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Psychology and Role-Playing Games

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13 Psychology and Role-Playing Games

Sarah Lynne Bowman; Andreas Lieberoth

Role-playing games (RPGs) can be ludic, narrative, and social – but they are always on some

level psychological experiences. The role-playing experience offers possibilities for studying

psychological phenomena like personality and identity. Similarly, the discipline of psychology

offers designers and practitioners of RPGs frames of interpretation and models for design. The

term “role-playing” appeared in the psychological literature as early as 1943 (Lippitt, 1943). In
1947, Julian B. Rotter and Delos D. Wickens presented a paper on role-playing as a “behavioral

method” for assessing trait aggressiveness to the American Psychological Association, asking

participants to play out situations in which one person had a dominant position over the other.

They cited Moreno’s (1945) emerging concept of psychodrama as a source of their idea. Rotter

and Wickens (1948, 235) defined role-playing as a method in which “the subject is asked to play

out some role as naturally as possible with another subject. The roles are usually defined with

minimal instructions, and the subject is allowed great freedom in selecting his responses or

interpreting the role.” Such uses of role-playing as a research method and object of inquiry

became more common in the latter half of the twentieth century, e.g. in education and the social

psychology of attitude formation. By 1960, the concept had been introduced in settings ranging

from schools (Gillies 1948) to industry (Bavelas 1947) to prisons (Lassner 1950). Many papers

would follow. From being wholly absent from psychology journals before 1948, “role-playing”

appeared as a keyword in three PubMed citations in 1960, rising to a hundred papers per year in

1975, and even more thereafter.

From the viewpoint of psychological sciences, the kinds of role-playing games discussed in this

volume are a fairly marginal cultural phenomenon. So, few studies have directly and rigorously

investigated their impact or dynamics. However, there are studies that address the constituent

elements of role-playing experiences through lenses such as play, role taking, media and games

more generally (e.g. Ferguson 2007; Lieberoth, Wellnitz, and Aagaard 2015). Additionally, a

body of ambitious para-academic literature has emerged in the new millennium (see Chapter

10). Finally, though psychoanalysis has fallen out of favor in academic psychology on

methodological grounds (see notably Popper 1962), it is still often used as an interpretative
framework and basis for therapy, as the conversation and relation building entailed in all

versions of the “talking cure” seem effective (Shedler 2010). This chapter thus aims to gather

existing research on the psychology of role-playing from two perspectives: 1) current scientific

psychology, and 2) phenomenological and psychoanalytic analyses.

We will begin exploring role-playing from different existing scientific frameworks, including

developmental, cognitive, behavioral, motivational, clinical, and social psychology. Next, we

will emphasize the subjective psychological interpretations of role-playing through various

perspectives, including phenomenology, hobbyist theories, role-play studies, and psychoanalysis.

We thus connect evidence that can be leveraged from the psychological sciences, based on

empirical research in the (post)positivist tradition, and the uses and conjectures of other forms of

analysis.

The Psychology of Role-playing: A Scientific View

Thorough application of psychological theories and methods to RPGs is still scientifically

marginal. Therefore, we will explore the few empirical studies that have addressed the

psychology of RPGs directly, as well as the ways in which different scientific perspectives in

psychology may illuminate aspects of the role-playing experience.

Developmental Psychology

Developmental psychology examines the growth of the mind throughout the human lifespan with

an emphasis on child development. It encompasses “systemic changes and continuities in the

individual that occur between conception and death” (Sigelman 1999, p. 2-3). Pretend play is
recognized as an important facet of development. Many animals engage in pretense activities

such as chase play that allow the opportunity to practice important survival skills (Owens and

Steen 2001). Similarly, humans play chase games such as “Hide and Seek” and “Cops and

Robbers”. Additionally, humans play to practice social identities and roles, such as “Playing

House”, although not all play has a productive function (Stenros 2015).

