British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 42 No 5 2011 842–849

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01106.x

Gamers and gaming context: Relationships to critical thinking _1106 842..849

Sue Gerber and Logan Scott

Sue Gerber and Logan Scott are Faculty in the Informatics Program at University at Buffalo. Address for correspon-
dence: Sue Gerber, University at Buffalo, 215 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. Email: [email protected]

Abstract
Gaming is purported to hold promise for education, in part, because it is thought to
develop 21st century skills such as critical thinking. To date, there has been a dearth of
generalisable research investigating the relationship between gaming and critical think-
ing. Results of a survey of 121 adults found that gamers and non-gamers do not differ
significantly on critical thinking dispositions. However, gamers who play strategy games
scored higher on actively open-minded thinking than did other types of gamers. In
addition, low compared with high involvement in the gaming community was associ-
ated with higher open-minded thinking. Implications for educators and for further
research are discussed.

Background
Critical thinking
Fostering critical thinking is fundamental to the mission of formal education, including higher
education. Critical thinking is a cornerstone of liberal arts education. Recently, critical thinking
was listed as a 21st century skill (Angeli & Valanides, 2009; Galarneau & Zibit, 2007; Silva, 2009;
Wang, Woo & Zhao, 2009). The notion of 21st century skills stems from the emphasis on
information in today’s society. The value is not just in having information, but also in being able
to use it. The problems with which individuals are confronted today are ill defined and require
critical thinking in drawing on knowledge from a variety of fields.
The concept of critical thinking can be traced to Socrates, but John Dewey is closely associated
with critical thinking in modern times. Although definitions today vary, there is a generally
accepted core set of cognitive skills involved in critical thinking, including analysis, interpreta-
tion, evaluation, explanation and self-regulation (Abrami et al, 2008; American Philosophical
Association, 1990; Ennis, 1987; Fischer, 2001). In addition to cognitive skills, dispositions are
crucial to critical thinking (Facione, Sanchez, Facione & Gainen, 1995). A disposition towards
critical thinking is the ‘likelihood that one will approach problem framing or problem solving by
using reasoning consistent with internal motivation to engage problems and make decisions by
using thinking’ (Giancarlo & Facione, 2001, pp. 30–31).
Both cognitive skills and dispositions are seen as equally important components of critical think-
ing. One difference between the two is that skills are context-dependent and non-transferable.
Dispositions, on the other hand, are more general, discipline-neutral traits (Abrami et al, 2008;
Cheung, Rudowicz, Kwan & Yue, 2002; Ennis, 1987; Giancarlo & Facione, 2001; Kuhn, 1999;
Tishman, Jay & Perkins, 1993). Although more research has been devoted to skills than disposi-
tions, some believe that the latter may be more important. This is in part because skills require
direct teaching, whereas dispositions are learned through enculturation into reasoned and
thoughtful ways of approaching situations and acting in the world. As such, critical thinking
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2010 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 Gamers and critical thinking 843

