The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 22:243–251, 2012

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1050-8619 print/1532-7582 online
DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2011.638606

RESEARCH

No Other Gods Before Mario?:

Game Preferences Among Atheistic
and Religious Individuals

Christopher T. Burris
Department of Psychology
St. Jerome’s University, Canada

Elyse K. Redden
Department of Psychology
University of Guelph, Canada

Burris and Petrican (2011) recently showed that atheists are less capable of internally simulating
vivid, emotionally evocative experiences relative to those who identify with religion. Consequently,
relative to religious individuals, atheists were expected to find the engaging, multisensory expe-
rience offered by virtual gaming environments to be an especially appealing form of play. This
hypothesis was supported. Indeed, atheists did not rate narrative-oriented tabletop games more
appealing than did religious individuals, and rated them as less appealing compared to agnostic/no
religion individuals. The disparity in atheists’ game preferences was further polarized by individual
differences in psychological absorption. Atheists’ preference for “what you see is what you get”
video game environments over tabletop games that require greater imaginative effort for less
immersive benefits may reflect a broad orientation that provides an experiential basis for disbelief
in the unseen.

Noting the apparent dearth of research concerning psychological variables differentially linked
to willingness to self-identify as either an atheist or a member of a religious group, Burris
and Petrican (2011) recently offered evidence that atheistic and religious individuals process

Correspondence should be sent to Christopher T. Burris, Department of Psychology, St. Jerome’s University,
Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G3, Canada. E-mail: cburris@uwaterloo.ca

243
244 BURRIS AND REDDEN

emotions differently. In particular, self-identified atheists reported less sadness after reading a
tragic news story, less intense positive emotions associated with a recalled love experience,
and less vivid recall of the subjective details of emotion-laden positive and negative events
compared to individuals who identified with a religious group. Thus, when reliant upon
internal simulation of events not in real time—be they self-relevant memories or mental
constructions of events befalling others—atheists’ experiences appeared to be less vivid and
less emotionally evocative relative to those of religious individuals. In the present research,
we sought additional evidence consistent with the differential ease of generating emotionally
evocative internal simulations among these two groups by focusing on the appeal of video
versus tabletop format for role-playing games (thus paralleling Burris & Petrican’s, 2011,
focus on narrative).
Przybylski, Rigby, and Ryan (2010) have made a strong case that the appeal of video games,
including those with role-playing components, is a direct function of how well they satisfy the
basic, universal human needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness (see also McGonigal,
2011). Although we are unaware of any research that has examined the efficacy of tabletop
role-playing games from a need satisfaction perspective, it seems intuitively reasonable that
such a framework would be similarly applicable. According to Pezzeca (2009), however, an
empirical literature that centers on direct comparisons of either the predictors or the outcomes
of preference for video versus tabletop gaming format is essentially nonexistent.
Nevertheless, we reasoned that such a direct comparison would be ideally suited for our
purposes precisely because of the different modes of experience inherent in the respective
formats. Specifically, in its most elaborate form, the video game format allows players to
“interact with one another in real time while they explore a graphically elaborate and expansive
virtual world” (Pezzeca, 2009, p. 18), whereas in the tabletop format “the game takes place
primarily in the imagination of the players” (p. 6). Thus, if the appeal of gaming depends
on its capacity to satisfy basic human needs (Przybylski et al., 2010), and atheists’ ability
to generate vivid, emotionally engaging mental simulations is limited relative to religious
individuals’ (Burris & Petrican, 2011), then the prefabricated virtual environment offered by
video games should be more conducive to atheists’ need satisfaction than is the imagination-
dependent tabletop environment. Consequently, we expected video games to be regarded as
more appealing by atheists than by religious individuals. Concurrently, although we did not
necessarily expect atheists to find tabletop games less appealing than would religious individuals
as a group, we expected the former group to show a greater relative preference for video versus
tabletop format relative to the latter group.
Moreover, Yin (2011) has recently provided empirical evidence that focused attention signifi-
cantly contributes to positive gaming experiences. Conceptualized as the “centering of attention
on a limited stimulus field” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997, p. 40), focused attention seems to be a
state-specific analogue of the dispositional capacity for psychological absorption—that is, the
ability to restrict one’s attention to the parameters of immediate experience and thereby exclude
irrelevant stimuli (see Roche & McConkey, 1990; Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974). Indeed, Yin’s
focused attention items utilized response anchors such as “deeply engrossed” and “absorbed
intently” for participants to characterize their experience during in-lab video gaming sessions
(for discussions of the constellated concepts of “presence,” “immersion,” and “mindfulness” in
virtual environments, see Gackenbach & Bown, 2011; Lee, 2004; Madigan, 2010; Tamborini
& Bowman, 2010; Wirth et al., 2007).
 ATHEISM, RELIGION, AND GAME PREFERENCES 245