While many studies have addressed fantasy play and role taking in children, few have directly

involved RPGs. Only a couple of RPG-based interventions have been documented in groups with

special needs (Zayas and Lewis 1986; Rosselet and Stauffer 2013). Here, psychiatrists and case

workers observed increases in self-efficacy among participating children and adolescents,

finding the game context to be a useful social and behavioral scaffolding for development of

impulse control (Enfield 2006; Rosselet and Stauffer 2013). It is unclear whether these findings

are generalizable or scalable. Indeed role-playing has not proven easy to link empirically to

academic achievement for school children, even though many examples of school interventions

exist (White 2008).

Theory of mind is another important concept in developmental psychology. As children develop,

they learn to establish theories of mind of others: an internalized model of how an individual –

e.g. a peer or teacher – is likely to respond to a particular course of action and how they may

experience it differently from the child herself (Sigelman, 1999, 329). Not only is theory of mind

crucial to the development of empathy and higher cognitive process such as abstract thinking, it

also helps to explain the process of role-playing, as the creation and enactment of a consistent

character is likely a function of theory of mind.

In Piaget’s conception (1923), play is an exercise in assimilation where children express their

own inner schemas of the world around them. In order to play roles and shift perspectives

children must have basic concepts and behavioral scripts for the characters they embody and also

the overall cognitive capacity to imagine the minds of others and shift perspectives accordingly.

Thus children’s role-taking transitions from rudimentary reenactment of stereotypical characters

such as “doctor” or “teacher” to complex negotiations of identity and behavior as well as shared

meta-obligations for the play session in question (e.g. Scott, Baron-Cohen, and Leslie 1999;

Harviainen and Lieberoth 2011) As a part of this development, children also sometimes create

paracosms (Cohen and MacKeith 1991) – or imaginary worlds – and imaginary friends (Taylor

et. al. 2004).

As children mature into adolescence, pretense play often connects with the development of

identity, as adolescents seek to individuate from their parents and find their place in the social

strata (Erikson 1968). Pretend play such as role-playing can help provide direction for identity

formation in adolescents, as can self-socialization though organized sports, games, and media

(Carnes 2014).

Adults also engage in pretend play, though generally under constrained circumstances facilitated

by social structures, e.g. novel writing or stage acting. Adult pretend play undertaken outside of

these structures is often viewed as transgressive (see Chapter 24). Despite the stigma attached to

adult pretend play, players cite benefits to the leisure activity, including community building,

problem solving, identity exploration (Bowman 2010); increases in self-awareness and empathy
(Meriläinen, 2012); the development of critical ethical reasoning and awareness of social issues

(Simkins 2010), etc. Professional and social skills are sometimes practiced using role-playing.

In organizational psychology, many professional organizations utilize adult role-playing as a

means of simulation, including higher education, healthcare, government (Bowman 2010, 2014),

and the military (e.g. Vanek 2012). Scholars and designers are developing a growing interest in

adapting leisure role-playing to educational environments for these reasons (see Chapter 15).

Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience

Cognitive psychology studies the mind and mental function, including learning, memory,

attention, perception, reasoning, language, conceptual development, cognitive capacities, and

decision making. Cognitive psychology typically employs experimental methods and is often

considered as providing the “hard” evidence base for understanding human phenomena. Since

our shared cognitive apparatus underlies all human behavior and experience, cognitive

psychology arguably can help understand the mental processes of role-playing.

Still, few studies in cognitive psychology have tackled RPGs directly (Lieberoth and Trier-

Knudsen 2016). An early study by Kallam (1984) found that a small group of mildly

handicapped subjects gradually developed more creative and complex solutions to in-game

problems over a prolonged role-playing campaign, a finding that was later mirrored in an inner-

city intervention by Zayas and Bradford (1986). Both studies addressed cognitive problem

solving at a group level, but their findings may not transfer to individuals or other problem

domains. Using a correlational design, one study found that students who were role-players had a
slightly higher IQ (Barnett 1995), while two other studies found no such relationship (Douse and

McManus 1993; Simón 1998). Empirically speaking, the evidence base regarding the cognitive

dimension of RPGs is too thin for any strong claims or generalizations.

