A group of Austrian scientists specializing in psychology conducted a series of research to verify the impact of personality disorders on the skills of solving problems. Gamers will be interested in knowing that during the experiment, the skills of subjects were checked using the popular urban planner Cits: Skylines.
242 adults, former patients of psychiatric and psychosomatic departments were invited to participate in the study. Among the subjects were those who fought with personality disorders and depressive disorders. The following characteristics were highlighted:
- paranoid features (distrust of others);
- antisocial (neglect of social obligations and feelings of other people);
- schizotypic (departure from social life);
- obsessive-compulsive (excessive perfectionism and inflexibility).
The task of participants in the experiment was to play the popular game of Colossal Order Studio. After a certain time, their successes in the expansion and management of the city should have appreciated the researchers.
Since some of the subjects had not previously had the experience of the game, before completing the assignment they were offered assistance in understanding all the key aspects of the Cities: SkyLines gameplay:.
The authors of the study decided to include in the experiment a popular urban planner due to multidimensional gameplay, proposed by the game, which makes the player make a number of decisions and offers many decisions when clash with the problem. As an argument in favor of the use of CITIES: SkyLines, researchers note:
The game system consists of many components, including a huge number of different buildings (areas, main resources, roads, structures, electricity, water supply, etc.D.), options (fiscal issues, budgeting, lending, movement management, safety, health and education) and parameters (population density, residents’ satisfaction, environmental problems and crime).
The effect of the test group was then evaluated, and on the basis of comparison and analysis of the collected data, researchers were able to draw a number of conclusions.
Players with schizotypic, iron and depressed personality traits did the worst of all with the expansion of the city. Players with symptoms of a dependent and paranoid personality also experienced difficulties. Among these groups, the most common were problems related to the solution of complex tasks set for players in CITies: SkyLines.
According to respondents, schizoid, obsessive-compulsive and antisocial character traits did not have a significant impact on success in the game.
According to Ulrika Kipman, one of the researchers participating in the project, the study showed that character traits directly affect the skills of solving problems.
Among the features that positively affect this aspect, there were orientation on action and work or motivation for creativity. People with higher social skills and more sociable were less successful.
The conclusions also indicate the lack of correlation between personality disorders and better performance during the study:
. No clinical personality structure was associated with a higher effectiveness of solving problems (compared to the level of non -linear features). Since personality disorders are usually associated with an increased level of neuroticism, which, as established, negatively affects the solution of problems, this result is also consistent with general clinical intuition.
With the rapid development and popularization of our environment, one can confidently assume an increasing participation of video games in academic research, as presented in the text above. The flexibility and variety of games means that they can successfully contribute to the development of many areas of science and life.