It is important to note that Yin (2011) also demonstrated that player skill level moderated the
effect of task challenge level on the likelihood of having an optimal gaming experience: Such
experiences were nearly absent regardless of challenge level when skill level was low but more
likely when challenge-level matched progressively higher skill levels beyond that threshold.
Analogously, we reasoned that game format would interact with atheists’ dispositional capacity
for psychological absorption to predict game appeal. That is, given that atheists appear to
be less skilled at the internal simulation of vivid, emotionally engaging events relative to
religious individuals (Burris & Petrican, 2011), we did not expect a direct linear relationship
between (dispositional) absorption and interest in tabletop role-playing games that require
such simulation abilities (cf. Pezzeca, 2009). In contrast, because enjoyment of the virtual
environment is less predicated on the capacity for internal simulation, atheists’ interest in
video role-playing games should be directly linked to their capacity to “really get into it,”
that is, their capacity for psychological absorption. Because religious—and, to a lesser extent,
agnostic/nonreligious—individuals have a greater capacity for internal simulation relative to
atheists, we would not necessarily expect individual differences in absorption to have the same
degree of predictive utility for game preferences in either of these groups.

METHOD

Two hundred twenty-eight students at a southwestern Ontario university (100 men, 126 women,
two no sex indicated) completed an online study concerning religion and play/pretend interests
across the lifespan. Mean age was 20.05 years (SD D 2.04 years). Each received $10 in
appreciation of his or her participation. Amidst other demographic questions was one that
prompted participants to select “which of the following best describes [their] religious affilia-
tion”: Protestant (n D 43, or 19%); Catholic (n D 41, or 18%); Jewish (n D 3, or 1%); Muslim
(n D 13, or 6%); Hindu (n D 13, or 6%); Buddhist (n D 9, or 4%); Personal Religion (n D
19, or 8%); Other (n D 5, or 2%); Agnostic—no religion, but not an atheist (n D 51, or 22%);
Atheist (n D 31, or 14%). As in Burris and Petrican (2011), the first eight response categories
were collapsed into a single “religious” group (n D 146, or 64%). The male/female ratio was
comparable across the three groups (2 D 3.95, p D .14).
Participants were asked to rate the appeal of a wide variety of recreational activities from
1 (not at all appealing) to 7 (extremely appealing). Included was a set of four items concerning
video games that feature strategy, role-play, a narrative (i.e., a story or world to discover), and
simulated violence, respectively. A second set of identical items referring to tabletop (i.e., board
and card) games was also included. Because Przybylski et al. (2010) noted that violent content
is by no means an essential component of video game appeal in the general gaming population,
we conducted preliminary analyses that excluded the violence item from each appeal scale.
The pattern of results was essentially identical to those reported next, so the format-specific
violence item was retained in both the appeal scales, as it contributed to Cronbach’s alpha in
each case (.80 and .74, respectively). There was a moderately strong correlation between the
two appeal scales, r(226) D .58, p < .001.
Elsewhere in the packet, participants completed the 34-item version of the Tellegen Absorp-
tion Scale (Tellegen & Atkinson, 1974); two participants (both in the “religious” category) did
not complete this measure. Per Kihlstrom’s (2006) recommendation, a 0 (never) to 3 (always)
246 BURRIS AND REDDEN