Scholars like Lieberoth, Lankoski and Järvelä have applied the theories of grounded cognition

and embodiment to the role-playing experience, arguing that “immersion and bleed are natural

consequences of how the brain works” since knowledge is “inseparably grounded to bodily states

and modalities” (Lankoski and Järvelä, 2012, 18). In other words, when we experience things in

the body – even when we know them to be fictional – they affect the mind. This has implications

for live-action roleplay (larp), though possibly as well for the other forms.

In brain research the emerging consensus is that when viewing stimuli such as motion or social

interactions on-screen, the patterns of neural activations correspond to slightly modified versions

of what we would expect to see if the subject was in that situation herself. This includes

emotional states such as vicariously experiencing embarrassment when watching a cringe-

inducing reality show (Melchers et al. 2015). Arguably, the brain does not have separate

apparatuses for playing a multi-player online RPG (MORPG), interpreting movies, or imagining

the feelings of a Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) character. Instead, the brain recruits the neuronal

networks evolved to do or experience those things in real life, with certain “checking and

tagging” mechanisms (Lieberoth 2013). We might hypothesize that deep immersion in role-

playing involves changes in these modulating processes, at least at the level of conscious

experience. A similar hypothesis has been investigated for theatre viewing using an fMRI-

scanner, linking activation changes in certain brain regions to the state of dissociation between
immediate physical awareness and adhesion to the dramatic fiction (Metz-Lutz et al. 2010).

Furthermore, significant overlap exists between the neural networks used to understand stories

and those used to interact with other individuals, i.e. the theory of mind or mirroring (Mar 2011),

as described earlier. In other words, our cognitive processing of fictional constructs (say, an RPG

character) is highly similar to that with actual ones, which may be a reason why engaging with

fictions can lead to increased capabilities for empathy, understanding, and taking on the

perspectives of others (Mar, Oatley, and Peterson, 2009; Kaufman and Libby 2012).

Some fMRI-studies also suggest that our perception of “reality” versus “fantasy” may relate to

personal relevance to the imaginative content in the brain (Abraham and von Cramon 2009). In

other words, if a concept is more relevant to our daily lives, we are more likely to perceive it as

real. While most of the time, a fictional character might be less relevant and, therefore, less

“real” than other concepts, a chronic World of Warcraft player likely views the fictional content

as far more relevant, and therefore, more real. An alternative interpretation of such results is that

narrative meaning helps the brain process fictional elements in a coherent and predictable

manner, as evidenced by greater inter-subject overlaps of fMRI data recorded while watching

story-driven over non-story movie clips (Hasson et al. 2008). In theory, role-playing could

piggyback on both of these factors, as players seek to merge reality and narrative in their in-

character experience. Ultimately, even young children exhibit the capacity to understand the

difference between play and work (Bergen 2009), which indicates that even if an individual feels

a strong sense of empathy, emotional connection, or relevancy to fictional events, they do not run

the risk of forgetting the distinction between reality and fantasy.

 [Box Insert 13.1 around here]

Behavioral Psychology and Motivation

Psychologists have examined why games appear to be highly motivating. Indeed, looking for

motivational effects has been one of the more fruitful empirical approaches to the psychological

study of games (Ryan, Rigby, and Przybylski 2006) including digital and analog role-playing

games in schools (Bowman and Sandiford 2015; Lieberoth 2015).