dispositions are particularly germane as 21st century skills. Dimensions of critical thinking
dispositions include truth-seeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, confidence in
thinking, inquisitiveness and maturity.
The open-mindedness dimension has been examined in some depth. Stanovich and West (1997)
describe open-minded thinking as the ability to recognise one’s opinions and beliefs and to keep
them separate from one’s analytical processes. The authors assert that open-mindedness is one of
the cornerstones of critical thinking. In today’s information and Internet society, opinions are
increasing in prominence via news, media and individual blogging. Thus, the ability to remain
open-minded and to detach opinion from reasoning is likely to maintain or expand its importance
in the foreseeable future.
Gaming
Gaming is thought to hold promise for fostering critical thinking and other 21st century skills,
resulting in many initiatives to utilise gaming in educational settings. Focusing on commercial
games, Gee (2003) delineated 36 gaming principles that were associated with social constructiv-
ist learning principles. Many of the principles also represent aspects of 21st century skills, includ-
ing active, critical, reflective thinking; communicating; and engaging with ill-defined domains
and tasks.
Some assert that while these higher-order skills are not being learned in school, they are being
developed through games (Galarneau & Zibit, 2007; Prensky, 2007). If this were the case, com-
pared with non-gamers, gamers would be expected to exhibit greater tendency towards critical
thinking. To date, however, there is little empirical research exploring gaming and these impor-
tant outcomes (Oliver & Carr, 2009; Schrader & McCreery, 2008; Steinkuehler & Duncan, 2008).
Rather, there is an emphasis on research focusing on educational games (eg, Annetta, Minogue,
Holmes & Cheng, 2009; Coller & Scott, 2009). However, because these games are developed
specifically for instructional purposes, these studies do not address the question of whether the
skills used in everyday gaming transfer as life skills for gamers. There has been some research on
transfer and commercial gaming focusing on skills such as vision, attention and focus, and spatial
ability (eg, Dye, Green & Bavelier, 2009; Feng, Spence & Pratt, 2007; Green & Bavelier, 2007). In
general, positive transfer of these skills to non-gaming activities was found.
This study adds to the body of gaming research by (1) examining the higher-order skill of critical
thinking, and (2) exploring differences between gamers and non-gamers.
Gaming culture
A second area of gaming research focuses on gaming culture. This research includes ethno-
graphic studies of gamers, which emphasise the communities of practice that develop in the
environments, and the skills used in situ when gaming (eg, Steinkuehler, 2006; Steinkuehler &
Duncan, 2008). Although these studies do not examine the extent to which players exhibit these
cognitive skills outside the gaming environment, they do highlight the importance of gaming
culture and context. Thus, the current study also explores the context of gaming.
One of the most important aspects of context is genre. Classifying games is a complex process and
can at best be described as subjective (Pinelle, Wong & Stach, 2008). Most classifications originate
with the video game industry, although these are not without their challenges (Apperley, 2006).
For instance, as games change from version to version, genres and their definitions continually
evolve. Similarly, as new games are developed, the industry develops sub-genres and hybrid genres
(eg, action-adventure).
Table 1 displays major genres and their characteristics that are commonly represented in the
gaming industry. Based on this table, it is clear that different types of games emphasise different
skills. As such, game genre may be a factor in critical thinking skills of players. First-person
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Table 1: Description of gaming genres

Genre Description

Adventure Player must complete puzzles or tasks by interacting with characters in a

scenario. Emphasises exploration over reflexes and confrontation.
Fighter Player competes using some means of combat, usually one-on-one.
First-person shooter Player takes a first-person view, centred on a weapon, such as a gun. Requires
speed and fast reflexes.
Music Player emulates music using mock instruments or body movements to
represent tones.
Platformer Specific type of action game involving jumping onto platforms to travel
through a course with obstacles. Emphasises precision and fast reflexes.
Puzzle Player solves logic puzzles or manoeuvres through mazes. Often emphasises
fast reflexes.
Racing Player drives a vehicle and competes in a race. Player usually takes on the view
from the driver’s seat. Emphasises speed and reflexes.
Role play Player assumes the role of a character and explores a world, gaining new
abilities along the way. Many games have a science fiction or fantasy
component. Emphasises story.
Simulation Player is involved in a realistic simulation of the world. Simulations may
involve life, building or business.
Sports Player emulates the experience of a sports game. Games involve choosing
strategies for play, displaying physical skills or both.
Strategy Player has command of units, such as an army, and seeks to defeat opponents.
Can either be real-time or turn-based. Emphasises tactical planning.

shooter games, for instance, typically have a singular goal of shooting at opponents. Speed and
reflexes are valued over critical thinking. Conversely, strategy games emphasise tactics and long-
term planning over reflexes.
In addition to the genre, context includes the extent of involvement in gaming communities and
gaming practices. Time spent playing is one aspect of involvement that has been examined for
potential negative effects. This body of research includes psychological factors of the individual,
but emphasises playing time and what has been described as gaming addiction (eg, Carnagey,
Anderson & Bushman, 2007; Hsu, Wen & Wu, 2009; Liu & Peng, 2009). Other aspects of gaming
context include the extent to which one is connected with gaming community.