Likert-type response format was used. Cronbach’s alpha was .93. With a possible range from
0 to 102, the grand mean was 52.15 (SD D 18.32). Absorption was not significantly related to
self-identified (non)religious affiliation, F(2, 223) D 1.66, p D .19. Likewise, men and women
did not differ significantly in terms of self-reported absorption, t (222) D 1.35, p D .18.
Men were significantly more interested in video games than women were, t (224) D 6.51,
p < .001 (for an overview of gender differences and similarities with respect to video game
use and preferences, see Terlecki et al., 2011). There was no gender difference with respect
to the appeal of tabletop games with comparable content, however, t (224) D .92, p D .36.
All reported analyses were initially performed with gender included as an additional predictor
variable or as a covariate. In no case did gender interact with the other predictor variables
or reduce any key finding to nonsignificance. Thus, we report the simpler findings, excluding
gender, next.

RESULTS

Game Format Appeal as a Function of (Non)religious Identity

As expected, self-identified (non)religious affiliation predicted the appeal of video games, F(2,
225) D 9.44, p < .001, such that atheists (as did agnostic/no religion individuals) rated video
games as more appealing than did religious individuals (see Table 1). In contrast, the overall
effect of (non)religious identification on the appeal of tabletop games with comparable thematic
content was not significant, F(2, 225) D 2.78, p D .06. Indeed, although agnostic/no religion
individuals averaged higher than the religious on the latter variable, atheists did not (see
Table 1). Nevertheless, a Group (atheist or religious)  Format (video or tabletop) mixed-
factor analysis of variance yielded a highly significant interaction, F(1, 175) D 15.77, p <
.001: Thus, although religious individuals as a group found video games to be more appealing
than thematically comparable tabletop games, t (145) D 3.16, p D .002, this appeal gap was
substantially greater among atheists, t (30) D 4.92, p < .001 (raw mean differences were C.35
and C1.43, respectively). Agnostic/no religion individuals also preferred video games over

TABLE 1
Video Game and Tabletop Game Appeal as a Function of (Non)Religious Self-Identification

Atheist Agnostic/No Religion Religious

(n D 31) (n D 51) (n D 146)

Raw video game preference 5.31a 4.59a 3.99b

(1.50) (1.61) (1.67)
“Pure” video game preference .94a .03b .21b
(1.45) (1.36) (1.29)
Raw tabletop game preference 3.88a;b 4.17a 3.64b
(1.39) (1.50) (1.35)
“Pure” tabletop game preference .38a .26b .03a;b
(1.31) (1.26) (1.05)

Note. Means in each row not sharing a subscript differ at p < .05 (least significant difference procedure). Standard
deviations appear in parentheses below the means.
 ATHEISM, RELIGION, AND GAME PREFERENCES 247

tabletop games, t (50) D 2.05, p < .05, but given a mean raw difference of C.43 for the latter
group, the Group (atheist or agnostic/no religion)  Format (video or tabletop) interaction was
also highly significant, F(1, 80) D 8.13, p < .006.
The substantial positive correlation between the two appeal measures suggests a common
core that might be characterized as nonspecific interest in narrative-oriented games. Conse-
quently, to get a cleaner look at the relationship between (non)religious identity and the virtual
experiential mode that is specific to video (vs. tabletop) games, we regressed the tabletop and
video game appeal measures onto each other and saved the residuals as variables representing
the “pure” appeal of the video and tabletop modes of narrative-oriented game play, respectively.
The key effect remained: That is, there was a significant effect of self-identified (non)religious
affiliation on the “pure” video game measure, F(2, 225) D 9.60, p < .001, such that atheists
rated video games as more appealing than did religious individuals (and agnostic/no religion
individuals; see Table 1). The overall effect of self-identified (non)religious affiliation on the
“pure” tabletop game measure was at the threshold of significance, F(2, 225) D 3.01, p D
.05, such that tabletop games were rated as less appealing by atheists relative to agnostic/no
religion individuals, with religious individuals falling in between (see Table 1).1