Early twentieth century behaviorism eschewed notions of cognition and motives, instead seeing

“learned associations between external stimuli and observable responses [as] the building blocks

of human development” (Sigelman 1999). Behaviorism centers upon the ways in which human

activity can become motivated through positive and negative reinforcement techniques. In the

context of games, behaviorism has been used to explain how players may become highly

motivated – even ‘addicted’ – to play due to the ongoing reinforcement provided by rewards in

games such as World of Warcraft (Yee 2002; Karlsen 2011) and gamification in general

(Linehan, Kirman, and Roche 2014). However, such behaviorist frameworks do not help explain

why role-taking and pretense play are motivating.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, as cognitive psychology gained footing, motivations

other than conditioning and rewards became a legitimate area of inquiry. Motivation in this more

recent view refers to the human impulse to perform certain actions or maintain specific attitudes.

In humanistic psychology, motivation is viewed as a spectrum from extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic motivation refers to actions that are energized by causes outside the activity itself, such
as punishments, rewards, or social pressure. In RPGs, these can be in-game resources, experience

points, special items (Karlsen 2011), status gains (Bowman 2010), or fear of losing one’s

character or key social relationships in-game.

However, gameplay is also intrinsically motivating: done for its own sake, energized by causes

within the activity itself (e.g. Malone and Lepper 1987; Ryan, Rigby, and Przybylski 2006).

Players experience enjoyment in the act of play itself regardless of successes or failures

(Csíkszentmihályi 1975). Multiple models of intrinsic motivation exist; immersion, curiosity and

surprise (Malone and Lepper 1987), and experiences of competence, autonomy, and relatedness

(Ryan, Rigby, and Przybylski 2006)) are repeatedly highlighted as sustaining game engagement

over time. More recently, researchers have begun to investigate intrinsic motivation from

meaningful experiences (Oliver & Raney 2011), as some players intentionally “play to lose” to

evoke negative experiences similar to e.g. tragedies in theater and literature (Montola 2010;

Montola and Holopainen, 2012). Besides such theories stemming directly from psychology, RPG

players and designers have developed typologies of player personalities, motives and preferences

that have since been taken up by research (See Chapter 10).

Clinical Psychology

Role-playing is sometimes used as a therapeutic tool. An early version of the term role-playing

was coined by Jacob L. Moreno, an Austrian-American psychologist who founded psychodrama

and group psychotherapy. Psychodrama involves a therapist helping individuals explore

psychological issues through the enactment of roles (Blatner 2000). Instead of working through

issues one-on-one, psychodrama encourages individuals to cast other participants in the re-
staging of key past scenes or imagined future scenarios to explore alternative courses of action,

just as leisure role-playing often does. These acts of role-taking not only allow patients to

develop new social skills, but also to feel empathy for others, benefits also attributed to leisure

role-playing and educational games. Other psychologists use non-directed play therapy to help

children work through issues (Ginott 2005). One popular type of play therapy is sandplay, where

children are encouraged to play freely with objects in a tray in order to better understand their

feelings and their relationships to others (Carey 1999).

Psychodrama: A method of group psychotherapy developed by Jacob L. Moreno. Under

guidance, patients stage and enact inner conflicts or key scenes from their past with the help

of the group to then be able to reflect on them and explore alternative ways of dealing with

them.

Callout 13.1: Psychodrama

Some case studies exist where psychologists have used leisure RPGs in therapeutic contexts. One

study claimed that the “unrestricted play” of games such as D&D by adolescents in psychiatric

impatient units “contributed to the disruption of a treatment setting, resistances to treatment,

reinforcement of character pathology, disruption of individual treatments, and to the

normalization of violence” (Ascherman 1993). Another therapist used D&D to treat a suicidal

young adult with an obsessional, schizoid personality. This study found that the fantasy play

released fears, enhanced ego development, improved the patient’s interactional abilities, and

increased the patient’s feelings of comfort with himself (Blackmon 1994). Kallam (1984)

observed that a cohort of mildly handicapped players gradually developed higher self-efficacy
and capacity for creative and complex solutions as a group, a finding mirrored by Zayas and

Lewis (1986). In general, existing clinical case studies (e.g. Enfield 2006; Hughes 1988; Zayas

and Lewis 1986; Blackmon 1994; Almog 2011) have a bright outlook on the therapeutic uses for

fantasy RPGs, many reporting some kind of positive effect in individuals or small groups.

