MindCraft Challenges

Michael Scullin is a psychology professor and sleep researcher. He decided to help his students sleep during finals week by offering extra credit for averaging more than 8 hours of sleep each night during the final exam week. His challenge worked! The students reported getting more sleep each night and scored higher on their exams than students who opted out or tried the challenge but didn't succeed (even after controlling for their performance in the class before the challenge).

Challenge: Try the eight-hour sleep challenge for a week. Because the offer of a reward was an important part of the challenge, I will provide 25 XP for any student who successfully completes the 8-hour sleep challenge and reports it in a MindCraft report. Your report will need to document the amount of time you slept each night for a week, and you must average 8 hours or more per night. This will require some time management!

Read More
Scullin’s 8-hour sleep challenge
https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628318816142
Consistent sleep predicts academic performance, not sleep the night before a test
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-019-0055-z

Actors involve their bodies and emotions in learning, with remarkable results. These results are part of a broader pattern in the study of memory known as the enactment effect: when people act out an instruction or a pattern, their memory is more effective than when they simply hear it.

Challenge: How can you use the enactment effect? If what you are learning has associated spatial information (a diagram, a process, or a sequence) or can be converted to that information, you can act out the layout or sequence of the information by talking while you move your hand or body through the space. For example, rather than just looking at a Krebs Cycle diagram, you might walk the cycle while gesturing to describe what is happening at each step. Think about how your movement can point to the next step or idea: goal-directed movement is the key, not just movement without any purpose!

Read More
Subject-performed tasks improve memory
https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.3.524
https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194399
Goal-directed movement is key for actors’ memory
https://doi.org/10.1080/01638530701498911

Acting as an agent can make a big difference. However, people don’t always think about whether they can be agents. College classrooms are one place where this often happens—students don’t always realize that they can actively improve their classes. Erika Patall and her colleagues demonstrated that student motivation improves when they learn to act as agents.

Challenge: Read the short version of Patall’s training course (linked below). Make sure that you complete the letter-writing activity at the end. Try to apply what you learn about agency and motivation in one of your classes. Did your classroom experience change?

Training: https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/make-any-class-better.pdf

Read More
Student agency to change motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000614
Student engagement improves motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034934
Student actions create supportive classrooms
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032690

Kristin Laurin and her colleagues conducted one of many studies demonstrating that thinking about God can change people's behavior. In their study, they activated people's thoughts about God. People were more likely to be resistant to temptation—however, they were also less likely to actively pursue goals when they thought about a controlling God. Laurin and her colleagues interpreted this as people feeling less like agents while thinking about an omnipotent God (the participant’s religious beliefs didn’t change the pattern). When people thought about God as a guide, they were both resistant to temptation and willing to pursue their goals.

Challenge: Spend a day regularly reading, memorizing, and reciting Psalm 121. Did your motivation or susceptibility to temptation change from what it usually is as you thought about God’s constant guidance?

Read More
The Laurin “thinking about God” study:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025971
More about religion and self-control:
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014213

What should a person do if they realize that they have hostile habits online or in real life (or, likely, both)? Sheri Johnson and her colleagues used a WOOP intervention (a kind of implementation intention) to help people develop a plan for hostile habits.

Challenge: If you have a hostile online habit that you want to reduce, form and implement a WOOP plan:

Wish: (What do you want to stop doing?)
Outcome: (What is your goal?)
Obstacle: (What is the trigger of your habit?)
Plan: (How will you stop the trigger from activating the habit? What will you do instead?)

Implement your WOOP plan for a week. Were you able to reduce the hostile habit as you wished?

Read More
The WOOP intervention
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2020.103708
Another intervention to reduce hostile attributions and aggression
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10147-8

Bob and Elizabeth Bjork refer to the types of effective learning techniques that challenge students as desirable difficulties. These techniques make studying more difficult in helpful ways so that performance on tests is less difficult.

