Jeffrey G Snodgrass

Colorado State University | CSU · Department of Anthropology and Geography

More information here: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520384354/the-avatar-faculty About the Book The Avatar Faculty creatively examines the parallels between spiritual and digital activities to explore the roles that symbolic second selves—avatars—can play in our lives. The use of avatars can allow for what anthropologists call ecstasy, from...

We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine 1354 survey responses from members of the American Anthropological Association about their practice and teaching of cultural anthropology research methods. Latent profile analysis and an examination of responses to open‐ended survey questions reveal distinctive methodological clusteri...

In their classic accounts, anthropological ethnographers developed causal arguments for how specific sociocultural structures and processes shaped human thought, behavior, and experience in particular settings. Despite this history, many contemporary ethnographers avoid establishing in their work direct causal relationships between key variables in...

We use ethnographic observations, interviews, and surveys to illuminate video game‐related gambling in India, where players use as currency decorative in‐game weapon covers referred to as skins . We focus on gaming and gambling related to virtual items acquired in the popular shooter game Counter‐Strike: Global Offensive , and our study unfolds amo...

In their study, Stavropoulos et al. (2023) capitalized on supervised machine learning and a longitudinal design and reported that the User-Avatar Bond could be accurately employed to detect Gaming Disorder (GD) risk in a community sample of gamers. The authors suggested that the User-Avatar Bond is a “digital phenotype” that could be used as a diag...

Supporting Information for Open Access article (CC-BY): Snodgrass, Jeffrey G., Michael G. Lacy, Evan Polzer, and Chakrapani Upadhyay. 2024. “Gaming lounges in India afford socially productive gambling: The moral economy and foundations of play in Udaipur, Rajasthan.” Ethos 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/etho.12443

In their study, Stavropoulos et al. (2023) capitalized on supervised machine learning and a longitudinal design and reported that the User-Avatar Bond could be accurately employed to detect Gaming Disorder (GD) risk in a community sample of gamers. The authors suggested that the User-Avatar Bond is a “digital phenotype” that could be used as a diag...

We review ethnographic methods that allow researchers to assess distress in a culturally sensitive manner. We begin with an overview of standardized biomedical and psychological approaches to assessing distress cross-culturally. We then focus on literature describing the development of reliable and valid culturally sensitive assessment tools that c...

Ethnography is a core methodology in anthropology and other disciplines. Yet, there is currently no scholarly consensus on how to teach ethnographic methods—or even what methods belong in the ethnographic toolkit. We report on a systematic analysis of syllabi to gauge how ethnographic methods are taught in the United States. We analyze 107 methods...

Background Social connection has been linked to reduced disease risk and enhanced antiviral immunity, but it is unclear whether online social connections have similar effects to those previously documented for in-person/offline social relationships, or whether online connections can substitute for in-person social relations when the latter are rest...

Historically, ethnographic methods were learned by cultural anthropology students in individual research projects. This approach creates challenges for teaching in ways that respond to the next generation's calls to decenter anthropology's White, heteropatriarchal voices and engage in collaborative community-based research. Analyzing syllabi from 1...

The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conv...

Peer popularity constitutes a pivotal developmental task to adolescents’ current and future adaptation. This study identified distinct adolescent popularity profiles and explored their links with excessive Internet usage and interpersonal sensitivity. The sample included 2090 students attending Greek high schools (Mage = 16.16, SD = 0.91). Their po...

Abstract: We present a qualitative data analysis framework that integrates perspectives from theme analysis, cultural models analysis, grounded theory, and content analysis. We demonstrate how these research traditions are united in their aim to, first, uncover meaningful themes, and, subsequently, to understand those themes’ relationships to each...

We present a qualitative data analysis framework that integrates perspectives from theme analysis, cultural models analysis, grounded theory, and content analysis. We demonstrate how these research traditions are united in their aim to, first, uncover meaningful themes and, subsequently, to understand those themes’ relationships to each other. To i...

Objective: We examine the extent that videogame avatars provide players with opportunities for identity exploration, aiming to test the findings of self-discrepancy theory research on the user/avatar relationship with novel cognitive anthropological methods. Specifically, we examine if avatar traits are idealized (more representative of players' id...