The Moderating Role of Psychological Absorption Among Atheists

Moreover, as expected, the “pure” appeal of video games among atheists increased as their
dispositional level of psychological absorption increased, whereas this was not the case among
religious individuals (see Figure 1a, wherein low or high Absorption D ˙1z): Within a
regression context, the Group (Atheist or Religious, dummy coded as 1 or 0, respectively) 
Absorption interaction was significant, ˇ D .58, t (171) D 2.91, p D .004. The slope was positive
and significant among atheists, ˇ D .48, t (29) D 2.91, p D .007, but not among the religious,
ˇ D .04, t (142) D .48, p D .63. Further illustrating the specificity of the relationship
between absorption and “pure” video game appeal among atheists, this same relationship was
also negligible among agnostic/no religion individuals, ˇ D .13, t (49) D .88, p D .38.
In contrast, the “pure” appeal of tabletop games among atheists decreased as their dispo-
sitional level of psychological absorption increased, whereas this was not the case among
religious individuals (see Figure 1b, wherein low or high Absorption D ˙1z): Within a
regression context, the Group (atheist or religious)  Absorption interaction was significant,
ˇ D .56, t (171) D 2.68, p D .008. The slope was negative and significant among atheists,

1 In addition to rating the appeal of the various game features, participants were also asked whether they had ever

played games with these features (yes/no), from which we computed summed indices of self-reported past experience
with video and tabletop game play. Patterns of significance for “pure” video and tabletop game experience were
identical to those associated with the “pure” appeal measures, and so we report only the latter to conserve space.
Two hundred seventeen of our participants also completed Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann’s (2003) brief measure
of the so-called Big Five dimensions of personality. Relative to self-identified religious individuals, atheists were
significantly (p < .05) more extraverted and open to experience, and significantly less agreeable. Agnostic/no religion
individuals were also more open to experience relative to religious individuals. Even with all of the Big Five dimensions
entered as covariates, however, the overall effect of self-reported (non)religious identity on “pure video game” appeal
remained highly significant (p < .001), and the overall effect on “pure tabletop game” appeal remained marginally
significant (p D .07). Thus, notwithstanding recent links between the Big Five dimensions and interest in violent video
game play (Chory & Goodboy, 2011), personality could not account for the between-group differences in game format
appeal that we report in the present research.
248 BURRIS AND REDDEN

(a)

(b)

FIGURE 1 “Pure” (a) video and (b) tabletop game appeal as a function of (non)religious identification and
psychological absorption. (Color figure available online.)

ˇ D .39, t (29) D 2.29, p D .03, but not among the religious, ˇ D .05, t (142) D .58, p D
.57. This same relationship was also negligible among agnostic/no religion individuals, ˇ D
.02, t (49) D 14, p D .89. (When using the raw appeal scores rather than the “pure” ones
that control for the common appeal of narrative-oriented games regardless of format, both of
the interactions involving absorption were in the same direction, but neither was significant.)
In a follow-up analysis, subscales based on a tentative factor structure of the Tellegen
Absorption Scale (Responsiveness to Engaging Stimuli, Synesthesia, Enhanced Cognition,
Oblivious/Dissociative Involvement, Vivid Reminiscence, Enhanced Awareness: see Kihlstrom,
2006) were entered into separate stepwise regression analyses to predict “pure” video and
 ATHEISM, RELIGION, AND GAME PREFERENCES 249

tabletop game appeal, respectively. Among atheists, the sole significant predictor of “pure”
video game appeal was Oblivious/Dissociative Involvement, ˇ D .50, t (29) D 3.10, p D .004,
which includes items such as “While watching a movie, a TV show, or a play, I may become
so involved that I forget about myself and my surroundings and experience the story as if I
were taking part in it” and “When I listen to music, I can get so caught up in it that I don’t
notice anything else.” The specificity of this relationship seems entirely compatible with the
role of focused attention (on external media) that contributes to optimal gaming experiences
(Yin, 2011).
For “pure” tabletop game appeal, the sole significant (negative) predictor among atheists
was Enhanced Awareness, ˇ D .46, t (29) D 2.79, p D .009, which includes items such
as “My thoughts often don’t occur as words, but as visual images” and “Sometimes thoughts
and images come to me without the slightest effort on my part.” Thus, atheists who experience
spontaneous visual imagery were especially likely to regard the tabletop format as unappealing.
One possible explanation for this curious finding is that atheists regard spontaneous imagery
as aversive, and so they are reluctant to participate in activities (i.e., tabletop role-play) that
specifically encourage imagery. Verifying such a speculative interpretation would, of course,
require additional research.

