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Does gender stereotype threat affects the levels of aggressiveness, learning and flow in gamified learning environments?: An experimental study

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Abstract

Studies in the literature reported several positive benefits provided by the use of technology in online education, especially in the gamified tutoring system. However, despite the benefits of intelligent tutoring systems, recent studies indicate the presence of a gender gap not considered in the construction of the attributes present in the gamified tutoring system. To investigate this impact by observing users’ behavioral changes in gamified online educational environments, the present study aims to investigate the effects of the stereotype threats using a quantitative experiment with a Factorial Design in three gamified environments (stereotypical male version, stereotypical female version and control environment). Was conducted an experiment with 150 individuals (high school and undergraduate students) without considering age, ethnicity, or social class. The results show that the participants allocated to the male learning environment present an increase in aggressiveness level. Furthermore, the results also show the stereotypical male and female learning environments increased the participants’ performance level. Another finding was that the threatening condition provided a significant increase in the participants’ flow level among males subjected to a threatening condition, which did not manifest in the case of females. In addition, this study also observed the effect of the stereotype threat on men and women in the threatening condition by division in the 34-year age group, resulting in a significant increase in the level of flow among men. This study showed previous results show that the gamified environment influences psychological variables as aggressiveness, intellectual performance, and flow level, they raise questions about the direction of these changes and the impact they may have on users’ usability and performance in these systems.

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Data availability

The datasets analysed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YGL56B.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) and the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPQ). The authors were also supported by the University of São Paulo (USP), the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), the ICMC-USP Software Engineering Laboratory (LABES), and the NEES - Núcleo de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mathematics and Computational Sciences, University of São Paulo (USP), Avenida Trabalhador São-Carlense, 400 Centro, 13566-590, São Carlos, SP, Brazil

    Jário Santos & Seiji Isotani

  2. Computing Institute, Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), Campus A.C. Simões, Cidade Universitária, 57072-970, Maceió, AL, Brazil

    Ester Andrade, Kamila Benevides, Kelly Silva & Ig Bittencourt

  3. Institute of Psychology, Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL), Campus A.C. Simões, Cidade Universitária, 57072-970, Maceió, AL, Brazil

    João Nascimento, Ig Bittencourt & Sheyla Fernandes

  4. Institute of Psychology, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Campus Universitário, São Lãzaro, Salvador, BA, 41940-220, Brazil

    Marcos Pereira

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  1. Jário Santos
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Correspondence to Jário Santos.

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Ethics approval

This study received approval from the ethics committee under the number 44824621.1.0000.5013 submitted to the national platform of the Brazilian National Council of Health (referred to as Plataforma Brasil). It is worth noting that data collection and storage have followed strict guidelines of data protection. In addition, all collected data have been anonymized.

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Santos, J., Andrade, E., Benevides, K. et al. Does gender stereotype threat affects the levels of aggressiveness, learning and flow in gamified learning environments?: An experimental study. Educ Inf Technol 28, 1637–1662 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11220-3

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