Whack-A-Mole turns out to be social engineering
Posted by Peter Smith on 06-04-30This has been floating around the net for awhile, I most recently ran across it on the Guardian Unlimited Games Blog, and they got it from Watercooler Games (both of these sites are superb). Incase you haven’t seen it yet Stanford and The Washington Post ran a study that involved people playing Whack-A-Mole, only the target were Dictators, Celebrities, and Political Figures. Interestingly they found that after whacking on dictators you would favor George Bush more than you did before. This is really cool psychology telling us that if we want people to favor a position we can have them wail on the counterpoint for a few minutes with a small plush hammer connected to a chain, or in this case just click on pictures of their opposites with a mouse. The guardian suggests that because speed of reaction can be a predictor of unconscious attitudes, games could be used in the future by pollsters trying to determine an accurate measure of person’s political views. I say we embrace this idea and determine the next presidential election with a huge Quake 3 death match.