Mood, expertise, analogy, and ritual:

an experiment using the five-disc Tower of Hanoi

Yvan I. Russell1-4

Fernand Gobet4-5

Harvey Whitehouse1

1. Explaining Religion Project, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary

Anthropology, University of Oxford.

2. Junior Research Group “Evolution of Cooperation and Prosocial

Behaviour”, CRC Evolution of Social Behaviour, University of Göttingen,

Germany.

3. Department of Psychology, Middlesex University

4. Department of Psychology, Brunel University

5. Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool

Send correspondence to: yvanrussell@gmail.com

Word count: 10870 including references, figure legends and acknowledgements

8591 manuscript and appendices only

Keywords: Tower of Hanoi; mood; emotion; religion; analogy; thinking; ritual; anxiety

1

Abstract

We used game-playing as a proxy for religious ritual in a study of the differential effects

of euphoric and dysphoric mood – with a specific focus on expertise and analogical

reasoning. Previous research demonstrates that euphoric individuals think more broadly

and schematically, and that dysphoric individuals are more focused and details-oriented.

We investigated the effect of mood on analogical transfer in four conditions: (1) expert

euphoric, (2) expert dysphoric, (3) non-expert euphoric, and (4) non-expert dysphoric.

Mood was induced from watching a ten-minute video (a comedy excerpt to induce

euphoria; a realistic depiction of nuclear war to induce dysphoria). The Affect Grid was

used for a manipulation check. In expert conditions, participants first played the five-disk

Tower of Hanoi (TOH) game, followed by the “Bear God” (BG) task, a new isomorph of

TOH (same rules, different surface features). Participants were not told about the hidden

isomorphism. In non-expert conditions, participants played an unrelated game first.

Based on prior literature, it was possible that dysphoria could either hamper or enhance

analogical reasoning. We found evidence for the latter – superior performance in the

dysphoric BG task – but only in the expert condition. In other words, dysphoria only

enhanced analogy formation among those with prior expertise. This is consistent with

previous work showing that dysphoria can enhance analogical reasoning in settings

congruent with religious experiences.

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Introduction

Emotional arousal plays a momentous role in defining an individual's experience

of their faith (Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Azari & Birnbacher, 2004; Azari et al., 2005;

Emmons, 2005; Hayden, 1987; Keltner & Haidt, 2003; McCauley & Lawson, 2002,

Rossano, 2006; Russell et al., 2011; Sjöblom, 2008; Whitehouse, 2004). Ecstasy and

euphoria, for example, occur periodically in the form of group-coordinated rituals

(Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Hayden, 1987; Whitehouse, 2004) and tend to occur most

commonly in annual festivals and ceremonies (Atkinson & Whitehouse 2011). When

people think about themselves in relation to their religion-specific cosmos, they are

engaging in dynamic feedback loops between their own emotional states and the

cognitivity inherent in their belief (Azari et al., 2005; see Boden & Berenbaum, 2010,

about affect-belief feedback loops in general). In other words, a person figures out their

place in their cosmos, the causes and consequences of their behaviour, and uses their

emotional state as both antecedent and consequent of their reasoning (also see Russell et

al., 2011; cf. Grim, 2006 and Sjöblom, 2008). In the growing field of the cognitive

science of religion (CSR), the prevailing strategy is to investigate small facets of religious

experience in order to gain insight into the big picture (for background on CSR, see

Barrett, 2007; Boyer, 1994, 2001; Guthrie, 1980, 2007; Ozorak, 2005; Pyysiäinien, 2004,

2013; Pyysiäinen & Anttonen, 2002; Russell & Gobet, 2013; Whitehouse, 1995, 1996,

2000, 2004; Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004; Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005; Whitehouse

& Martin, 2005). Here, we use the methodology of cognitive psychology to probe the

nexus between emotion and cognition as might be found in religious settings.

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Psychologists have long known that emotions exert a significant influence on

cognitive processes (Chepenik et al., 2007; Clore & Huntsinger, 2007; Dolan, 2002;

Frederickson & Branigan, 2005; Isen, 1987; Storbeck & Clore, 2007; Wyer et al., 1999),

reflecting the fact that putative cognitive and emotional areas of the brain are highly

interconnected through executive control (Pessoa, 2007). In our current experiment, we

focus on longer-term mood rather than fleeting emotion. Mood refers to a “background”

emotional state that “rises and dissipates slowly” (Beedie et al., 2005, p. 871). In contrast

to emotion, mood is generally more mild, unfocused, and stable (Beedie et al., 2005; for

discussion see Clore & Huntsinger, 2007; Stevens, 2006, pp. 92-93; Storbeck & Clore,

2007; Wyer et al., 1999, pp. 5-7). According to a number of studies, people think

differently in a euphoric versus dysphoric mood (for a review, see Clore & Huntsinger,

2007). In a euphoric mood, people adopt a more global, schematic view. In other words,

people in a euphoric mood tend to look at the “big picture”. In contrast, people in a

dysphoric mood tend to be more non-schematic and details-oriented. For example, Bless

et al. (1996) found that the participants with an induced positive mood were more likely

to falsely recognise an item from a story (when the stimulus is conceptually similar but a

different word) than those in a negative mood. Participants in a positive mood appeared

to fall back on general semantic knowledge whereas the ones in negative mood

remembered the details better. Similarly, Gasper and Clore (2002) asked their

participants to draw/classify pictures they had seen before, and found that participants

with an induced positive mood focused on the global characteristics at the expense of the

details, whilst those in a negative mood did the opposite. Beukeboom and Semin (2005)

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found the same results in a paradigm where they asked participants to choose appropriate

phrases to describe behaviours: those in a good mood thought more about “why” a

behaviour occurred, and those in a bad mood thought more about “how” a behaviour

occurred. Frederickson and Branigan (2005) confirmed the broadening effect of positive

mood in a study where they asked participants to choose which image was the most

similar to a previous one. The two choices were appropriate either for a global view

(overall shape) or a detailed view (component parts of the overall shape). Those in a good

mood chose overall shape more often.