Research questions
This study has two research objectives. The first investigates differences between gamers and
non-gamers on critical thinking dispositions. The research question is: Is there a significant
difference between gamers and non-gamers on measures of critical thinking dispositions?
The second objective focuses on gamers only and examines the relationship of critical thinking
dispositions to gaming context. The aspects of context explored are: game genre, daily playing
time, and connection with the gaming community. A representative research question is: Among
gamers, is genre played significantly related to critical thinking dispositions? The method section
of the paper details the measures of context.

Method
Participants
Data were collected through an online survey from July to October of 2009. Gamers and non-
gamers were recruited through flyers posted on the authors’ campus and invitations sent via
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2010 Becta.
 Gamers and critical thinking 845

email to students of several specific courses taught at the university. The courses were in educa-
tion, technology and design. In addition, invitations were sent to gaming forums, with a request
to forward the invitation to other forum lists.
Critical thinking dispositions
One portion of the survey instrument assessed dispositions towards critical thinking. Multiple
instruments have been developed to measure critical thinking dispositions. Stanovich and West
(1997) developed one scale, the Actively Open-Minded Thinking (AOT) Scale. The 41-item ques-
tionnaire has a 6-point Likert format. An example of an item is ‘people should always take into
consideration evidence that goes against their beliefs’. Instrument validation yielded a split-half
reliability of 0.75 and a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.83.
Cacioppo and Petty (1982) developed a questionnaire assessing Need for Cognition (NFC). This
questionnaire, in 9-point Likert format, includes items such ‘the notion of thinking abstractly is
appealing to me’. The authors also developed and validated a shorter, 18-item version (Cacioppo,
Petty & Kao, 1984). The Cronbach’s alpha is 0.90.
In several studies, Stanovich and colleagues employed both these measures, intermixing the
questions into one 59-item questionnaire with 6-point Likert format (eg, Stanovich & West,
2007; West, Toplak, & Stanovich, 2008). This study uses the same methodology. Specifically,
separate scales were developed for the AOT and the NFC by summing items from each instrument
and converting to z-scores.
Gaming context
The survey also assessed gamer status and, when applicable, gaming context. Context included
genre, playing time and involvement in gaming communities. Respondents were presented with
the 11 genres shown in Table 1 and asked to indicate all genres played. Playing time was a 4-point
Likert scale item ranging from 1 hour or less per day through over 4 hours. There were four
survey items measuring community involvement. Participants were asked to indicate whether
they followed gaming news, participated in or read gaming blogs or participated in
gaming tournaments. A final item asked the percentage of friends involved in gaming (0–25%,
26–50%, etc.).

Results
Non-gamer and gamer profiles
In total, 121 individuals responded to the survey: 79 gamers and 42 non-gamers. The weighting
towards gamers is to be expected given that recruitment included gaming forums. The informa-
tion collected on non-gamers was limited to demographics. The gender distribution was approxi-
mately balanced, with 43% males. Approximately 62% of non-gamer respondents were of college
age, 18–22 years. This is likely because of the recruitment plan, which included college cam-
puses. Unlike non-gamers, gamers were predominantly male, 78%. This is consistent with demo-
graphics reported by the gaming industry. The Entertainment Software Association (n.d.)
indicates that 60% of gamers are male. Like non-gagmers, the age distribution for gamers was
weighted towards college-age persons (65%).
Gamers also reported on their gaming habits. The typical gamer in this study is a college-age male.
He tends to keep up with gaming news (70% responding affirmatively) and gaming blogs (75%)
but does not participate in organised tournaments (35%). His friends generally share his gaming
focus, although not exclusively. Approximately 32% of gamers indicated that 51–75% of their
friends are gamers. However, 22% reported having, at most, one-fourth of their friends as gamers,
and only 7% asserted that more than three-quarters of their friends are gamers. The typical
gamer, in this sample, plays between more than one and up to 2 hours daily (33%). Only 19% of
respondents play for more than 4 hours per day.
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Table 2: Players by genre