We examine internet gaming-related suffering as a novel syndemic most prevalent among contemporary emerging adults. Synthetic analysis of our prior research on internet gaming and health affirms how social factors and mental and physical wellness mutually condition each other in this online play context. Employing biocultural anthropological mixed...

Previous research has identified a link between experiencing life as meaningful and purposeful—what is referred to as “eudaimonia”—and reduced expression of a stress-induced gene profile known as the “conserved transcriptional response to adversity” (CTRA). In the current study, we examine whether similar links between eudaimonic well-being and CTR...

We explore the problem of distinguishing the relatively constant versus culturally variable dimensions of mental suffering and disorder in the context of a cross-cultural study of Internet gaming-related distress. We extend the conceptual contrast of “core” and “peripheral” symptoms drawn from game studies and use a framework that synthesizes cultu...

Extending classic anthropological “idioms of distress” research, we argue that intensive online videogame involvement is better conceptualized as a new global idiom, not only of distress but also of wellness, especially for emerging adults (late teens through the 20s). Drawing on cognitive anthropological cultural domain interviews conducted with a...

We compare the forms online gaming-related distress takes cross-culturally, and examine how much such distress resembles the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Gaming disorder,” understood to be an “addiction.” Our preliminary exploratory factor analysis (EFA) in North America (n=2025), Europe (n=1198), and China (n=841) revealed a constant four-fa...

The most widely used formal approach to culture, the cultural consensus theory (CCT) of Romney, Weller, and Batchelder, originally relied on a priori definitions of cultural groups to map their unity and diversity. Retaining key features of classical CCT, we provide techniques to identify two or more cultural subgroups in a sample, whether those gr...

Objectives To combine social genomics with cultural approaches to expand understandings of the somatic health dynamics of online gaming, including in the controversial nosological construct of internet gaming disorder (IGD). Methods In blood samples from 56 U.S. gamers, we examined expression of the conserved transcriptional response to adversity...

Abstract: Extending classic anthropological "idioms of distress" research, we argue that intensive online videogame involvement is better conceptualized as a new global idiom, not only of distress but also of wellness, especially for emerging adults (late teens through the twenties). Relying on a novel integration of cognitive anthropological cultu...

Objectives To combine social genomics with cultural approaches in order to expand understandings of the somatic health dynamics of online gaming, including in the controversial nosological construct of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD). Methods In blood samples from 56 U.S. gamers, we examined expression of the conserved transcriptional response to ad...

Relying on a novel integration of both survey data (N = 3629) and egocentric social network interviews (N = 53), this study explores associations between patterns of social support and online gaming involvement and experience. In both our large survey and network interviews, informants who possess a greater number of “alters” (social ties) who supp...

Research has established loneliness as a good predictor of intensive Internet use. But it is not fully understood whether Internet activity lessens lonely individuals' felt distress (known as positive psychosocial “compensation”), or by contrast further magnifies it (the “poor-get-poorer” hypothesis). Focused on online videogames in particular, we...

We present a perspective to analyze mental health without either a) imposing Western illness categories or b) adopting local or “native” categories of mental distress. Our approach takes as axiomatic only that locals within any culture share a cognitive and verbal lexicon of salient positive and negative emotional experiences, which an appropriate...

Response to commentators.

We tested whether religious ritual lessens or increases stress and anxiety among indigenous Sahariya conservation refugees recently displaced from a wildlife sanctuary in central India. Combining ethnography with structured survey and salivary analyte data (the stress hormone cortisol), we tracked di/stress over two 9-day periods before, during, an...

We employed ethnographic methods more attentive to insider gamer perspectives to develop culturally-sensitive scale measures of online gaming involvement and its positive and negative consequences. Our inquiry combined relatively unstructured in-game participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, and a web survey. The latter derived from both...

Since 2008, at Colorado State University, I have been collaboratively researching virtual worlds with my students in experimental methods seminars. My “ethnographic research and teaching laboratory” (ERTL), ambitious in scope, conducts original and even cutting edge research, while teaching students field methods in the process. The research and te...

We examine human displacement among indigenous tribal conservation refugees—the Sahariya—recently displaced from a wildlife sanctuary in central India. We focus on human displacement’s mental health toll as well as the displacement-related changes that help explain such emotional suffering. To do so, we compare individuals relocated from the core o...