We will focus on religious ritual as an integral component of religions that are

simultaneously emotional and functional (for a review, see Bell, 1997). In our experiment

below, we investigate the role of a person's mood on their ability to transfer a skill from

one context to another. We regard this as roughly equivalent to a religious person

learning about their religion, and then needing to apply these principles out in the real

world (e.g. see Jarvis, 2008, on the purposes of religious teaching). Let us think more

about the definition of religious ritual in order to justify our presumption. Bell (1997)

identified six defining characteristics of ritual: (1) formalism (following conventional

rules), (2) traditionalism (staying with traditional methods), (3) invariance (elements and

ordering of ritual must stay the same), (4) rule-governance (actions constrained by pre-

specified rules), (5) sacral symbolism (acts have supernatural significance), and (6)

performance (theatrical aspect). We use game playing as a proxy for conducting a

religious ritual. Obviously, game playing is not the same as a religious ritual, primarily

because they lack the “sacral symbolism” aspect. Nonetheless, if we can find mood

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effects on game playing (cf. Stevens, 2006) – which do incorporate aspects like

“invariance” and “rule governance” – then we can find ourselves in the position to reason

inductively towards real religious rituals. Here, for our game-ritual proxy, we utilise the

Tower of Hanoi (TOH) problem, a tricky game involving the transfer of disks over three

pegs (for details, see Simon, 1975 and Gardner, 2008). Participants begin with a set of

disks on the leftmost peg (see Figure 1), which are stacked from largest at the bottom to

smallest at the top. The object is to move all of the disks to the rightmost peg (in the same

order), but there are two rules: (1) you can only move one disk at a time, and (2) you

cannot put a larger disk atop a smaller disk. The more disks in the game, the more

difficult the game is (we will choose the five disk version in our study because it is

moderately difficult). There is only one optimal solution (Simon, 1975). The five-disk

version is soluble in a minimum of 31 steps. Less expert players are likely to play many

more than 31 steps, and in playing they might adopt a non-optimal solution such as a

simple rote strategy (following the basic rules without a longer range plan). However, a

rote strategy can only go so far. When there are more than four disks, the rote strategy is

sub-optimal (ibid.). In order to succeed at the five-disk game, a more expert player should

adopt a goal-recursion strategy wherein a person must think about subgoals nested within

an overall plan (ibid.).

Mood affects performance in a variety of domains outside of religion. For

example, in sports performance (Stevens, 2006) and school examinations (Thelwell et al.,

2007), a person's background mood feeds into an assessment of the task (how well they

6

can perform according to expectations) to produce a coping strategy. The extent of a

person's expertise in the task makes a difference here too. If a task overwhelms a person's

abilities, and success appears unlikely, then the mood might become depressed and

performance might suffer; but if the task seems doable, then mood might contribute to

success (see discussion in Stevens, 2006; Thelwell et al., 2007). However, Pe et al.

(2008) failed to find an advantage of mood in playing the TOH (and another game)

although game success did improve mood afterwards. Similarly, Spering et al., (2005)

failed to find an advantage of good mood in a complicated business simulation game.

However, positive mood does appear to have an advantage when the participant has prior

experience of the game. Brand and Opwis (2007) asked participants to teach themselves

(in dyads) to play the three-disk TOH and then afterwards asked them to play similar

types of games (five-disk TOH and two others). Participants in good moods performed

better in these later games (as measured by solution time) than those with poorer moods.

Conversely, Brand et al. (2007), using a similar paradigm with the same games, found

that participants in a sad mood did worse in playing the later games. Presumably, those in

a worse mood are less able to think schematically and therefore worse in analogical

transfer.

Below, we will investigate differential effects at a cognitive level in both euphoric

and dysphoric situations in ways that are analogous to situations that occur in religions.

Our study will expand on the above studies of analogical transfer by factoring the role of

prior expertise (compared to other studies where experts have thousands of hours of

practice, in this study we use the term "expertise" in a rather loose sense, see

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Didierjean & Gobet, 2008, and Gobet et al., 2011, about expertise). Hence, the

independent variables are expertise and mood in four conditions: (1) expert euphoric

(EE), (2) expert dysphoric (ED), (3) non-expert euphoric (NE), and (4) non-expert

dysphoric (ND). Mood will be induced using film clips (see Methods). Expert

participants will play the TOH first and then play a TOH isomorph, a version of the TOH

game where the surface features have been substantially altered, but which has precisely

the same rules (e.g. see Simon & Hayes, 1976, Figure 1 therein, or Clément & Richard,

1997, Figure 1 therein). Despite the fact that a TOH isomorph can be solved in exactly

the same way as the TOH game, players often find it exceedingly difficult to solve the

isomorph even after they have learned the original game (see Clément & Richard, 1997,

Kotovsky et al., 1985). In our procedure, the isomorph is called the “Bear God” (BG)

task (inspired by the “tea ceremony” isomorph by Hayes & Simon, 1974). In our study,

experts will have an opportunity to transfer their TOH skill to the BG task. Non-expert

participants will play the Missionary Cannibal (MC) game (a.k.a. Hobbit and Orcs; see ;

Greeno, 1974; Thomas, 1974): a simpler “river crossing” game where the participant

needs to move three cannibals and three missionaries across a river in a two-person boat

– restricted by the rule that cannibals can never outnumber missionaries at either side (or

else the cannibals eat the missionaries). This is not only a simpler game, but has a

different type of solution from the TOH game. Therefore, those who play MC prior to the

BG task will not have an opportunity to transfer their skill. In the transfer context,

individuals need to apply previously learned principles to a new context. A very

important point here is that the participants will not be told that the BG task is an

isomorph.

8

Although we would expect experts to perform better than non-experts in the

transfer task (Gobet et al., 2011) previous literature motivates contradictory hypotheses

with regard to the effects of mood. Based on the aforementioned literature showing that

euphoria is conducive to lateral thinking (e.g. Brand & Opwis, 2007) we would predict

that global thinkers will be better able to spot the analogical similarity between the BG

task and the previously learned TOH game and then apply their TOH skills in the BG

task (cf. Brand & Opwis, 2007). By contrast, based on his ethnographic work,

Whitehouse (1996) has predicted that dysphoria should enhance analogical reasoning as

part of a process of ‘spontaneous exegetical reflection’ (SER) on religious rituals

(Whitehouse, 2004; also see Richert et al., 2005). This prediction is congruent with later

experiments (not related to SER) showing that, at least for simple visual displays,

analogical reasoning is enhanced by experientally-induced anxiety (e.g. Hristova &

Kokinov, 2011; Feldman & Kokinov, 2009; Feldman et al., 2010 and references therein).