However, cases and theoretical interpretations are difficult to distill into clinical

recommendations (Sackett et al. 1996) and implement on a larger scale.

While readers should remain careful not to conflate leisure RPGs with therapy, many participants

report playing them as therapeutic, particularly individuals who cannot afford more standard

treatments (Bowman 2010). In fact, some games are designed to explore difficult psychological

situations, such as freeform games intended to explore infidelity, e.g. Doubt (Axelzon 2007) and

Under My Skin (Boss 2009). Other games include psychologically difficult content as part of the

overarching game fiction, such as racism, murder, and slavery. In such games, players may deal

directly with such topics or choose to stay farther removed from them. Concerns about

psychological safety have thus led to the creation of tools and mechanisms to create safer spaces

inside certain role-playing communities (see Box Insert 13.2).

Concerns about potential ill effects of immersion in fantasy games (see Chapter 19) have largely

been dismissed in the research literature. For instance, a casual analysis of suicide statistics does

not support the notion that role-players as a group have a higher rate of suicides or symptoms

related self-harm than any other youth cohort (Wolpert 2006; Højgaard and Lieberoth 2015).

When compared to groups of non-players such as other college undergrads (Carter and Lester

1998) or US national guardsmen (DeRenard and Kline 1990), no differences have been found in
relation to depression, suicidal ideation, psychoticism, extraversion, or neuroticism. In the latter

study, role-players indeed rated lower on scores of meaninglessness, suggesting that RPG

activities may positively impact mental health and well-being. Authors of clinical case studies

suggest that such positive impacts stem from camaraderie and a sense of accomplishment (Zayas

and Lewis 1986), as well as the empowering negotiation of shared realities (Hughes 1988). In

this regard, role-playing has been linked to increased self-efficacy in children and adults (Almog

2011; Zayas and Lewis 1986; Rosselet and Stauffer 2013; Enfield 2006; Hughes 1988).

However, some researchers have found correlations between excessive gaming and depression.

One study found that individuals who play 15+ hours a week had significantly higher depression

and loneliness scores (Pezzeca 2009), but role-players scored lower on depression than did video

game players as a group. Even if troubles in the real world may be the root cause of problematic

gaming, excessive tabletop role-playing appears to be comparable to other kinds of gaming in

this regard.

Personality, Attitudes and Social Psychology

Issues of personality and identity are also central to role-playing. From common personality

tests, role-playing gamers appear much like everyone else (e.g. Abyeta and Forest 1991; Carroll

and Carolin 1989; Leeds 1995; Rosenthal et al. 1998; Carter and Lester 1998; Simón 1998;

Simón 1987; Douse and McManus 1993). However, small variations occur across studies. One

study found that players were more likely to be introverted, intuitive, and perceptive compared to

the national average (Wilson 2007). Survey researchers and ethnographers have also looked at

the formation of identity in role-playing communities. Denman (1988) found that players
believed themselves to be intelligent, imaginative, and set outside the mainstream culture.

Certain gender stereotypes are endemic to many role playing genres, which may find expressions

though play (Martin 2013), yet Fleischer (2007) finds that among larpers, masculine role-playing

identities are negotiated to represent more complex masculine stereotypes. For instance, Shay

(2013) investigated a current sample where “good gamer” identities were construed as dedicated,

cooperative, selfless, creative, intelligent, and dedicated to authenticity. This fits other studies of

community values among tabletop RPG players and larpers (Denman 1988; Meriläinen 2012;

Wilson, 2007). Indeed, camaraderie (Zayas and Lewis 1986; Almog 2011) and shared gamer

identity seems to be important to myriad social and psychological effects surrounding gaming.

