adolescent exergame play for weight loss and psychosocial improvement: a controlled physical activity intervention. Obesity 21(3), 598–601 (2013)
Kivikangas, J.M., Kätsyri, J., Järvelä, S., Ravaja, N.: Gender differences in emotional responses to cooperative and competitive game play. PloS one 9(7), e100318 (2014)
Adams, R.: Revised physical activity readiness questionnaire. Can. Fam. Physician 45, 992 (1999)
Shaw, L.A., Buckley, J., Corballis, P.M., Lutteroth, C., WĂĽnsche, B.C.: Competition and cooperation with virtual players in an exergame. PeerJ. Comput. Sci. 2, e92 (2016)
Spielberger, C.D., Sydeman, S.J., Owen, A.E., Marsh, B.J.: Measuring anxiety and anger with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Hillsdale (1999)
Barnes, L.L., Harp, D., Jung, W.S.: Reliability generalization of scores on the Spielberger state-trait anxiety inventory. Educ. Psychol. Meas. 62(4), 603–618 (2002)
Li, X., Li, R., Han, T.: Effect of gamification of exercise therapy on elderly’s anxiety emotion. In: Zhou, J., Salvendy, G., (eds.) HCII 2019. LNCS, vol. 11593, pp. 533–544. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22015-0_41
Najafpour, E., Asl-Aminabadi, N., Nuroloyuni, S., Jamali, Z., Shirazi, S.: Can galvanic skin conductance be used as an objective indicator of children’s anxiety in the dental setting? J. Clin. Exp. Dent. 9(3), e377 (2017)
Silver, R.: The relationship between physical activity levels and health anxiety. Senior honors diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2019)
Petruzzello, S.J., Landers, D.M., Hatfield, B.D., Kubitz, K.A., Salazar, W.: A meta-analysis on the anxiety-reducing effects of acute and chronic exercise. Sports Med. 11(3), 143–182 (1991)
Lim, S., Reeves, B.: Computer agents versus avatars: responses to interactive game characters controlled by a computer or other player. Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud. 68(1–2), 57–68 (2010)
Novak, D., Nagle, A., Keller, U., Riener, R.: Increasing motivation in robot-aided arm rehabilitation with competitive and cooperative gameplay. J. Neuroeng. Rehabil. 11(1), 64 (2014)
Zhao, Z.: Personalization of wearable-based exergames with continuous player modeling. PhD diss., Carleton University (2019)
Wu, Z., Li, J., Theng, Y.L.: Examining the influencing factors of exercise intention among older adults: a controlled study between exergame and traditional exercise. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 18(9), 521–527 (2015)
Kivikangas, J. M.: Emotion and social context in a digital game experience. Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Studies in Psychology (2015)
Peng, W., Crouse, J.: Playing in parallel: the effects of multiplayer modes in active video game on motivation and physical exertion. Cyberpsychol. Behav. Soc. Netw. 16(6), 423–427 (2013)
Murray, E.G., Neumann, D.L., Moffitt, R.L., Thomas, P.R.: The effects of the presence of others during a rowing exercise in a virtual reality environment. Psychol. Sport Exerc. 22, 328–336 (2016)
Acknowledgement
The research is supported by National Social Science Fund (Grant No. 18BRK009).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fan, B., Cao, X., He, J., Han, T. (2020). Impact of Competitive Versus Cooperative Exergame Play on Releasing Anxiety Among Male University Students. In: Fang, X. (eds) HCI in Games. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12211. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50164-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50164-8_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-50163-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-50164-8
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)