Moreover, Whitehouse (1996, 2004) has conjectured that dysphoric rituals might trigger

‘flashbulb memory’ (Luminet & Curci, 2009): the phenomenon whereby people have

unusually vivid recollection of circumstances surrounding emotional/traumatic events

(more on this topic later). The experiment below will attempt to adjudicate between these

two competing predictions: whether euphoria or dysphoria enhances analogical thinking.

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Methods

Participants

A total of 67 adults were tested at Brunel University, UK. All had replied to

posters offering £10 (GBP) to participate in a study called “Playing Games”. The mean

age was 23.6 years (SD = 3.9). There were 30 males and 37 females. Religiously, the

group was 43% Christian, 21% Muslim, 15% non-religious, 12% Hindu, 4.5% Sikh, and

4.5% Buddhist.

Apparatus

The computer games were programmed specifically for this study in Visual Basic

(see Acknowledgements). The three games were: (1) Tower of Hanoi (TOH), (2)

Missionary Cannibal (MC), and (3) Bear God (BG) task. Each game had a graphical

interface featuring cartoon characters (drawn by YIR) or objects that could be moved

using the mouse. Figure 2 is an image of the BG task at the beginning of the game.

Anytime a game was played, it generated a data file showing all moves made by a

participant. The games were played on a laptop computer (19 cm 30 cm screen). Mood

induction was conducted by showing video clips to the participant (see Westermann et

al., 1996, on the relative merits of different types of mood induction techniques; cf.

Feldman et al., 2010). The mood induction video clips were watched on a separate

computer screen (27 cm 34 cm) using full size headphones for audio.

For a manipulation check, we used the Affect Grid (Russell et al., 1989), an undisguised

single-item scale consisting of a 9 9 matrix (81 squares) wherein the participant marks

10

an “x” in the single square that indicates their current mood (see Figure 3). This is from a

class of emotion measures called “self-reports of subjective experience” (for reviews of

types of measures, see Larsen & Frederickson, 1999; for background on the Affect Grid,

see Russell, 1980; Russell et al., 1989; Killgore, 1998; Russell & Gobet, 2012). The

Affect Grid was chosen for two reasons: (a) it is very quick to administer, and (b) it

simultaneously measures two dimensions, happiness/sadness (horizontal dimension) and

arousal (vertical dimension).

Procedure

Table 1 illustrates the procedure (normally 1 hour in duration). Bold items

indicate where the four conditions (EE, ED, NE, ND) differed. To avoid biasing the

participants, participants were told that this was a study about “how games make you

feel” (opposite to the actual purpose of the study). After signing the consent sheet (step

1), participants were given a questionnaire listing 15 different games (step 2). They were

asked to estimate the number of times (in total, over lifetime) that they had played each

game. One of the items was the “Tower of Hanoi” (TOH) and the other 14 games were

distractors (irrelevant to the study). The purpose of the questionnaire was to ascertain

whether the participant had played TOH before. If they had played the game at least

once, then they were assigned randomly to only one of the two expert conditions. If they

had never played, then they were assigned randomly to one of the four conditions (two of

which are expert and two of which are non–expert).

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After completing the questionnaire, the participant was shown the Affect Grid and

the experimenter explained how to use it. The participant was asked to mark an “x” in the

one square that indicates “how you feel at this moment” (step 3). The Affect Grid was

given a total of four times during the study (steps 3, 6, 8, 10). After step 3, the participant

was given the mood induction by watching a video clip (step 4). However, they were not

told that it was a mood induction. Instead they were told that this was a memory test.

They were asked to watch the video closely because afterwards they would need to recall

the contents of the video. The experimenter gave the participant a set of headphones,

darkened the room, and then played the video for 10 minutes (with no interruptions).

After 10 minutes, the experimenter switched on the lights, and then proceeded to ask the

participant a series of prepared recall questions about the video clip (step 5). These 15

questions were not relevant to this study, but were included as part of the cover story.

If the participant was in one of the euphoric conditions (EE, NE, see Table 1),

then they watched the first ten minutes of a “Mr. Bean” TV episode (“The Trouble with

Mr. Bean”, Curtis et al., 1992). If the participant was in one of the dysphoric conditions

(ED, ND), then they watched ten minutes of the British dramatic film about nuclear war

called “Threads” (Jackson,1984). A middle portion of the movie was shown (approx.

43:40-53:40), depicting an unpleasant but realistic sequence of events whereupon a

nuclear explosion occurs near a major British city, causing panic, a firestorm, and then

widespread suffering, and death (for more details about this film, see Bartlett, 2004).

12

After watching the video clip (step 4) and answering the sham memory questions

(step 5), the participant was asked to fill out the Affect Grid again (step 6). Then, they

were introduced to the first game. If the participant was in one of the expert conditions

(EE, ED), then they played the five-disk TOH game (step 7). The experimenter provided

instructions (even if they had played before). The participant was asked to play for 15

minutes. If the participant finished a game before the time limit, then they were asked to

start again and continue playing repeated games until the 15 minutes was up. There was

no limit to the number of games they were allowed to complete within the 15 minute

session. When 15 minutes had passed, the experimenter stopped the game regardless of

the participant’s progress. If the participant was in one of the non-expert conditions (NE,

ND), then they played the MC game. Here, they were also allowed to solve as many

games as possible within a 15 minute limit.

After playing the first game (step 7), the participant was given the Affect Grid

again (step 8). Then, the participant was given the BG task (the TOH isomorph). Figure 2

is a screenshot of the BG task (at the beginning of the game). The experimenter did not

inform any participants that the BG task should be played exactly the same way as the

five-disk TOH. Instead, it was described as a new game. The experimenter read a story

(see Appendix 1) to introduce the characters of the game, and provide instructions for

play. The story was deliberately written to be confusing and to obfuscate the parallels

between the TOH and the BG task. However, as shown, the participants were made

aware of the rules, which parallel the rules of the TOH. The first rule was that “the more

serious ritual could not be entered in a box wherein a less serious ritual already was”.

