The Psychology Behind Puzzle Games: Why We Love Solving Them?

Solving puzzle games is the ultimate combo of cognitive, emotional, psychological, and social benefits. From a curious 10-year-old kid to a 45-year-old, everyone loves it because after putting their undivided focus and time, the reward they get after solving the puzzle in the form of dopamine release, emotional satisfaction, and increased self-confidence makes them keep doing it.

A study done by the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry in 2018 shows that regular crossword puzzlers are significantly better at short-term memory and speed of thought than non-puzzlers. Let’s take a closer look at what makes puzzle-solving so fascinating to the human brain.

Puzzle-Solving Through The Lens of Neuroscience

When you’re solving puzzle games, no matter if it’s the infamous Rubik’s Cube, Sudoku, Block Blast, or Jigsaw Puzzle, both sides of your brain become active. For context, the right side of your brain is responsible for creative thoughts, spatial reasoning, and non-verbal processing, i.e., printing a scene in your brain. However, the left side is more analytical and logical part of the brain.

Parts Of Your Brain Involved While Playing Puzzle Games:

Ever happen that you’re continuously trying to solve puzzle games but can’t spot a pattern? It’s pretty common when you are puzzling (ah, that’s a new term right there! Back to the serious stuff now).

That’s precisely when the prefrontal cortex takes the lead and starts analyzing the problem or block. When you’re making decisions or solving problems, your memory is directly linked to this part of your brain, located in the frontal lobe. So, it’s highly active when you’re deeply immersed in analyzing the puzzle problem.

The parietal lobe also plays a crucial role in spatial reasoning and visual processing. It helps you concentrate on the game’s visuals and spot visual patterns, elements, and pieces.

The hippocampus is a small part of your brain responsible for short-term and long-term memory, as well as learning. While solving puzzle games, it helps you with the memory of the patterns you just noted in the game.

All the parts are equally essential while solving a puzzle. When you are done with the puzzle, dopamine is released in your brain, which gives you a sense of accomplishment and emotional satisfaction.

The Benefits of Solving the Puzzle Games

Playing a puzzle is a mental workout for your brain. To prove the point, the University of Michigan conducted a study that shows giving 25 minutes to puzzle solving every day results in a 4-point increase in IQ. However, we must keep in mind that different exercises benefit specific muscles and parts of our body. The same is true for puzzles.

For example, crosswords and jigsaw puzzles help enhance your vocabulary and memory, while escape rooms force you to think creatively and improve your problem-solving skills.

Cognitive Benefits:

Improved problem-solving: If you are someone who wants to improve their problem-solving skills, there couldn’t be a better way than getting a few puzzles and solving them in a limited time. So, you’re in a situation where you have to think analytically, which enhances your ability to find the solution drastically.

Short-term memory enhancement: Name any puzzle game, and all of them contribute to the betterment of your short-term memory. Short-term memory has mainly two functions: absorbing new information for a few seconds to minutes and matching the new thing you’ve learned to the already stored information in your brain. Playing different puzzle games helps you store more of these storage systems in your brain.

Sharpened visual-spatial reasoning: The occipital lobes, in the back of our brain, are mainly responsible for our visual information processing through the lens. Puzzle games, especially jigsaw puzzles, are a fantastic way to enhance visual and spatial processing in all age groups. Children who are involved in solving puzzles develop essential skills such as mental rotation and pattern recognition, which are related to spatial processing.

Boost your IQ: Solving simple puzzles can boost your IQ level because you have to invest your focus and logic muscles in it. When solving puzzles like speedcubing, daily calendar puzzles, and Sudoku, it stretches different muscles of your brain, which results in improving various cognitive abilities. In 2023, Research Gate took the initiative to find out if puzzles improve cognitive skills. For that purpose, they selected two groups of elementary school students, one group would regularly engage in puzzle games and improve its learning through gamification, while the other one wouldn’t. When the kids were tested through some cognitive testing activities, those who didn’t solve puzzles were outperformed by those who did.

