_quarto.yml

project:
  type: book
  output-dir: docs

execute:
  freeze: auto

book:
  title: "Playing Alone, Feeling Connected: Do Single-Player Video Games with Social Surrogates Replenish Belonging After Social Rejection?"
  abstract: "People have a fundamental need to belong—to be accepted, loved, and cared for. The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened people’s sense of belonging; people had to isolate themselves from others due to the stay-at-home orders. At the same time in early 2020, people started to spend more time playing video games; sales and consumption of video games skyrocketed, breaking previous records worldwide. Existing theoretical perspectives suggest one possible reason for this popularity: video games, including single-player video games, may help people feel socially connected. For example, according to the bi-dimensional rejection taxonomy, solo gameplay is a disengaged prosocial response, an attempt to replenish belonging in a hands-off, indirect manner. Also, according to the social surrogacy hypothesis, solo gameplay can provide social surrogates, symbolic bonds that can replenish belonging. Players can form parasocial relationships (one-way psychological bonds) with a non-player character in the game; players can also immerse themselves in the social worlds and feel like a member of a collective presented in the video game. Although existing theories and qualitative evidence suggest that solo gameplay can benefit belonging, quantitative evidence is lacking to support this prediction. In this dissertation, I examined if solo gameplay could replenish belonging after social rejection. In Study 1, I validated the Heart Manikin—a single-item measure of state belonging, which I used in the subsequent studies. In Study 2, rejected participants recalled their time playing a video game with vs. without social surrogates. In Study 3, rejected participants played a custom video game that manipulates parasocial relationships and social worlds. Across studies, I found that rejected participants reported similar levels of belonging after being exposed to social surrogates in video games. The results move forward the discourse on the bi-dimensional rejection taxonomy, the social surrogacy hypothesis, and the video games literature."
  output-file: "Sunami-Dissertation.pdf"
  author: "Naoyuki Sunami"
  date: "1/10/2025"
  chapters:
    - index.qmd
    - 01-Bi-DR.qmd
    - 02-Current-Dissertation.qmd
    - 03-Study-1.qmd
    - 04-Study-2.qmd
    - 05-Study-3.qmd
    - 06-General-Discussion.qmd
    - 07-References.qmd
    - 08-Appendix.qmd

bibliography:
  - references.bib
  - packages.bib

format:
  html:
    theme: cosmo
  pdf:
    documentclass: scrreprt

editor: source