13

This was equivalent to the TOH rule where you could not put a larger disk atop a smaller

disk. The second rule was that “you can only remove the least serious ritual out of the

box”. This was equivalent to the TOH rule where you could only remove the smallest

disk out of a pile. A third rule was that ‘you could only remove one ritual at a time’. This

was equivalent to the TOH rule of moving only one disk at a time. After reading the story

and instructions (duration: about 3 min.), the participant was asked to play the BG task

for 15 minutes (step 9) and asked to start again if they had finished the game prior to 15

minutes. After finishing the BG task, the participant was given the Affect Grid one last

time (step 10). Finally, they were given a brief demographic questionnaire (step 11),

debriefed (step 12), and then paid £10 GBP (step 13).

Results

Affect Grid data were assessed in order to check that the mood induction was

effective. Because we were interested in a longer-lasting effect (“mood” rather than

emotion), we obtained the mean score of all four measures per participant (steps 3, 6, 8,

10). In both the designed “euphoric” (EE, NE) and “dysphoric” (ED, ND) conditions,

Table 2 (rows 2–5) shows the scores for the horizontal (H) dimension (happy-sad

spectrum) and the vertical (V) dimension (degree of arousal). For the H dimension, the

individuals were significantly happier in the euphoric than dysphoric conditions (t65 =

2.924, p = .005). For the V dimension, there was no significant difference (t65 = 0.920, p

= .361). We explore alternative ways to measure sequential Affect Grid scores in a

separate paper (Russell & Gobet, 2012).

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There were two dependent variables: (a) number of times BG task solved, and (b)

mean duration of game (if only one game, then duration = 900 seconds). Looking first at

the number of games solved, we see that the solution of the BG task (like the TOH) is all-

or-nothing: the goal is either reached or not. The number of steps needed to reach the

goal can vary greatly in this game (especially if participants make a mistake and then

need to backtrack in order to reach the goal), and therefore there is no useful measure of

partial completion. All analyses were conducted with PASW Statistics 18.0, except for

the Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression, for which we used STATA (see Appendix 2).

Scores for all conditions are shown in Table 2 (row 6). Figure 4 is a boxplot of the

number of times games played compared across the four conditions. On the left are the

two expert conditions: euphoric expert (EE) and dysphoric expert (ED). On the right are

the two non-expert conditions: euphoric non-expert (NE) and dysphoric non-expert (ND).

As expected, expert individuals (those who played TOH prior to BG) solved significantly

more games than the non-expert individuals (Kruskal-Wallis χ2 = 9.125, p = .003). We

also analysed the two euphoric conditions lumped together (EE, NE) and the two

dysphoric conditions lumped together (ED, ND). Two participants who had earlier been

assigned to the ND condition later realised they had played the TOH games in the past

(under a different name), so these two people were reclassified into the ED condition for

all results. Surprisingly, there was no significant differences for mood (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2

= 0.198, p = .657) across the four conditions. Moreover, there was no significant

differences between EE and ED (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2 = 1.291, p = .256) or between NE and

ND (Kruskal-Wallis χ 2 = .018, p = .892).

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Why was the result not significant despite the apparent pattern in Figure 4?

Possibly, it was because the data were highly skewed and therefore non-normal, in

particular due to the large number of zeroes (i.e. people who never solved the game at

all). Table 2 (rows 7–8) shows the proportion of zeroes for each condition and the

skewness statistic (for solved BG task) for each condition (0 = normal distribution). As

shown, the non-expert conditions (NE, ND) are highly skewed, the EE condition is less

skewed, and the ED condition is the least skewed. Due to these problems, we used the

ZIP regression, a test specifically designed for zero-heavy data (see Appendix 2 for

explanation). To begin this analysis, we used a chi-square test on the difference of log

likelihoods, and found that the ZIP model was a statistically significant fit against a null

model (χ 2 = 20.32, p < .001). We also compared the ZIP model against a normal Poisson

model using the Vuong test and found that the ZIP model fitted better than the normal

Poisson (ZIP > Poisson, Vuong statistic = 1.67, p = .048). The euphoric (EE) condition

was not a significant predictor of number of games solved (z = 0.93, p = .352). In

contrast, the dysphoric (ED) condition was a highly significant predictor (z = 3.19, p

= .001). Neither of the two non-expert conditions (NE, ND) were significant predictors (z

= -0.73, p = .464). Also, there were no significant effects of age (z = 1.09, p = .275) or

sex (z = -0.49, p = .624).

Another potential issue is prior skill (Table 2, row 8). A person’s pre-existing

talent at playing games seemed a weighty determinant of success in the BG task. TOH

players (n = 32) solved a mean of 2.9 games (SD = 2.48). MC players (n = 35) solved a

16

mean of 3.2 games (SD = 3.43). There was no significant difference between the number

of solutions in the TOH versus the BG task (Kruskal Wallis χ 2 = .716, p = .397). There

was a correlation between TOH solutions and BG task solutions (Spearman’s ρ = .613, p

= .001) but not significant between MC solutions and BG task solutions (Spearman’s ρ

= .197, p = .257) (the two reclassified individuals are excluded from the above correlation

but included in the “prior skill” variable). The TOH and MC scores were combined into a

“prior skill” score for duration. There seemed to be a higher score for the ED than EE

condition, but this was not significant (Kruskal Wallis χ 2 = 1.504, p = .220).

Table 2 also shows the mean duration in all four conditions. The maximum

amount of time to play a single game was 900 seconds (15 minutes). Therefore, longer

durations indicate less skilled play (e.g. someone who never solved the game at all scores

900 seconds, whereas someone who solved 1 game after 500 seconds and then played an

unsuccessful game at 400 seconds would attain a mean score of 450 seconds). The

duration data were normally distributed, and therefore we conducted a univariate

ANOVA with “game duration” as the dependent variable and mood and expertise as the

fixed factors. Results are shown in Table 2 (rows 9–11). There was a significant main

effect of expertise (F1,66 = 9.958, p = .002), but the effect of mood was not significant

(F1,66 = 1.357, p = .248). There were no significant interactions. The mean duration of

TOH games was 358.9 seconds (SD = 252.8). The mean duration of MC games was

432.0 (SD = 317.3). There was a significant correlation between “prior skill” (Table 2)

and average solution time in the BG task (Pearson r = .368, p = .002). There were no

17

significant differences between conditions on these durations. Also, there were no age or

sex differences found in our analyses.