As noted, the earliest publicized uses of role-playing occurred in psychology research and

psychodrama. While adaptations occurred within therapy, most empirical research that followed

took place in attitude research and social psychology. The hypothesis was that people’s

behaviors and attitudes might by influenced by, say, having to argue unfamiliar points or taking

someone else’s perspective in a dilemma. In one famous approach, participants in one

experimental group were asked to read an argument and those in another group to write an

argument pertaining to the same political issue. Afterwards, the two groups had both been

somewhat persuaded on the subject matter, but the group that had to take on a position and make

their own case for it were significantly more likely to remember the proceedings and retain the

attitude contained therein over time (Watts 1967). More emotional role-playing, such as taking

on the role of a lung cancer patent receiving bad news from her physician, was also demonstrated

to have an effect (e.g. Janis and Mann 1965). By the late 1960s, enough studies had been

published to warrant review (Elms 1967) and the assertion of a reproducible “role-playing
effect” which was said to have occurred “when greater attitude change is manifest by role-

playing subjects than by controls exposed to similar information.” However, results were far

from uniform, especially outside well-controlled labs.

The Psychology of Role-playing: An Experiential and Interpretative View

The perspectives discussed so far understand role-playing from a scientific perspective.

However, the psychology of role-play has also been examined from a subjective view in terms of

the lived experiences and meanings of role-play.

The study of lived experience is commonly called phenomenology (Eagleton 2008, 47-53; Starks

and Trinidad 2007). Since researchers cannot access the ‘live’ mental states of others,

phenomenological research commonly relies on self-observation and post-hoc reports (White

2014). After play, players inevitably construct elaborate stories about their role-play experience,

either as informal war stories or guided through more serious debriefing methods (Fatland 2013;

Stark 2013; Bowman 2014a). These allow players to express themselves; make sense of their

experience; reflect upon the relationship between themselves and their characters; validate the

significance of specific moments; and share with others.

Some researchers consider these stories a “lie” (Waern 2013): an attempt to make a chaotic,

confusing experience linear and coherent. However, players rarely lie, at least not consciously,

although they may omit or forget certain details in the retelling. A more useful way of framing

post-game narrativization is the psychoanalytic concept of secondary revision (Freud 2010).

Arising from dream analysis, secondary revision refers to telling a dream after waking; certain
material becomes instantly repressed, whereas other details remain distinct. Freud believed that

one can analyze the contents of secondary revisions. While such descriptions don’t fully replicate

the dream, they provide helpful clues to the psychological concerns of the dreamer. Similarly,

post-game narratives can help point to the play experience and express player concerns. Indeed,

psychoanalysis is one body of inquiry that has been used to unpack the experiences and

meanings of role-play, next to Role-Play Studies, describing a body of inquiry emerging chiefly

from aca/fans (see Chapter 10) interested in understanding their ‘hobby’, particularly larp. We

will here engage with them in reverse order.

Concepts Emerging from Role-play Studies

The act of immersion into a character and a fictional world is psychological at its core. The

participant must accept a new set of precepts about reality, personal goals, and identity. Role-

play theorists have called this shift pretending to believe (Pohjola 2004, 84). Pretending to

believe requires the participant to play an active part in the unfolding of the narrative. Indeed, the

role-playing experience is viewable as an altered state: a double consciousness of ironic

imagination, in which they experience reality from within at least two frames of understanding

without experiencing cognitive dissonance (Hopeametsä 2008; Saler 2012; Stenros 2013). Role-

players often report having psychologically transformative experiences as the result of aesthetic

doubling, a similar concept in which they perceive their own identity existing alongside that of

their character’s, a phenomenon also observed in drama therapy contexts (Østern & Heikkinen,

2001). Players’ primary sense of self or identity remains present while a new self emerges and

acts within the fiction of the game world. This alterego represents the identity and the goals of

the character. In their study on the power of narrative fiction, Kaufman and Libby (2012)
describe this as the process of experience taking: temporarily adopting the emotions and

concerns of a fictional character in lieu of one’s own. Role-players often refer to this identity

shift as immersion (see Chapter 22).