Challenge: Choose one or more of the study techniques in green or yellow from the charts in class today to implement (I recommend practice testing if you have a class that requires learning facts or patterns). Use your change in study techniques to study for a relatively low-stakes test (for example, a quiz instead of a mid-term test). Pay attention to what study feels like and your performance on the test—our intuitions about study often lead to the incorrect belief that difficult study means that learning isn’t happening.

Read More
Learning in College
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616645770
Intuitions about spaced practice are reversed
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02127.x

An earlier challenge was about making a habit, but this challenge is about breaking a habit. Wendy Wood and her colleagues discovered that when students transferred to a new university, their habits (exercising, TV watching, and reading) were disrupted because the cue that started the cycle of cue-habit-reinforcer was missing. This suggests avoiding cues to habits you want to change might be an important first step.

Challenge: Identify a habit that you want to block. Try to identify the context or situation that is the cue for your cue-habit-reinforcer cycle. It might be something in the environment or an internal state. Now, try to disrupt the cue so it can’t start the cycle (avoid certain places at certain times, plan actions that disrupt internal states). Did the disruption help you block an unwanted habit?

Read More:
Disrupting habits
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918
Habits and behavior change
https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214241246480

Can people use evaluative conditioning to help them like new habits? There is some preliminary evidence that this might be possible. Conroy and Kim set up people’s cellphones with rotating wallpaper on the lock screen that paired positive images with images of an activity that they wanted people to engage in more often (physical exercise). People did report liking and engaging in physical exercise more often during the experiment.

Challenge:
Set a goal: increasing the frequency of a desired behavior or forming a new habit. Create a set of 4 or 5 wallpapers to set as a rotating gallery for your phone lock screen (see the first ‘Read More’ link for an example—the picture of the behavior to increase should be one-half of the screen, and a paired positive image should be the other half). Track the target behavior or habit during the week. Did the evaluative conditioning seem to help you change behaviors?

Read More:

Evaluative conditioning via lock screen:
https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000886
More about evaluative conditioning:
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031815

Wendy Wood suggests that we can move tasks from System 2 to System 1 by practicing the task regularly in the same context (the context will become a cue).

Challenge:
1. Choose a behavior that you want to make into a habit (read more books, go to gym, eat veggies).
2. Choose a context. When and where do you plan to do this new behavior? Specify a context (location, time).
3. Reward yourself for the behavior and track the development of your habit over several days using this scale and set of questions:

Disagree ①②③④⑤ Agree
Sometimes I start _____ before I realize I’m doing it.
______ is something I do without thinking.
______ is something I do automatically.
______ is something I do without having to consciously remember.

Read More:
Wendy Wood on habits: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721424124648

Listening is a multi-modal activity involving multiple senses and experiences with your own motor systems, allowing you to accurately simulate speech production. Imitating an unfamiliar accent improves those unconscious, real-time simulations and thus improves comprehension when listening to the practiced accent.

Challenge::
Practice imitating an unfamiliar accent. You might choose a teacher you are having trouble understanding, a friend, or even a podcast or video channel speaker. Practice the accent (not in front of them—be polite). Does your ability to understand improve?

Read More::
Imitation and comprehension::
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610389192:
Skilled mimics have better comprehension:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9562-y

Hindsight bias (“I knew it all along”, “I saw it coming all along”) can lead to problems with learning and decision-making. Because of hindsight bias, people fail to search long enough for explanations for mistakes or unwanted outcomes (cognitive myopia). People also believe they have the best understanding of situations (overconfidence). Thus, people avoid learning from mistakes.

Challenge:
One of the best ways to counteract hindsight bias is with the consider-the-opposite strategy. When faced with the results of a decision, you can use consider-the-opposite to think about what other outcomes could have occurred and what steps might have led to those other outcomes. You might also think about how other steps could lead to the same outcome. Try using consider-the-opposite to better understand educational or social outcomes for a week. Did you learn anything about alternative actions or possibilities?

Read More:
About hindsight bias:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691612454303