Discussion

We found that dysphoria led to better performance in the analogical reasoning

task. As stated earlier, we tested three predictions. The first was that experts (which we

defined as persons who played the TOH prior to the BG task) would outperform non-

experts (who played MC prior to the BG task). This prediction was confirmed. The

second prediction – that euphoria would enhance analogical reasoning – was not

confirmed. Our third prediction (which was incompatible with our second hypothesis)

stated that dysphoria provides an advantage – was supported (e.g. Feldman & Kokinov,

2009; Feldman et al., 2010, Hristova & Kokinov, 2011; Richert et al., 2005). We found

that expert dysphoric (ED) individuals outperformed the euphoric expert euphoric (EE)

individuals when using the measure of “number of games solved” in the “Bear God”

(BG) task (a TOH isomorph). Zero-heavy data necessitated the use of a ZIP regression

(see Appendix 2), which confirmed that the ED condition represented a significant

predictor. There was also an ostensible effect of prior skill (i.e. their presumed natural

abilities prior to training), but the effect was ambiguous. Interestingly, dysphoria

provided no advantage in the non-expert conditions, suggesting that mood alone is not

enough to complete a complicated task. There needs to be some knowledge behind it.

This has interesting implications for the issue of expertise and religion. Dysphoria only

18

helps the knowledgeable person conducting a ritual. Without a previous level of

procedural expertise, mood seems to be irrelevant.

Why was our third prediction (dysphoria leads to better performance) confirmed but not

the second (euphoria leads to better performance)? As mentioned in the introduction,

previous studies appear to support the idea that euphoria should be superior in analogical

reasoning because it is conducive to breadth of information processing. Part of the reason

for our results might lie in methodological differences between the current study and

prior studies. The study we emulated the most closely was that of Brand and Opwis

(2007), who trained participants in learning three-disk TOH prior to asking them to solve

three subsequent games that varied in how closely they resembled the first one (namely,

five-disk TOH, Missionary-Cannibal game, and “Katona card task”). In that study,

euphoria produced superior play (as measured by duration of game to solution).

Rethinking the study, we note that their paradigm was quite different to ours in possibly

some crucial ways. These differences might explain our results. One important contrast

might be that Brand and Opwis trained their participants in dyads. Participants were

paired and then asked to figure out the three-disk TOH together until they had mastered

the game. In contrast, our study simply gave participants a five-disk TOH (which is more

difficult than the three-disk version) and left them to figure out the solution solo. Another

difference lay in the transfer tasks. As Brand and Opwis (2007) admit, transfer

“performance may have been facilitated by first presenting… the task with very similar

surface features” (p. 62). In other words, the fact that they presented the five-disk TOH

after teaching them the three-disk was likely an obvious clue that the participants needed

19

to transfer their skills from one game to another. The participants in our study lacked this

clue. All of these factors mentioned above may have made the task much easier for the

participants in the Brand and Opwis (2007) study. Still, this might be other reasons for

why their results differ from ours. One might be in the way that euphoria and dysphoria

affect cognition differently. As noted in our introduction, euphoria has been described as

having a “broadening effect” on cognition (Frederickson & Branigan, 2005) and

dysphoria as having a “narrowing effect” (cf. Feldman & Kokinov, 2009; Feldman et al.,

2010). In other words, euphoria opens up your attention to the wider array of stimuli,

whereas dysphoria restricts one’s attention to the most salient details. Prior to conducting

this research, we thought that the “big picture” orientation of euphoric individuals would

naturally incline them to spot the analogy between the BG task and the five-disk TOH.

The idea was that the euphoric individuals were more schema-oriented rather than

details-oriented, and that this euphoria would facilitate transferring the principles better.

We were mistaken about this prediction. It seems that the “narrowing of scope” of

dysphoria was actually an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, because it focused

attention on the rules of the game. If so, then perhaps the euphoric state (“widening of

scope”) was less successful because the euphoric participants were too distracted by the

cover story (Appendix 1). More research is needed in order to uncover the mechanism

behind our results (cf. Hristova et al., 2011). The question is whether dysphoria helped

the participant to think analogically (cf. Richert et al., 2005) and apply the rules from a

previous game, or whether it helped them to figure out a problem that they thought was

novel, even if analogical reasoning was impaired (cf. Feldman & Kokinov, 2009).

20

The manipulation check (Affect Grid) appears to have worked as intended, but

only in one dimension. Individuals in the euphoric conditions did indicate higher scores

in the “happiness/sadness” (horizontal) dimension than those individuals in the dysphoric

conditions. However, this was not true for the “arousal” (vertical) dimension. This

suggests that the mood induction did not influence excitement level as strongly as it

influenced the character of their moods (for discussion about the circumplex model of

emotion, see Russell, 1980; Russell et al., 1989). Another independent variable was game

duration (which has been used successfully in previous studies, e.g. Brand & Opwis,

2007). Here, the only notable result was that expertise was a significant predictor of short

game durations. As mentioned earlier, shorter durations reflect quicker solution times,

whereas longer durations indicate lengthy, less skilled games (some of which were not

solved at all).

Our results prompt this question: does positive affect create a disadvantage? As

Frederickson and Branigan (2005) write: if “positive emotions do not share with negative

emotion this hallmark feature of promoting and supporting specific action, then what

good are they?” (p. 314). The answer, they write, is that positive affect is probably useful,

but for much different purposes than that of dysphoria. Negative affect is useful for the

“attack” and “flee” situations, whereas positive attack is about “play, explore, savour and

integrate” (p. 314). Accordingly, it is best to regard euphoria and dysphoria as

complementary processes with different purposes. Emotions are valuable because they

constitute an "index [of] occurrences of value" (Dolan, 2002, p. 1192): people pay

attention to the emotional and remember it better afterwards. According to Levenson

21

(1999), the human emotional system (consisting of automatic core processes partially

subject to voluntary control) is extremely useful in that it "helps us to engage in adaptive

voluntary behaviors" (p. 497; also see Hayden, 1987; Bless et al., 1996; Wyer et al.,

1999, §3). Levenson (1999) further claims that negative emotions "are optimal for the

short-term needs of actively dealing with threatening environmental challenges" (p. 492),

whereas positive emotions have a "soothing function" (p. 494). Fiedler et al. (2003)

claimed that positive mood facilitates "assimilative" tasks (where you need to think top-

down, be creative and attend to a wide range of stimuli), while negative moods facilitate

"accommodative" tasks (where one needs to think bottom-up, and attend closely to the

most important stimuli for the task) (also see Spering et al., 2005; Feldman & Kokinov,

2009; Feldman et al., 2010). Why is there a cognitive difference between positive and

negative affect? According to Isen (1987), the difference might be motivational (people

want to escape a sad mood but remain in a happy one), or else structural (happy

memories are better integrated than sad memories). A third view (Bless et al., 1996) is

that negative mood is a signal of urgency to act in response to a problem, whereas

positive mood is non-urgent (also see Wyer, 1999, pp. 38-40; Feldman et al., 2010).