Within play, this new identity performs actions bounded in part by the structure of the game, but

also driven by the goals of the character. These goals manifest from some mixture of in-game

and out-of-game motivations. Thus, both the player and the character have goals that affect play.

Sometimes, these goals conflict with one another (Cooper 2007). For example, if a player wishes

to have a pleasant role-playing experience with friends, but their character’s goals revolve

around deception, betrayal, and conflict, that individual may experience moments of dissonance.

This can also extend to one’s experience of identity (Montola 2010); if characters behave in

ways that their players find inconsistent with their identity, such as acts of murder or taboo

activities, they may wonder how such actions can be enacted by them.

Players often resolve such dissonance through a rationalization mechanism called alibi (Montola

and Holopainen 2012). While players are technically present and enacting, they absolve

themselves from responsibility for actions their characters perform with statements such as “it’s

just a game” or “it’s what my character would have done.” Alibi is an essential aspect of the so-

called magic circle of play (Salen and Zimmerman 2004) or frame (see chapter 12) – the

psychological and practical arrangements and implicit or explicit social contract that ‘set apart’

in-game events and actions and discount them as fictional (Kessock 2013). Together, they help

resolve emerging dissonance and allow participants to experience a game with a relative sense of

safety.
However, their protective framework is not iron-clad. The phenomenon of emotions, thoughts,

relationships, and physical states spilling over between in-game and out-of-game is known as

bleed (Montola 2010; Bowman 2013). For example, if a player feels jealousy when their out-of-

game monogamous romantic partner flirts with another character during a game, they are

experiencing bleed, even if their partner technically has the alibi of the character and fiction.

Bleed-in occurs when aspects cross over from player to character, while bleed-out happens when

the character’s actions and experiences affect the player (see Figure 13.1 and Chapter 23).

[Figure 13.1 here]

Alternately, a player may direct the actions of the character for out-of-game reasons, a process

known as steering (Montola, Stenros, and Saitta 2015; Pohjola 2015). While bleed is a mostly

unconscious process, steering is intentional. Using our previous example, the jealous player

might steer toward a romantic relationship with their out-of-game partner in order to replicate

their real life dynamic in-game and fend off emotional complications (Bowman 2013).

Participants can attempt to “play for bleed” by using strategies to weaken the protective

framework of play. For example, players can enact characters similar to themselves – also called

“close to home” characters or Doppelgangers (Bowman 2010). Players can also weaken their

psychological barriers through exertion, such as sleep deprivation or extreme emotional play,

called “brink” or “hardcore” play (Poremba 2007; Montola 2010). This often leads to a more
intense experience, a lowered sense of inhibition, and a reduced ability to maintain psychological

distance. However, employing these strategies does not guarantee bleed. Some players claim to

have never experienced bleed in years of role-playing, whereas others hold to experience it on a

regular basis.

Montola (2010) explored how playing taboo scenarios about e.g. rape produced strong feelings

of bleed; while the contents of the game were morally “negative”, players framed their play

experience as “positive” in that they were cathartic and insightful. Bowman (2013) examined

both bleed-in and bleed-out as potential sources of conflict in role-playing communities, listing a

multitude of potential bleed effects arising from participant responses (16-18). Brown (2014) has

discussed bleed in relation to psychological triggers in larp settings. While bleed is separate from

triggering, it may lead to triggering complexes around previous trauma.

Related to such problematic consequences are possible negative impacts of exposure to

“questionable content” in games (Kessock 2013) and what Fine (1983) describes as

overinvolvement. Overinvolvement occurs where the attachment to the character and fiction

begins to create problems with the players’ mundane life, something that can be seen as akin to

gaming addiction (Karlsen 2011). While overinvolved players are not delusional, they may spend

excessive amounts of time playing the game or engaging in imaginative activities pertaining to

the fictional universe. One example imaginative activity is if-game thinking, in which a player’s

daydreaming is fixated upon a game (Koljonen 2014, 233; Bowman 2013). If-game thinking can

include actions the player fantasizes about taking as their character, scenes they wish to

orchestrate, ways in which they may optimize their character’s abilities, relationships they desire
to explore in-game, etc. While if-game thinking is a normal process associated with immersion,

an overinvolved player may neglect existing social relationships or personal responsibilities.