DISCUSSION

The present study was intended to provide additional evidence consistent with Burris and
Petrican’s (2011) claim concerning self-identified atheists’ apparently greater difficulty, relative
to religious individuals, with respect to generating emotionally evocative internal simulations.
We explored this issue in the context of the comparative appeal of video versus tabletop
format for narrative-oriented role-playing games. Given that the appeal of gaming is linked
to its capacity to meet basic psychological needs (Przybylski et al., 2010) and that enjoyment
of the WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) virtual environment is less dependent
on imagination compared to tabletop game format (Pezzeca, 2009), we reasoned that atheists
would find the video format more appealing than would religious individuals and that the
comparative preference of video versus tabletop format would be greater among the former
versus the latter.
Within our age-traditional, Canadian undergraduate sample, support for both of these hy-
potheses was obtained. Moreover, when controlling for the statistical overlap in ratings of
the appeal of video and tabletop games—which arguably represents nonspecific interest in
narrative-oriented role-play games—atheists’ interest in the video format exceeded that of the
agnostic/no religion group, whereas the latter were more interested in the tabletop format
compared to the former group. These results offer additional support for Burris and Petrican’s
(2011) assertion that atheists compose a distinct subgroup within the larger group of “nonreli-
gious” individuals. In addition, the absence of a difference in the rated appeal of the tabletop
format between atheists and religious individuals (whether raw scores or “pure” scores were
used) suggests that these two groups are differentially responsive to the virtual environment
specifically. Religious individuals are not simply rejecting role-playing video games based
on objections to thematic content on moral or theological grounds, for example (see, e.g.,
Waldron, 2005), nor can the differential appeal of the two formats across groups be explained
250 BURRIS AND REDDEN

in terms of broad-based personality differences associated with (non)religious identification

(see Footnote 1).
The distinctiveness of atheists was further underscored by the unique moderating effect of
psychological absorption on the appeal of video versus tabletop gaming within this group. That
is, when nonspecific interest in role-playing games was statistically controlled, the dispositional
capacity to restrict one’s attention to the parameters of immediate experience and thereby
exclude irrelevant stimuli appeared to polarize atheists’ game preferences, such that the virtual
environment was embraced and the tabletop format was eschewed. These results are broadly
consistent with the facilitative roles of focused attention and skill/challenge level correspon-
dence in optimal gaming experiences (Yin, 2011). That is, it seems likely that absorption (the
dispositional analog of focused attention) increased the appeal of (and the likelihood of having
played; see Footnote 1) video games but not tabletop games among atheists because of this
group’s comparatively limited skill for visualizing the sort of narrative experiences required for
need satisfaction and enjoyment in the context of tabletop gaming (cf. Przybylski et al., 2010).
Burris and Petrican (2011) argued that atheists’ and religious individuals’ differential ca-
pacity for generating emotionally evocative internal simulations of experience may be one
manifestation of underlying neurological differences between these groups (indicative of left-
vs. right-hemispheric brain dominance, respectively). The present research offered additional
evidence of these two groups’ differing abilities—again with outcome variables not obviously
related to religious (dis)belief.
Notwithstanding the latter, we would suggest that our findings have rather provocative
implications concerning the basis for atheists’ disbelief: Even in a play context, atheists
showed a much greater preference for the WYSIWYG virtual environment compared to the
tabletop format wherein imagination is more central. Like tabletop gaming, many articulations
of religion require that an individual behave “as if” a set of propositions concerning an
unseen realm is true. If the “atheist brain” and the “religious brain” have different processing
strengths and weaknesses, as Burris and Petrican (2011) suggested, then rejecting the unseen
may be a logical outcome of atheists’ relative inability to generate “as if” experiences in the
absence of multisensory “proof” of the sort provided by immersive, externally imposed virtual
environments. Indeed, based on the results of the present research, we suspect that if Doubting
Thomas were alive today, he would be an avid video gamer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks to Keri Raif and Kristina Schrage for assistance with data collection.

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