Gamifying Psychological Testing: Insights from Gamifying the TAT

OF THESIS Nowadays, gamification, using game elements in a non-game context, is becoming progressively popular in the research due to their affordances. Technology has the promise of increasing the accessibility and gamification has the capability of bringing engagement. This combination can increase participation in nonengaging contexts such as a test. In this study, we gamified a psychological test, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and ran an empirical study to test the effectiveness of such gamification. TAT consists a set of cards showing human figures in ambiguous situations and subjects write up stories about each card. The written stories are used to reveal aspects of the personality of the writers. We used a platform called Mad Science to implement our games and manipulated the test with achievement, exploration and social elements. In the empirical study, all participants did both the paper-based version of the TAT and the gamified version of it and rated their experience in each setting through surveys. We compared the results obtained from the traditional setting and the gamified version in terms of personality themes and detail of the stories to understand the consistency of results in the two settings and if stories in one setting could better reveal aspects of personality. We also looked at the survey results to understand the participants’ preference in each setting. Our results showed that the gamified version of the TAT provided a more motivating and enjoyable experience while at the same time could capture the essence of the TAT. The game could also reveal more personality themes in some of the cases. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Game Science and Design in the Graduate School of the College of Arts, Media and Design of Northeastern University