Dr. Kyle Nolla, PhD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Psychology with the Center for Data Analytics and Sports Gaming Research. Their research focuses on the emotional and social motivations that influence how people use technology. They work closely with students, esports players, and gamified mobile app users, employing both quantitative methods (statistical modeling, psychometrics) and qualitative methods (interviews, user experience analyses). They serve as advisor to the Morgan State Bears Esports Club and maintain membership with several professional organizations, including the American Psychological Association and Society for Behavioral Medicine.
Their recent projects with the Center include a longitudinal survey of gamers to investigate how compulsive gaming and gambling behaviors emerge to cope with trauma. They are planning further work using ecological momentary assessment methods to link daily emotional states to real-time sports betting behaviors in a sample of at-risk students during March Madness. Their recent publications include a study of how anxiety harms performance in esports competitors over the course of a tournament weekend; an experiment showing that women-only tournaments better support novice esports skill learning compared to mixed-gender tournaments; and an analysis of how sociodemographic and clinical factors predict patient engagement with digital electronic health records. Overall, their work is geared toward supporting the healthy use of modern technologies and refining our measurement of healthy and problematic use.