Genre Percentage

Role play 73
First-person shooter 71
Strategy 58
Adventure 56
Music 53
Platformer 44
Racing 43
Fighter 43
Puzzle 42
Simulation 37
Sports 30

The survey listed 11 game genres. Gamers play, on average, 5.5 genres (standard deviation
[SD] = 2.49). Over 45% of gamers play between three to five genres. Only five persons played just
one type, and four played 10 or 11 genres. Table 2 displays the percentage of respondents for each
genre, in descending order. Role-play and first-person shooter games are the most popular, which
is consistent with what is reported in the literature (eg, Choi, Konik, Nejati, Park & Langley, 2007;
Meredith, Hussain & Griffith, 2009). Three other genres—strategy, adventure and music—were
played by over half the sample. The least popular genres among respondents were simulations
and sports.

Gamer versus non-gamer

The first research question compares gamers with non-gamers on AOT and NFC. As preliminary
analyses, differences based on gender and age were explored. All comparisons used a 0.05 sig-
nificance level. There were no significant gender differences, but age group was significant for
both AOT (t(117) = 2.30, p = 0.023) and NFC (t(117) = 2.37, p = 0.019). In both cases, individu-
als 23 years of age or older scored higher than those 18–22 years. The difference for open-
mindedness was 0.43 points on the z-score scale; it was 0.44 for need for cognition.
Results of main gamer versus non-gamer analysis indicated no significant differences for either
AOT (t(117) = 0.96, p = 0.340) or NFC (t(117) = 0.59, p = 0.594). Overall, gamers and non-
gamers exhibit similar critical thinking dispositions. This stands in contrast to the theoretical
literature, which asserts that gaming develops critical thinking abilities.

Gaming context
The second set of research questions focused on the 79 gamers and examined the relationship of
context to critical thinking dispositions. Analyses employed separate independent group t-tests,
with a significance level of 0.05 throughout. Hours of playing time was compared for up to
2hours per day versus over 2 hours per day. There was no significant difference for NFC, but there
was for AOT (t(75) = 2.62, p = 0.011). Those playing two or fewer hours scored higher
(M = 0.32) than those playing over 2 hours (M = -0.24). This finding may support the literature
asserting the negative effects of excessive time playing games.
Four measures related to engagement with gaming community: read gaming news, read or
participate in gaming blogs, attend gaming tournaments, and friends’ involvement in gaming.
Two measures yielded significant differences on the AOT: gaming news (t(75) = 2.03, p = 0.046)
and friends’ involvement (t(75) = 1.99, p = 0.050). For news, individuals who do not follow
gaming news (M = 0.41) scored higher than those who do (M = -0.07). For friends’ involvement,
the measure was collapsed to 0–50% and 51–100%, to yield acceptable number of subjects for
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2010 Becta.
 Gamers and critical thinking 847

