Kyle Nolla, PhD

Assistant Professor at @MorganStateU - Psychology of Esports, Gender, Skill - 🏳️‍🌈 & 🇵🇷🇲🇽🇺🇸 - They/them

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

Research Recruiting: Seeking college student esports players age 18-35 to participate in 2 surveys. Fill out surveys now and in ~12 weeks for $5 each. Participants may be invited to a 6-hour mindfulness training program over Zoom for an additional $153. https://t.co/ZxWFWkw3aT

[Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium @BigTenCRC]

At the 2025 #BigTenCRCSummit, @KyleNolla, PhD, presented updates on the Jessen Award–funded study AthenaCompanion, a gamified web-based application designed to improve cancer symptom monitoring.
Learn more about this study and the Jessen Award: https://t.co/au0Q5nh6DD

[Dr. Piggy, PhD @drpiggyphd]

_*~RESEARCH OPPORTUNITY~*_

Attending Supernova this week? Stop by the research table in the tournament room to participate in paid research on gaming!

We’re offering a variety of studies for everyone - some are limited to tournament entrants & Top 100 players.

@SuperSmashCon

[Cindy Veldhuis, PhD 🏳️‍🌈🗽 (she/her) @CindyBVeldhuis]

Join our faculty! I could not imagine a more supportive environment than @NUFeinbergMSS @MSSatNU and encourage anyone with a health equity focus to consider applying.

[Ismael Pedraza @IsmaPedraza]

Hey everyone! At @G2esports and European partners, we seek esports players 18+ (any game, ranked, or team). Take 10 minutes to share your insights on mental health in esports. It’s anonymous, and your feedback will help create better support for players like you.

Let’s make our community stronger together! 💪

👉 https://t.co/wnSRktcpY1

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

Big thanks to the TOs of @SuperSmashCon @TheBigHouseSSB and @SmashNSplash who allowed me to table at their events to collect data. And thank you to the 90 players who took time out of their tournaments to fill out my surveys!

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

Wanted to make a thread to highlight cool aspects of this study. Namely, data came from Smashers competing in national tourneys rather than a controlled lab environment. We had to think hard about how real-world conditions would impact mood, then control. 4 specific highlights:

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

Takeaways: Competing in tournaments involve a range of emotions emerging from complex info players are considering. In the real world, players seem more likely to be too nervous than too calm, so equipping players with strategies to manage over-arousal could improve performance.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

playing games you know you’ll win/lose! All seem obvious but again, cool to have some numbers we can put on it to describe real-world experiences.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

4) Finally, players may feel validated in their emotional experiences during tournaments when looking closely at Table 1. Yes, people feel pretty shitty after losses - yes, people get exhausted over the course of the weekend. Yes, playing close games can be less satisfying than

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

We found that spillover/fatigue has a real impact on results: when someone has had a tough loser’s bracket run, that exhaustion *does* harm their ability to perform well in their toughest matches. Seems obvious, but cool to have scientific data to back it up.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

We didn’t see an effect of a scary future opponent - perhaps bc brackets aren’t always updated immediately during Smash tournaments, so players aren’t always sure who they’d face next, except between competition days like when R1 pools are all done & R2 pools are about to start.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

3) Elimination tournament effects. In actual tourneys, players are thinking ahead: who am I gonna play if I win, if I lose, what does my bracket look like? We accounted for 2 effects: a spillover effect (P1 has played more games than P2) & a shadow effect (scary future opponent).

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

Wanted to make a thread to highlight cool aspects of this study. Namely, data came from Smashers competing in national tourneys rather than a controlled lab environment. We had to think hard about how real-world conditions would impact mood, then control. 4 specific highlights:

[Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports @egaming_esports]

| #ESPORTS #FREEACCESS #RESEARCH | Congrats to @KyleNolla Paul Reber & Mark Beeman on the publication of "Affect and Performance across Double-Elimination Tournaments: A Field Study of Super Smash Bros Competitors" in JEGE's SI on #Psychology in Esports

https://t.co/AmrVpSLdUg

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

2) Relative strength of P1 & P2. We know top players sail through pools on skill alone, so obv their mood (& impact of their mood) will differ from an 0-2 player who only gets a few chances to play/win. So, we controlled for seed of P1 & P2 (& how close their seeds were).

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

We explored a few reasons why this might be, and it seems that experiences of performance pressure are related to arousal, but we’re not entirely sure of the direction (feeling arousal➡️ppl think they’re under pressure? Or feeling pressure➡️arousal?). Will look more in future.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

high arousal would harm game performance bc all of our players would be activated/invested. This is the main finding of the paper: after controlling for other things described in this thread, we found a difference in players’ self-rated moods before sets that were won or lost.

[Kyle Nolla, PhD @KyleNolla]

1) Physiological activation, or “arousal”, can help or harm performance based on how difficult the task is. But in the real world, does anyone sit down to a tournament match & feel no nerves? Or boredom? Although science may say arousal that is too low/high is bad, we assumed

[Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports @egaming_esports]

| #ESPORTS #FREEACCESS #RESEARCH | Congrats to @KyleNolla Paul Reber & Mark Beeman on the publication of "Affect and Performance across Double-Elimination Tournaments: A Field Study of Super Smash Bros Competitors" in JEGE's SI on #Psychology in Esports

https://t.co/AmrVpSLdUg

[Jasmin Brooks Stephens, Ph.D. @DrJBStephens]

A few more weeks to apply! 😊

My lab uses mixed-methods approaches to examine factors that shape the mental health trajectories of Black youth & adults, with a focus on identifying protective factors to reduce suicide vulnerability and racial trauma

https://t.co/EwRHy3Be9T

[Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports @egaming_esports]

| #FORTHCOMING #ESPORTS #RESEARCH | Congrats to @KyleNolla Paul Reber & Mark Beeman on acceptance of "Affect and Performance across Double-Elimination Tournaments: A Field Study of Super Smash Bros Competitors" in JEGE's Special Issue on #Psychology in Esports

@benjamintsharpe