Board, card or video games have been played by virtually every individual in the world. Games are popular because they are intuitive and fun. These distinctive qualities of games also make them ideal for studying the mind. By being intuitive, games provide a unique vantage point for understanding the inductive biases that support behaviour in more complex, ecological settings than traditional laboratory experiments. By being fun, games allow researchers to study new questions in cognition such as the meaning of ‘play’ and intrinsic motivation, while also supporting more extensive and diverse data collection by attracting many more participants. We describe the advantages and drawbacks of using games relative to standard laboratory-based experiments and lay out a set of recommendations on how to gain the most from using games to study cognition. We hope this Perspective will lead to a wider use of games as experimental paradigms, elevating the ecological validity, scale and robustness of research on the mind.

世界上几乎每个人都玩过棋盘、纸牌或视频游戏。游戏很受欢迎，因为它们直观且有趣。游戏的这些独特品质也使其成为研究思维的理想选择。由于直观，游戏为理解归纳偏差提供了独特的优势，这些偏差支持比传统实验室实验更复杂的生态环境中的行为。由于游戏很有趣，因此研究人员可以研究认知中的新问题，例如“玩”的含义和内在动机，同时还可以通过吸引更多的参与者来支持更广泛和多样化的数据收集。我们描述了使用游戏相对于标准实验室实验的优点和缺点，并就如何从使用游戏来研究认知中获得最大收益提出了一系列建议。我们希望这一观点能够更广泛地使用游戏作为实验范式，从而提高心理研究的生态有效性、规模和稳健性。