UNDERTALE: Determination & Personal Growth | Screen Therapy & Media Psychology
Channel: Screen Therapy
Date: 2021-04-09

#undertale #mentalhealth #psychology #gaming

Thanks for watching Undertale: Determination & Personal Growth | Screen Therapy!

I'm so glad to be back from a 3 month hiatus with this video about Undertale! I just played it this winter and I found that it was a truly profound game that inspires meaningful emotional experiences that can help us fortify our emotional well-being. Using Positive Media Psychology research I wanted to help explain why Undertale has been called a "life-changing" game and how it provokes such powerful emotions from us. Undertale creates a personally relevant and Eudaimonic play experience that helps us puzzle through our moral uncertainties and participate in a story of moral beauty, selflessness, altruism, and connectedness. This game is one of the few titles I've played that can provoke the very rare, but very powerful transcendent emotion of Elevation and all of its amazing benefits. Playing Undertale mindfully could teach us important emotional intelligence skills that can benefits our real life relationships with others and ourselves! 


Timestamp Chapters:
00:00 Introduction & What is Positive Media Psych?
01:44 The Moment I Understood....
05:39 The Secret Ingredient: 1 Human Soul
09:33 How Undertale Affects Us: Meaningful Media
12:13 Everything Means Something: Moral Engagement
16:23 "Determination" & Growth: Becoming a Better Person
20:10 Compassion over Fear
24:42 How Undertale Heals: Comfort & Forgiveness
27:31 That Mysterious Emotion We All Felt: Elevation
30:52 Conclusion


Sources:
 Oliver, M.B., Dale, K.R., Janicke-Bowles, S.H., Raney, A.(2020).
Introduction to Positive Media Psychology. "What is Positive Media Psychology?", "Meaningful Entertainment". United States: Taylor & Francis.

Reinecke, L., Oliver, M.B. (2017) Media Use and Well Being: Status Quo and Open Questions. The Routledge Handbook of Media Use and Well-Being. Routledge.

Nabi, R. L., Prestin, A. (2017) The Tie That Binds: Reflecting on Emotion's Role in Relationship Between Media Use and Subjective Well-Being.

Video Games and Well-Being: Press Start. (2019) "Press reset", Hughes, C. Germany, Springer International Publishing. 

Neff, K. D. (2011). Self-compassion, self-esteem, and well-being. Social and personality psychology compass, 5(1), 1-12.

Grayson, Nathan. (2015) "Undertale: The Kotaku Review" Kotaku.com

Bartsch A., & Oliver, M.B. (2016) Appreciation of Meaningful Entertainment Experiences and Eudaimonic Wellbeing." The Routledge Handbook of Media Use and Well-Being. Routledge.

Huta, V. (2017). An overview of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being concepts.

Reer, F., & Quandt, T. (2020). Digital Games and Well-Being: An Overview. Video Games and Well-being, 1-21.

Music:
Unertale OST - Toby Fox
Megalovania EP (Track 5: LoFi Megalovania) - Magnetium

Outro/Screen Therapy Theme:
Never Really Gone by Stuart Bateman
Stuart Bateman - https://soundcloud.com/stuartbateman 
https://twitter.com/StuartEBateman 

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