We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding guild” pursuing a balanced approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner “offline life matters.” Confirming insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our ethnography reveals that some guild members experience gaming distress. However, this guild’s normative culture helps i...

This article provides an alternate method to assess the fit of the cultural consensus model (CCM) of Romney and colleagues to the responses of a group of informants about a domain of knowledge, and thus also to evaluate the extent of shared knowledge within a group. Criteria for judging the existence of singular culture have been articulated previo...

We examine how online sociocultural context influences play experience in the popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how guilds, in-game associations of like-minded players, establish social relationships and cultural understandings that shape online play experience. Some guilds help their members regulate the stress...

Researchers propose “internet gaming disorder” as characterized by excessive or poorly controlled behaviors, preoccupations, and urges regarding online gaming that lead to distress or impairment (Pontes and Griffiths 2015). They suggest that distressful patterns of internet use, like other behavioral addictions, can be usefully classified with alco...

"EAGER: A Biocultural Study of the Functional Genomics of Intensive Internet Use” National Science Foundation BCE #: 1600448, awarded Nov. 16th, 2015 PI: Jeffrey G. Snodgrass (Colorado State University), Co-PI: Francois Dengah (Utah State University) With Steve Cole (UCLA), Michael G. Lacy (CSU), Daniel Lende (USF) Abstract This project, directe...

Abstract: We document the norms and practices of a “casual raiding guild” pursuing a balanced approach to World of Warcraft gaming under the banner “offline life matters.” Confirming insights in the problematic online gaming literature, our ethnography reveals that some guild members experience gaming distress. However, this guild’s normative cultu...

Significance Recent research links life stress to premature telomere shortening and human aging. However, this association has only been demonstrated in Western contexts, where stress is typically lower and life expectancies longer. Using innovative approaches, we show significant associations between stress and telomere shortening in a non-Western...

We present ethnographically-informed survey and interview data suggesting that problematic online gaming in the World of Warcraft (WoW) can be conceptualized as a response to pre-existing life stress, which for highly stressed individuals magnifies rather than relieves their suffering. In particular, we explore how relaxing and arousing in-game exp...

We use ethnographically informed survey and interview data to explore therapeutic and problematic play in the online World of Warcraft (WoW). We focus on how game-play in WoW is driven by shared and socially transmitted models of success that we conceptualize as cultural ideals. Our research reveals associations between having higher online compare...

The majority of research documenting the public health impacts of natural disasters focuses on the well-being of adults and their living children. Negative effects may also occur in the unborn, exposed to disaster stressors when critical organ systems are developing and when the consequences of exposure are large. We exploit spatial and temporal va...

The influence of human aesthetic appreciation of animal species on public attitudes towards their conservation and related decision-making has been studied in industrialized countries but remains underexplored in developing countries. Working in three agropastoralist communities around Amboseli National Park, southern Kenya, we investigated the rel...

Objectives: We analyzed singleton births to determine the relationship between birth weight and altitude exposure. Methods: We analyzed 715,213 singleton births across 74 counties from the western states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2000....

SubCultCon: Maximum-Likelihood Cultural Consensus Analysis with Sub-Cultures https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=SubCultCon The three functions in the package compute the maximum likelihood estimates of the informants’ competence scores, tests for two answer keys with known groups, and finds ”best” split of the informants into sub-culture groups. Ve...

We discuss why nature reverence and pro-environmental thinkingamong indigenous peoples inhabiting a Wildlife Sanctuary in southern Rajasthan does not translate into more actual conservation practice. We point to the way that the post-Independence dispossession of these peoples from their lands has resulted in a failure of institutional organization...

Yee (2006) found three motivational factors-achievement, social, and immersion-underlying play in massively multiplayer online role-playing games ("MMORPGs" or "MMOs" for short). Subsequent work has suggested that these factors foster problematic or addictive forms of play in online worlds. In the current study, we used an online survey of responde...

Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall on August 24, 1992, was one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history, causing atypically high levels of psychological and physical health impairment among the resident population and especially among vulnerable groups. This article investigates whether maternal exposure to Hurricane Andrew during...

Combining perspectives from the new science of happiness with discussions regarding “problematic” and “addictive” play in multiplayer online games, the authors examine how player motivations pattern both positive and negative gaming experiences. Specifically, using ethnographic interviews and a survey, the authors explore the utility of Yee’s three...