Supporting this view is the study of Gable and Harmon-Jones (2010), whose experiment

manipulated the motivational intensity of the task in the negative dimension, finding that

low intensity situations (e.g. sadness) created attentional broadening and high intensity

situations (e.g. disgust) caused attentional narrowing. This implies that intensity is a more

important factor than valence. We can echo Frederickson and Branigan (2005) above and

ask a question about euphoria and dysphoria in religion: what good are they?

22

If you view religion as an "adaptive complex" in evolutionary terms (sensu

Alcorta & Sosis, 2005, Rossano, 2006, Kydd, 2008, etc.), then you might consider the

differential usefulness of each (Russell et al., 2011). Accordingly, we can adopt the view

that religions themselves are evolutionary units of replication (Whitehouse, 2008): they

survive by gaining adherents; they die out by losing adherents; and they can be identified

as possessing traits which that are causally related to their survival (also see Whitehouse,

2004). In other words, they can be adaptive or maladaptive in a given ‘religious

marketplace’. Why would we call it a marketplace? It is because a defining characteristic

of modern religion is that people can defect from one religious affiliation to another quite

easily (e.g. see report by Pew Research Center, 2008). In a competitive religious

marketplace, only those traditions that maximize both the emotional appeal of rituals and

the salience of authorised teachings while minimizing ‘tedium’ are likely to thrive

(Whitehouse, 2004). Some of the most successful traditions, such as fast-spreading

evangelical Christian traditions, cultivate and sustain euphoric states through the uses of

sensory 'pageantry' (e.g. rhythmical singing and swaying, moving instrumental music,

impassioned speech-making, etc.). This leads to another question: if euphoria is such an

advantage, then why do some religions sometimes do things which provoke fear and

dysphoria (Alcorta & Sosis, 2005; Whitehouse, 1995, 2007) – the antithesis of euphoria –

amongst their members? Stories of hell are a good example (Bowker, 1982; Kvanvig,

2007), including that of the American “Hell House” tradition (Jackson, 2007), where

followers are deliberately put into a terrified state.

23

The question of dysphoria in religion might make the most sense if you put

religions into the context of modes theory (Whitehouse, 2004). Social scientists have long

recognized that rituals play a role in building social cohesion and collective identity and

have noted striking correlations between certain characteristics of rituals and particular

patterns of group formation and between-group competition. For instance, extensive

comparison of ethnographic case studies around the world (Whitehouse & Laidlaw,

2004) and longitudinal evidence from history and archaeology (Whitehouse & Martin,

2004) has shown that high-frequency but emotionally low-arousal rituals are typical of

large-scale but diffusely cohesive religious traditions whereas low-frequency but

emotionally very arousing rituals are typical of small but highly cohesive cults. A recent

survey of 645 rituals selected from a sample of 74 cultures (Atkinson & Whitehouse,

2011) confirmed that high-frequency rituals typically evince relatively low levels of

arousal whereas the vast majority of very low-frequency rituals entail intensely dysphoric

elements – traumatic ordeals involving physical and/or psychological tortures (ibid.;

Whitehouse, 1996, 2007). These two types of ritual correspond to distinct patterns of

group formation, respectively known as doctrinal and imagistic modes of religiosity

(Whitehouse, 1995, 2000, 2004). The doctrinal mode appears to be an evolved cultural

adaptation to large-scale societies with a complex division of labour, where trust and

cooperation among relative strangers requires standardized coalitional markers and a

common orthopraxy. The imagistic mode prevails in small groups engaging in high-risk

activities (such as warfare or the hunting of dangerous animals) where temptations to

defect in the face of danger are exceptionally strong. The intense intra-group cohesion

generated by the imagistic mode appears to be an evolved cultural adaptation to these

24

general circumstances, groups lacking such practices tending to be wiped out or absorbed

by neighbours who maintain the ‘right’ kinds of rituals. Much research has also been

devoted to investigating how variable frequency and arousal in ritual performances affect

the way rituals are remembered and interpreted (e.g. Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005),

since these and other related psychological factors are thought to impact the quality and

intensity of trust and cooperation within groups and rivalry and hostility between groups.

Euphoria and dysphoria might have different functions in religious transmission

(Russell et al., 2011). Euphoria might not promote intense philosophical queries or

precise implementation of rituals, but instead might be valuable for motivating

participation, stimulating social cohesion, and ensuring continued adherence to the faith

(cf. Hayden, 1987; Russell et al., 2011). In contrast – given that every religion carries a

range of stipulations about how to live, how to behave, and what to believe – we suggest

that dysphoria might be most useful for ensuring that adherents pay closer attention to the

meaning of rituals, the analogical connections between them, and their salience in

everyday life. More research is needed to confirm this possible functional distinction

between euphoria and dysphoria (see Russell et al., 2011). In terms of (cultural)

evolutionary success (Whitehouse, 2008), we can speculate that the most successful

religions (in terms of the capacity to attract followers, keep them, and spread into new

territories) are likely to be those that offer an optimal combination of euphoria and

dysphoria (see Whitehouse, 2004). However, in the mind of a ritual participant, there is

likely a complex interplay between pain, pleasure, and the socio-cognitive meaning of the

ritual (cf. Bell, 1997). For example, Xygalatas et al. (2013) found that real-life Hindu

25

participants in a painful and high-arousal ritual had higher levels of prosociality (as

measured by charitable donation) than those who participated in low arousal rituals. This

illustrates a different – non-euphoric – causal path to group cohesion, perhaps where

dysphoria facilitated the correct implementation of the ritual which in turn led to group

benefits. Future research should investigate a diversity of games as stand-ins for rituals

and using different levels of mood induction (cf. Richert et al., 2005).

