Psicologia del Videogioco: Come i Mondi Virtuali Influenzano Mente e Comportamento

The document is a critical book review, published in 2015, of "Psicologia del videogioco: Come i mondi virtuali influenzano mente e comportamento" by Luca Argenton and Stefano Triberti, two psychology PhD researchers from Milan, published by Apogeo. The reviewer argues that the book stands out from the many sensationalist, moralizing texts on video games produced by pedagogical and psychological authors who lack familiarity with the medium. Instead, the authors position themselves as gamers and aim to move beyond common clichés, offering a balanced synthesis of the scientific literature without either condemning or uncritically praising games.

The book is organized into four chapters: identity, immersion, emotion and cognition, and psychopathology. The identity chapter examines the avatar as a vehicle for projective identity, distinguishing relational from agentive avatars and low- from high-personality ones. The immersion chapter covers the Proteus effect, the sense of presence, and the concept of flow, including the notable finding that modestly budgeted games can produce flow as effectively as heavily funded ones, and the idea of networked flow in MMORPGs. The cognition chapter, reviewed as the densest and least cohesive, touches on educational uses of games, problem solving, and serious gaming. The psychopathology chapter concludes that games may be connected to pathological behaviors but are not a direct cause, as psychiatric conditions arise from complex, interacting environmental, social, and personal factors.

The reviewer praises the measured, flexible approach and the clear, accessible style, which makes the text useful to psychologists, game scholars, and ordinary players alike. Minor criticisms include occasional mismatches between in-text citations and the bibliography and interview segments that sit uneasily with the chapters they accompany. Overall, the book is characterized as a valuable first attempt at a theoretical framework for the psychology of video games.