Delay cognitive decline: As we age, our brain starts to shrink, which affects crucial parts directly linked to learning and logical reasoning, making a significant difference in one’s day-to-day life. Playing puzzle games is a fun way to deal with your cognitive decline and expected dementia. It gives you cognitive stimulation by keeping your brain muscles active and sharp.

Psychological & Emotional Benefits:

Flow state: If you look at the effect of puzzle solving through the lens of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of “Flow”, you will start looking at these simple games a little differently. According to his theory, when you are entirely immersed in an activity that consciously engages your creative abilities, you experience a sense of happiness. That’s actually because you are stretching your brain to its limits and solving a complex problem, and when it’s solved, you feel you’re on cloud 9. Sometimes, it even gets addictive to solve the issues and keep experiencing the feeling every time you’re done with it. It fits perfectly with solving puzzles, which is a fun and productive activity.

Reduce overthinking: If you have been playing puzzle games with your family or even alone for a while now, you must have experienced a sense of calm when you’re doing it. That’s because it forces you to focus on the problem, also known as a puzzle, and solve it, which keeps your mind away from unnecessary thoughts and relaxes your muscles.

Stress relief: Playing a puzzle is similar to meditating. You’re intensely focused on one activity, which is a mood lifter. In the meantime, when you make progress towards your goal, a neurotransmitter, which is mainly responsible for pleasure and reward, releases dopamine in your brain. And you feel like you’re doing such a great job, and the rest of the world doesn’t matter anymore (for a few minutes at least).

Build resilience: Not just in a puzzle but in any game, you have to face failure, and then you learn where you went wrong. That’s how you make progress in the game, navigating through trial and error. And that builds an essential life skill called “resilience”. Life is full of ups and downs, and playing puzzles helps naturally induce this quality in your system. So, you can cope with stress and tension better, take care of your emotional well-being, and improve your productivity.

Improve emotional communication: Imagine you’re solving a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle with utmost devotion and attention, completely cut off from the outside world. There’s JUST you and your 999 pieces of puzzle in place. That’s it. You got it! Dopamine is released gradually, and then someone slaps the pieces by mistake. All the effort went in vain, that’s what you think, experiencing the mixture of emotions from being surprised to frustrated, and then disappointed. Fortunately, that’s not the case. That’s when you learn to communicate your feelings to yourself and others.

Social Benefits:

Encourage teamwork: Whether you sit together with your family, group of friends, or colleagues to solve a puzzle, it brings enthusiasm to show individual strengths. It’s a great way of friendly bonding and brings a sense of teamwork to the environment. When the goal is one, everyone wants to work through it effectively and fast. And that’s why you have communicated effectively, pitching your point to the rest of the group and vice versa for every group. It creates memories, brings out laughter, and celebrates the victories you achieved together.

Intergenerational engagement: For centuries, puzzle games have been a great way to have fun for all age groups. From older adults to young kids, everybody is passionate about solving the puzzle. So, the grandparents get to have a great time with their grandkids. The kids get a chance to learn about the kinds of games and hobbies people had back in the early 90s, and then they tell them what’s trending today. Hence, it’s a lovely time they have together. Thanks to the old-school yet thought-provoking puzzles.

Reduce social isolation: Puzzles have become even more valuable bonding tools for families or teams in the digital era. Everyone’s always busy on their mobile phones, laptops, and PS4. Humans have become socially anxious, and some people even struggle with it in their day-to-day lives. So, it breaks the ice between a family that hasn’t sat down together or has been facing a family crisis for a while. The same goes for any group of people.

Conclusion:

The psychology behind the urge to play puzzle games is not rocket science. By investing our time and effort in a game, what we get is invaluable: a psychological reward. Sometimes, it can even get out of hand and become addictive for a socially anxious person. Because people often take it as an escape from their day-to-day problems and relax their minds by solving puzzles, which also gives them a sense of accomplishment. Therefore, you must always take control of what you choose and not let it take control of your mind & actions.