group comparison. Persons with fewer friends involved in gaming had higher AOT scores (0.27
compared with -0.15). In terms of context, therefore, less involvement with the gaming commu-
nity is associated with higher open-minded thinking.
The final comparisons were for genre. For each genre, gamers who played the type were compared
with those who did not. The only significant difference was on the strategy genre for AOT
(t(75) = 2.03, p = 0.046). The mean difference was 0.44, with strategy gamers scoring higher
(M = 0.24) than other gamers (M = -0.20).
Because this was the only genre that was significant, the other contextual variables were exam-
ined in relation to strategy gamers. The only difference of note was that, compared with other
gamers, strategy gamers spend more time playing. Approximately 26% of strategy players spend
over 4 hours playing per day, compared with 9% of non-strategy gamers. Similarly, 36% of
non-strategy gamers played less then 1 hour per day, compared with only 11% of strategy
gamers. In order to investigate a possible interaction, an exploratory two-way analysis of variance
was conducted using strategy gamer (yes/no) and playing time (up to 2 hours, over 2 hours) as
factors and AOT as the dependent measure. There was a significant interaction (F(1,73) = 9.35,
p = 0.003). For both strategy and non-strategy gamers, longer playing time was associated with
lower AOT scores, but the discrepancy was more pronounced for non-strategy gamers. These
results should be interpreted with caution, however, because of small cell sizes.

Conclusions
The main goal of this research was to examine the extent to which playing commercial games is
related to dispositions towards critical thinking. The study was designed to address the assertion
that formal education can be improved by leveraging gaming and the learning that takes place in
naturalistic game play. Results did not support this assertion; gamers and non-gamers did not
differ significantly on either measure of dispositions towards critical thinking.
However, this study does highlight the importance of context when examining gaming, and finds
support for the relationship between playing games and critical thinking when context is included
as a factor. Specifically, it was found that strategy gamers have a greater propensity for actively
open-minded thinking than non-strategy gamers.
In addition to game genre, involvement with the gaming community and playing time were
related to critical thinking dispositions. Overall, lower involvement—not keeping up with gaming
news, playing at most for 2 hours per day and having a lower percentage of friends involved in
gaming—was associated with greater open-minded thinking. Another way to interpret these
results is that extreme involvement, or what some refer to as addiction to gaming, is associated
with less open-mindedness.
However, hours played showed interesting results. Overall, shorter playing time was related to
higher AOT, but for strategy gamers, longer play was not as strongly associated with lower AOT
as for other gamers. This may call into question the practice of generalising regarding time spent
gaming, or the notion of gaming addiction itself. This latter possibility is consistent with Wood
(2008) who, in analysing four cases of supposed video game addiction, found that the issue is
complex and cannot be effectively explored outside of individual contexts.
The study has several limitations. First, the exploratory nature of this study and the limited
sample sizes requires caution in interpreting these findings. In addition, the study design does not
permit causal inferences. It may be, for instance, that gamers who are naturally critical thinkers
gravitate towards strategy games rather than first-person shooter games. Similarly, the recruit-
ment method and online survey format may have influenced results. Recruitment venues
included gaming forums, which may have limited the diversity in type of gamer-participant and
© 2010 The Authors. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2010 Becta.
848 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 42 No 5 2011

under-represented casual gamers. Finally, it is important to remember that the survey measures
dispositions, rather than actual critical thinking behaviours.
These limitations can be used to inform the design of future research in this area. From an
educator perspective, there may be value in focusing on strategy games and/or strategy gamers.
For instance, future research could explore measures of critical thinking skills, in addition to
dispositions. As noted, critical thinking skills are context- and perhaps subject-specific. Thus, it
may be useful to examine strategy gamers’ critical thinking abilities in relation to a variety of
subjects.
Future research should also focus on recruiting a more representative sample of gamers, includ-
ing both casual and hardcore gamers. It would be beneficial to attempt to recruit individuals in
enough numbers to allow more multifaceted comparisons. These comparisons could involve
hardcore gamers compared with casual gamers, and the interaction between game genre and
time spent playing.
Finally, research should also seek to address the issue of causality and investigate whether learn-
ing to play strategy games can increase critical thinking skills and/or dispositions. Research in
this vein may provide the most challenges because any transferable effects of playing games is
likely related to personality traits and entertainment preferences. It may be necessary to consult
the literature and conduct preliminary research examining characteristics related to enjoyment
in gaming. Despite the difficulties, this area of research seems most critical for educators.

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