The Use of Theory in Designing a Serious Game for the Reduction of Cognitive Biases

This paper presents "Missing: The Final Secret," a serious game designed to help players recognize and mitigate three cognitive biases: anchoring, the representativeness heuristic, and projection (false consensus) bias. The game is built on a cognitive bias framework grounded in dual-process reasoning theory, linking each bias to its System 1 origins and to System 2 mitigation strategies. The central argument is that targeting shared origins across biases allows players to generalize what they learn, and that grounding serious game design in explicit theory is a productive approach to teaching reasoning skills.

The game teaches through embedded vignettes that compare player responses against objective benchmarks, such as actual reported smartphone use or polling data on public spending, followed by tactfully framed feedback and practice in After Action Reviews. In an efficacy evaluation comparing 156 game participants with 82 participants who watched a control video, about 81% of each group completed a 12-week follow-up. The game produced large, statistically significant gains in bias recognition and discrimination (d = 1.43 at immediate posttest, d = 0.66 at follow-up) and in bias mitigation (d = 1.75 immediately, d = 1.17 at follow-up).

Compared with a professionally produced educational video, the game yielded a significantly larger immediate gain in bias mitigation (d = 0.24, p < .001), though this advantage was only marginally significant at follow-up (p = .057). The scope of the evaluation is limited to these three biases, a single game, and a relatively short follow-up window, which the authors present as preliminary evidence. The concluding section consists of references to prior serious game research rather than additional findings.