321 7 MOTIVATIONAL FACTORS IN A MENTAL HEALTH GAME study on stress mindset. In their experiment, they exposed participants to three 3-minute videos presenting either the enhancing or debilitating effects of stress. A control group did not view any videos. Similar to our participants who chose the mental health trailer, participants in the enhancing condition became less convinced that stress is debilitating, although they still scored below the neutral point of the scale. Participants in the debilitating condition became more convinced about the debilitating nature of stress. Stress mindset did not change for participants in the control condition. The findings of the current study are not only similar, but also show that stress mindset can be changed by providing a mental health message before playing a short video game. The change in stress mindset may seem small, but is worth further exploration given that a stress-is-debilitating mindset has been linked to less adaptive physiological effects of stress, worse cognitive and affective outcomes, poorer (mental) health and well-being, and premature death (Crum et al., 2017; Keller et al., 2012; D. Park et al., 2018). It may be important to consider the reasons why stress mindset changed while emotion mindset did not. Previous research has shown that mindsets are domain specific and only impact on factors within the same domain (Beer, 2002; Dweck et al., 1995; Lee et al., 2012; Schroder et al., 2015; Scott & Ghinea, 2014; Tamir et al., 2007). It might be that the promotional mental health message and/or the game itself spoke more to one’s stress mindset than to one’s emotion mindset. In fact, the messages in the mental health trailer emphasized stress management (“learn to manage stress more efficiently”) and the relaxing nature of the game (“both challenging and relaxing”) rather than the changeability of emotions. These mental health messages may have led participants to focus on any slight stress that they experienced during the puzzles. In turn, because the mental health messages focused on stress management, participants may have interpreted this stress as manageable, less debilitating, and actually beneficial in helping them to find the solution. For example, one participant said “I felt a bit stressed when lots of black birds appeared on the map, which was a positive and exciting kind of stress. This kept me more interested in the game and motivated me”. Thus, the combination of the mental health messages and the gameplay experiences may have taught participants more about the enhancing nature of stress rather than the changeability of emotions. Limitations and Future Directions Several limitations should be mentioned when interpreting the findings. First, due to our recruitment strategy, the majority of the sample was highly educated
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