As mentioned earlier, Whitehouse (1996, 2004) proposed that ‘flashbulb’ memory

could play a role in the memory processes related to religious rituals; and this would be

most pertinent in rituals that provoke extreme emotion (e.g. in Xygalatas et al., 2013; cf.

Whitehouse, 2007). In a recent review of the ‘flashbulb’ phenomenon, Luminet and Curci

(2009) found that the best models of flashbulb memory (FBM) show a link between the

importance and emotionality of the dysphoric event, which inevitably leads to mental

rehearsal of the pertinent events – which ultimately leads to a vivid recollection that is

difficult to forget. Furthermore, they found that social identity was an important variable.

For example, Americans participants processed their memories differently to the 9/11

terror attacks than did European participants: the memory of American FBMs were also

affected by the novelty and surprise of the event; whereas European FBMs were affected

by their attitudes towards the United States. The implication of this for religion would

seem obvious: flashbulb memory should be highly consequential in how an individual

processes the memory of the high-arousal dysphoric ritual. If dysphoria generates

spontaneous exegetical reflection (SER) (Whitehouse, 2004; Richert et al., 2005), then a

member of the pertinent religious in-group – someone with expertise of one’s own

26

religion – will be able to generate their own theologically correct analysis of the meaning

of the ritual (the “sacral symbolism” aspect, Bell, 1997); which should, in turn, lead to an

enhanced motivation to perform the task correctly (i.e. conform to the other dimensions

that Bell, 1997, mentioned: formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule-governance,

performance). The need to perform correctly should not be understated: dysphoric rituals

play a crucial role in the formation of the essential personal self and can have major

consequences for group alignment (Swann et al. 2012; Whitehouse and Lanman, in

press). The performance aspect of a dysphoric ritual thus has two sides of its

performance: an expert semantic memory about the significance of the ritual (facilitated

by dysphoria-induced SER and FBM) and an expert procedural memory (and recall that

our results showed an advantage for dysphoria only in the expertise condition). We

should also note that the complexity of the task itself can play a role in the dysphoria-

expert advantage (Hristova et al., 2013). As we know, religious rituals vary enormously

in their complexity and emotionality (Atkinson & Whitehouse, 2011), and the cognitive

consequences of the full range of rituals should be explored in the context of the recurrent

forms of religion (cf. Whitehouse, 2012).

Finally, we will ask a methodological question: is the usage of the TOH game

actually useful for understanding religion? Let us think about what Azari et al. (2005)

show in their brain study: that the emotional experiences of religion – positive and

negative – emerge from the highly cognitive processes of needing to understand causal

relations within a religious belief system (cf. Hristova & Kokinov, 2011). This would

seem to justify our use of games as a proxy for religious ritual, because all game play is

27

based on understanding causal relations within the game (see below about ecological

validity). Here, we have used methodology from cognitive psychology hitherto not

applied to religion. This is a valid approach because, as Pyysiäinen (2013) says, “the very

existence of religion requires... cognitive mechanisms that also function outside of

religion” (p. 11) (also see Azari et al., 2005 and Ozorak, 2005). Although our games-as-

proxy approach may seem remote from religion in the real world, it is neither possible

nor desirable to accurately simulate the conditions of real-life religious occasions (see

Cole et al., 1997). There are two validity issues here (Brecht & Glass, 1968): (a)

“population validity” (issue of whether test population can be justifiably used to

generalise about larger non-test populations), and (b) “ecological validity” (issue of

whether the same results would be obtained in a different setting). Regarding the

population issue, we have deliberately sampled individuals from various religions and

cultural backgrounds. This was done for generalizability of our results across cultures

and religions (cf. van de Vijver & Leung, 1997); in other words, we sought “human”

rather than culturally-specific data. Because there is no real-life “generic” religious ritual,

our “Bear God” task was useful in its cartoonish neutrality. An alternative approach, for

future studies, might be to compare and contrast individuals on a group level (e.g.

compare different faiths). On the issue of ecological validity, we must highlight the

staggering diversity of religious experiences that exist in the world (e.g., see Bell, 1997;

Boyer, 1994, 2001; Davis, 1989; Grim, 2006; Jackson, 2007; Kvanvig, 2007; McCauley

& Lawson, 2002; Pyysiäinen & Anttonen, 2002; Swann et al., 2012; Stark, 1965;

Whitehouse, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007; Whitehouse & Laidlaw, 2004; Whitehouse &

Martin, 2004; Whitehouse & McCauley, 2005). It is simply not possible to create a

28

“generic” ritual setting that carries the same meaning(s) for all participants. For example,

it is not possible to create “sacral symbolism” (Bell, 1997) unless you test individuals of

the same faith (although this might create a politically sensitive situation for the

experimenter). However, other aspects of rituals (ibid.) – formalism, traditionalism,

invariance, rule-governance, performance, etc. – could be tested (in isolation or together,

in game-form or otherwise) against mood and emotion paradigms in order to find reliable

effects and to evaluate which aspects of ritual are important for the way that people

cognitively process their religious rituals. Our approach in this paper was to find an effect

rather than create a facsimile of a real ritual. As Brecht and Glass (1968) suggest, the

aforementioned problem of ecological validity can be surmounted by conducting future

studies which entail “varying ecological settings to determine what aspects of the

treatment are causing the effect” (p. 453). If we take this approach to the cognitive

science of religion using the well-developed techniques of psychology, then we can

ultimately piece together the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to religious movements

around the globe.

29

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Acknowledgements: We thank Alain and Tobie Gobet for programming the computer

games, 67 students at Brunel University, and to the organizers of CEM09 in Tunisia

(especially Dr. Masmoudi). For administrative support, we thank Barbara de Bruine,

Dr. Claire White, Dr. Jon Lanman, Sarah-Jane White, Dr. Jesse Bering, Shane

Gavaghan, Tricia Lock, Shereen Sinclair, and Dr. Karen Johnson. Thank to you to Dr.

