Escape Rooms And Psychology

Escape rooms are a new trend in which psychology plays a fundamental role. In this game, a group of people is locked in a room and they have to find a key that will allow them to escape. They do so by following different clues and solving riddles. They have limited time to find the key.

In this playful adventure, psychological processes are combined with physical activity and social cooperation.  In addition, such activities show how teamwork helps to solve problems that a person would not be able to solve on their own (or at least not within a reasonable time). These tasks make us realize that we need to trust other people and work with them.

What’s going on in the escape room?

Escape rooms take us to a parallel universe where we are private detectives and explorers. The escape room starts with you hearing a story that is different in every game. It only takes a few minutes until you feel like you are the protagonist of this adventure. Suddenly and almost without realizing it, you have to do with your teammates: escape.

That’s where the game begins. You have to find a way out of the room within 60 minutes. Wires can be anywhere: under the table, hidden in books, inside drawers under a false base, and so on. It is a good strategy to share tasks among team members. Then you can write down the clues everyone found to help the team move forward.

Participating in escape rooms promotes self-confidence, increases self-esteem, promotes self-criticism and encourages creativity.

Although the escape rooms were originally made for adults, children over the age of 14 can also participate as long as they are accompanied by an adult. This makes the escape rooms a great activity for players of different ages to enjoy together. There are also escape rooms specifically designed for children.

Origin of exhaust rooms

The escape rooms come from the first computer games. So-called chat games were designed as an alternative to the poor graphics capacity of the first computers. In addition to a simple still image, the character’s situation or interaction was described in writing. At the end of each section, several options appeared that allowed the player to make a decision based on the situation described. And based on the decision made by the players, the course of the game changed direction.

Many of these chat games were basically escape games. They had to make the right decisions to save their own or the princess’s life, to escape from prison, or to kill an evil enemy. These games have evolved over time and perhaps they have also lost their core essence due to the incredible graphics of modern games.

However, the game format gained great popularity again with the advent of smartphones. The escape games that actually take place in Japan started in 2008 in the right rooms.

Escape rooms and psychology

But the first escape room opened its doors in Budapest, Hungary in 2011, thanks to Attila Gyurkovics. This Hungarian created a game called Parapark where a group of people had to find a way out of a room in a limited time.

Gyurkovic developed the escape room based on the flow experience of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalysis.

Flow is a state of mind in which a person is completely focused on an activity out of his or her own pleasure or enjoyment. Time flies and actions, thoughts and movements follow each other. The Flow experience is when we balance the challenges of a task or activity with their solving skills.

Flow theory says that if we perform an activity for our own enjoyment and experience a balance between our abilities and the challenges we face, we enter a mental state of mind where everything just flows by itself. During that time, time seems to move very fast and thoughts arise freely in our minds.

Flow experience in escape rooms

Many say that they have felt a flow experience in the escape room, as described in the flow theory of Csikszentmihalysis. Escape rooms are recreational places where the only goal is for the players to have fun and they take on the challenge. So the escape rooms are fun in themselves, regardless of whether the players find the key or not.

We have to go through a process where we feel immediate satisfaction with every success (finding the key to the drawer, solving the riddle, or opening the lock). It satisfies us and encourages us to keep playing and focus on that challenge while all our worries disappear for a moment.