Players’ Quality of Play and Overall Interest of the Game in Dyadic Competition

These experiments examined the cognitive processes involved in judging the quality of play of a player competing against another player and the overall interest of a competitive game as a function of the players’ respective ability and motivation levels. For the quality of play of one player, a very...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of psychology 2008-03, Vol.121 (1), p.17-33
Main Authors: Dru, Vincent, Rulence-Pâques, Patricia, Mullet, Etienne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis
Aptitude
Athletes
Athletic ability
Athletic motivation
Athletic Performance
Attention
Behavior
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition
Cognitive ability
Cognitive science
Cognitive Sciences
College athletes
Competition
Competition (Psychology)
Competitive Behavior
Dyadics
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Games
Humans
Internships
Judgment
Life Sciences
Male
Management information systems
Medical care
Medical care (Private)
MIS
Motivation
Motivation research
Neurons and Cognition
Physiological aspects
Players
Political debate
Psychological aspects
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social psychology
Social Sciences
Sports
Tennis
Tennis - psychology
Theater
United States
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Description
Summary:These experiments examined the cognitive processes involved in judging the quality of play of a player competing against another player and the overall interest of a competitive game as a function of the players’ respective ability and motivation levels. For the quality of play of one player, a very simple information integration rule was found. Quality of play was judged almost exclusively as an additive function of the ability and motivation levels of the player. For the interest of the game, an apparently complex but fundamentally simple integration rule was found. For a game to be very interesting, players had to be both highly able and highly motivated; for a game to be somewhat interesting, each player had to be at least either highly able or highly motivated; and all other configurations corresponded to lower expected levels of interest.
ISSN:0002-9556
1939-8298
DOI:10.2307/20445441