Michael Buhrmester and anonymous reviewers for comments. This research was

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funded by a research grant from the European Commission (EC-FP6 EXREL project

43225). Yvan Russell was partly funded by the German Initiative of Excellence of the

German Science Foundation (DFG). This work was also supported by an ESRC

Large Grant (REF RES-060-25-0085) entitled “Ritual, Community, and Conflict”

(Whitehouse).

Appendix 1 Deliberately obfuscatory oral instructions for “Bear God” task (TOH isomorph)

The Legend of the Bear-God

In a remote northern region of the arctic, the Bear-God is a spirit who protects the “Go-bay” people from predators and fierce weather. But the Bear-God must be persuaded to continue providing supernatural protection through the performance of a series of sacred tasks. There are always two (and only two) spiritual practitioners in a Go-bay tribe. One is the Leader Shaman. The other is the shaman-in-training. The Leader Shaman performs all five tasks. However, pleasing the Bear-God is a complicated task and the Leader Shaman and the shaman-in-training need to work together.

The five tasks are ranked in order of their seriousness. Ranked from 1 – 5, they are:(1) Kill a bear and offer it as a sacrifice

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(2) Cut down a rare type of tree and use its timber to prepare a burnt offering(3) Make food offering (corn)(4) Recite a prayer(5) Put hand on your heart and close your eyes

Before performing any of these tasks, a person must turn towards the sun, close their eyes and say "I humbly offer to faithfully do the task of…” [insert ritual here]. The person must then choose which ritual to take on. However, there are two strict rules here.

(1) The person must only take over the lowest-ranked task that the other is doing. Therefore, at the beginning of the ritual, the person can only take over task #5 ("put hand on your heart and close your eyes").

(2) The person can only take a task which is lower ranked than one that they are already doing. Therefore, if a person is already doing task #3, then they cannot also take task #2 – but they can take task #4.

Sometimes the Leader Shaman and shaman-in-training have difficulty with this task. If so, they can appeal to the Bear-God for pity and ask that He treat the task as having been done. But the Bear-God can only grant such a request for a task which is lower ranked than the request that he has last granted. In addition, the Bear-God will grow impatient if he is asked to grant such favour too frequently, so the Leader Shaman and the shaman-in-training must strive towards accomplishing all the sacred tasks with as few requests for pity as possible.

Appendix 2 Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression

The Zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression (see Böhning et al., 1997, 1999) is a

mixed-model variant on the usual Poisson regression, where the curve is fitted according

to two classes: if the value is zero, then that part of the distribution has a single point at

zero; if the value is more than zero, then that part of the distribution resembles the usual

Poisson distribution. In the case of zero-heavy data, the ZIP regression curve can be used

to provide a closer fit to data than possible with other, more standard, regression curves

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(e.g. see Karazsia & van Dulmen, 2008). We used the statistical program STATA

(version IC 11.1) in order to use to ZIP regression. Here, the data were entered in the data

file in a different way. Columns held data as follows: number of BG games solved,

condition 1 (EE), condition 2 (ED), condition 3 (NE), condition 4 (ND), age, male, and

female. When running the ZIP regression, the STATA program omitted one of the gender

categories due to collinearity (i.e. female = “yes” is dependent on male = “no”).

Therefore, we report the effect of sex even though we run only one of the genders in the

analysis (i.e. the predictor of ‘male’ or ‘female’ will come out the same in the analysis, if

you exclude one or the other). Unexpectedly, the STATA program also omitted condition

4 due to being collinear with condition 3. This meant that the effects of the two non-

expert conditions would be identical (to confirm this, we ran the test twice, once

excluding condition 3 and once excluding condition 4). Therefore, we simply report the

‘non-expert conditions’ instead of referring to them individually.

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Figure 1 Five-disk Tower of Hanoi

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Figure 2 Screenshot of the “Bear God” task

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Figure 4 Number of times that TOH isomorph solved by condition

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Step Expert euphoric (EE)

Expert dysphoric (ED)

Non-expert euphoric (NE)

Non-expert dysphoric (ND)

1. Sign consent sheet2. Games questionnaire3. Affect grid4. Mood induction

(“Mr. Bean”)Mood induction (“Threads”)

Mood induction (“Mr. Bean”)

Mood induction (“Threads”)

5. Sham memory test6. Affect grid7. Play Tower of

Hanoi (TOH) Play Tower of Hanoi (TOH)

Play Missionary Cannibal (MC)

Play Missionary Cannibal (MC)

8. Affect grid 9. Play Bear God (BG) task10. Affect grid11. Demographic questionnaire12. Debriefing13. Payment (£10 GBP)

Table 1 Experimental procedure

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Row Measure: Expert Euphoric (EE)

Non-expert Euphoric (NE)

Expert Dysphoric (ED)

Non-expert Dysphoric (ND)

All conditions

1 First game played TOH MC TOH MC TOH or MC

2 Horizontal score (happy-sad) on affect grid (range 1–9)

6.24(1.11)

6.07(1.14)

5.55(1.03)

5.29(0.98)

5.77(1.11)

3 6.15(1.11)

5.40(0.99)

4 Vertical score (arousal) on affect grid (range 1–9)

5.90 (1.43)

5.95(1.40)

5.70(1.17)

5.57(1.41)

5.77(1.34)

5 5.93(1.39)

5.62(1.29)

6 Number of times BG solved: Mean (SD)

0.88(0.92)

0.31 (0.60)

2.13 (2.53)

0.42 (0.96)

0.90 (1.55)

7 Proportion of zeroes 47% 75% 40% 79% 61%

8 Skewness statistic (BG games solved)

0.256 1.890 1.016 2.347 2.375

9 “Prior skill”: number of times TOH or MC solved: Mean (SD)

2.36 (1.50)

3.06(3.99)

4.13(3.60)

2.89(2.60)

3.07 (3.03)

10 “Prior skill”: mean duration (seconds) TOH or MC: Mean (SD)

371.49 (247.18)

440.99 (247.18)

347.99 (275.31)

424.09 (320.50)

397.74 (285.98)

11 Game duration (seconds) of BG game (including non-solutions): Mean (SD)

611.97 (281.16)

786.79 ( 202.94)

500.09 (346.98)

744.09 (240.79)

666.14 (286.66)

Table 2 Dependent variables and affect grid scores across conditions for BG (Bear-God), TOH (Tower of Hanoi), and MC (Missionary-Cannibal) games.

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