The Effect of Social Dilemma on Flow Experience: Prosociality Relevant to Collective Efficacy and Goal Achievement Motivation

Abstract

According to social dilemma theory, students may be characterized as being indifferent to reciprocal behavior and disengaged from interacting with the board gaming process. Given a common goal, students’ prosociality can affect the collective efficacy and goal achievement motivation that reflects their flow experience in a cooperative-competitive computer-based digital board game, called Strike-Up. The players were randomly provided with five numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division signs, and parentheses, and needed to complete the arithmetic calculation to find the best approaches to achieve the goal of reaching the end of the game. In addition to the cognitive strategies, the game allowed players to help each other to win. To explore the correlation, 240 students were randomly grouped into three-player teams to play Strike-Up against other teams. Data of 180 players were effectively returned and subjected to confirmatory analysis with structural equation modeling. The results revealed that prosociality can positively predict players’ flow experience mediated positively by collective efficacy and performance-approach goal motivation. The results also implied that the higher level of prosociality students had, the higher level of flow state they experienced in the game which involved a social dilemma.