Why does a sheep "go up" when playing with sheep? Expert: Falling into a "dopamine trap"

　　Why do we "head" the sheep for the sheep?

　　Recently, how many people around me have been fighting all night just for a small game.

The stack-type elimination game "Sheep and Sheep", known as "the clearance rate of less than 0.1%", has become popular all over the Internet, making players "pain and play".

Playing some casual games properly can release physical and mental stress, but there are indeed some addictive mechanisms in the difficulty setting and game setting of "Sheep".

Psychological experts told reporters that in fact, many games can make people addicted and fall into a "dopamine trap".

　　Yangzi Evening News/Ziniu News reporter Zhang Nan

　　1 Why is it "stuck"?

control emotional value

　　Recently, have you been trapped by "sheep for a sheep"?

The first level is a teaching level, and it is very easy to get started.

However, the real test is from the second level, the difficulty jumps from "novice" to "epic difficulty".

The clearance rate of less than 0.1% instantly aroused everyone's strong "challenge".

And because of the gameplay of fighting for the province, it has aroused everyone's sense of honor that "I will win glory for my hometown" and the desire to win and lose that will not hold back my hometown.

I can't pass it once, and in order to "continue my life", I have to watch advertisements.

"Sheep is a sheep" makes players jump back and forth between "want to play", "blood pressure rise", "self-doubt" and "still want to play", and finally, driven by the complex mood of "more angry and more playful", repeated challenges, Watch an ad.

　　Even because too many players poured in in a short period of time, the popularity far exceeded expectations, causing the server to crash twice in three days. The company had to pay a lot of money to urgently recruit back-end server developers.

In just a few days, game guides, plug-ins and even piracy emerged one after another.

The police also urgently reminded to beware of telecommunication fraud posing as customer service staff, sales props, resurrection times, etc.

　　At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be anything special. Why has “Sheep and Sheep” become the most profitable and traffic-earning game in the market in the short term?

Psychologists said that the motivation of playing games and posting friends circles has changed from sharing the highest record to complaining and unwillingness. This kind of gameplay is actually in the process of game design, through a deep insight into the psychological logic to let users "get into the trap".

Games are still games, but they contain multiple attributes, including social attributes, comparison psychology, and gambler psychology, etc. By accurately controlling emotional value, users are driven to try out game levels.

　　2 Why is it so "up"?

Falling into the "dopamine trap"

　　"The sheep is a sheep", why can it be so "up"?

There is a point of view that in the game of "sheep and sheep", the psychology of players "playing with pain" is more like the "slot machine effect" in psychology: using simple operations in exchange for "0.1% clearance rate", To achieve the psychological needs of "small and broad".

During the interview, Han Ning, a national second-level psychological consultant, a member of the Jiangsu Nanjing 12355 Psychological Expert Think Tank, and a teacher at Nanjing Transportation Technician College, told reporters, "Many people can't stop, it's not how novel this game is, but it's actually an upgraded version of Lianliankan; It's not that this game is so fun. Many people can't play it at all, and they can't even pass the second level. But why can't everyone put it down? This is a typical addiction. "

　　Han Ning analyzed, "If you can't pass the test and feel uncomfortable, you will secrete dopamine to soothe our emotions. And the process of secreting dopamine will make us feel happy. So we will enter the game again and repeat this process. Side effects. It is the increase in the tolerance threshold, our body gradually adapts, and the secretion of dopamine becomes less and less, you need greater stimulation or longer stimulation, such as continuously prolonging the game time, in order to obtain new dopamine.”

　　In addition, another major feature of this game is that it has certain social functions, "It is precisely because of this kind of sharing and ranking in the circle of friends that you always have a constant entanglement with this game. When you give up, when your friends are chatting about the game, you play the game unconsciously, and you fall into the dopamine trap again.”

　　3 How to "quit addiction" in life?

learn behavioral psychology

　　In fact, the development of many such small games is in line with the addiction mechanism, and many players fall into the "addiction trap" unknowingly.

These mini-games are often designed for the purpose of "harvesting" a wave of traffic. They only become popular for a short period of time, and gradually disappear as social topics gradually subside, and their life cycles are getting shorter and shorter.

　　"In addition to small games, in life, some people will be 'addicted' to other bad habits, such as alcoholism." Han Ning said, might as well use behavioral psychology to analyze why it is difficult to quit addiction?

"Imagine the circumstances under which alcoholism will occur. In fact, most of them are under emotional fluctuations such as distress, depression, exhaustion, irritability, fear, anxiety, excitement, excitement, etc. At this time, they need to divert their attention and choose to achieve it through external behavior. , and when these behaviors are not enough to transfer, they even choose to self-harm."

　　The question is, can we regulate these emotions if we do not choose external behavioral help?

The answer is "yes".

Han Ning said that in fact, our own regulatory mechanisms will help us spontaneously, but we need to give these mechanisms some time.

This adjustment period is a bit slow, and this slowness is also a form of self-preservation.

For example, if you speed up, stop suddenly, and then speed up again, every organ of your body will be overloaded, and even life-threatening.

In fact, emotions are the same, great joy and great sorrow will also endanger our life safety.

Therefore, in this process, our intelligent body will avoid excessive methods, and will slowly treat our drastic emotional changes.

　　But we can't wait for such a slow process, and we are very eager to quickly return to normal during this process, so we will definitely use external forces to help ourselves, but the symptoms are not cured.

The real decisive role comes from ourselves, and it is the regulation of the functions of our various organs, which helps us relieve related negative emotions.

When we feel a little more comfortable, it is not by external behavior, but by changes in our inner selves.

But many people are unaware of their inner self, believing that it is the outer behavior that has brought us the change.

So I fell in love with this kind of behavior, I felt that this behavior could solve my own problems, and formed a conditioned reflex. Finally, as long as I had a little emotional change, I would make corresponding external behaviors.

　　How can we use this mechanism to move ourselves in a positive direction?

Hanning suggests that when our emotions change drastically, we can choose some positive behaviors and turn these positive behaviors into our "habits."

For example, you can choose appropriate fitness, running, reading, listening to music, etc.

It's important to remember that it's not these external behaviors that heal our emotions, but our own biological regulation mechanisms.

We need to use this regulatory mechanism to make us have the "habit" of positive behavior.