Pleasure Differences as a Result of Seeing an Action versus Own Acting

DOI: 10.5176/978-981-08-7656-2ATAI2010-67

Authors: Xinying Cheah and Alexander Nareyek

Abstract:

Actively playing a computer game will generate more pleasure than a corresponding passive experience, such aswatching a movie or reading a book. This is what common knowledge tells us. It is however not fully consistent with ourresearch on the human reward system, and we undertook thestudy described in this paper to have a closer look at the differences. In this study, test participants watched videos of actors playing games as well as actively played the games themselves. The study examined how the pleasure difference of the participant's own acting versus passively differences of actions of an actor changes with the participant's level of empathy, the sympathy toward the actor, and the level of emotion displayed by the actors. Among other results, the findings indicate that a higher pleasure resulting from own actions diminishes with a higher empathy rating, with equal pleasure at about the maximum rating of 80.