However, the point at which a player should be considered “overinvolved” is debatable, as many

role-players engage enthusiastically with their preferred game worlds while still maintaining

healthy social relationships and fulfilling professional and scholastic obligations. And while

outsiders may view psychological investment in a game as unhealthy, players often report feeling

a greater sense of meaning and community as a result of immersion into game worlds (Bowman

2010).

[Box Insert 13.2]

Psychoanalytic Theories

Next to Role-Play Studies, psychoanalytic theory offers interesting concepts and methods for

understanding various aspects of the role-playing experience, including the types of content with

which participants play and the drive to adopt alternate identities and worlds, which Freud

(2008) called phantasy. Psychoanalysis – also called depth psychology – focuses upon the

relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious, seen as a collection of drives and

desires that lurk beneath the surface. Freud (1990) believed that the psyche is divided into three

distinct areas: the ego, the conscious mind, the “I” when we speak of ourselves; the id, which is

made up of our unconscious drives toward sex, aggression, and death, also called libido and

thanatos; and the superego, which is the internalization of social norms meant to regulate the id’s

influence. Freud (1990) posited that as children, we understand reality primarily based upon the

pleasure principle – meaning we seek pleasure and avoid pain. As we mature, we must adopt the
reality principle, an understanding of time, money, language, work, and other social norms that

we must adopt in order to coexist, analogous to Durkheim’s (2001) collective consciousness.

The ego remains largely unconscious of this internal battle between desires and norms through a

process called repression. While repression attempts to keep most drives under control, their

mental energy is often redirected into observable thoughts and behaviors, such as dreams,

neuroses, psychoses, and creative impulses. Freud believed that the unconscious could be

revealed and understood through examination of these impulses, advocating for a form of verbal

dialogue between therapist and patient called psychoanalysis. Freud considered himself an

empiricist, meaning that he thought that “symptoms” such as artistic representations and dreams

could unlock the secrets of the unconscious in every person. Freud (1990) referred to most of

these representations as wish fulfillments, meaning images that bubble up from the unconscious

intended to satisfy the wishes of the id.

These theories offer some explanation for certain types of creative expression in role-playing

games. Scholars such as Nephew (2006) have found the notion of wish fulfillment useful when

analyzing role-playing, positing that the core contents of most D&D adventures – including

violence, theft, and sometimes rape – are the manifestation of male power fantasies emerging

from adolescence. In fact, as with much of popular culture, RPGs often feature extensive systems

for violence as main components of their design (Torner 2015). Some systems also feature

mechanics for sexuality, although explicit sexuality in games remains somewhat taboo (see

Chapter 25).
Some reject this reading of role-play as wish fulfillment view to be reductive; after all, the

imaginative spaces of RPGs can and do produce an almost limitless wealth of creative imagery,

only some of which emerges as sexual or violent. Still, if role-players can imagine any world,

why do they continue to imagine worlds filled with dominance and violence? Whatever the

cause, much RPG content is transgressive against social and cultural norms (see Chapter 24).

Jungian psychoanalysis offers an alternative explanatory framework. Jung (1976) believed that

the human mind had embedded images – called archetypes – that evolved over time. Drawing

the term from Plato’s philosophy of ideal forms, Jung thought archetypes were important to the

development of human consciousness and language and that they continue to manifest within our

dreams, art, creativity, religion, and other facets of human culture. Jung (1976) posited that

humans could access archetypes through a process called active imagination, a conscious dream

or trance-like state in which the individual is awake, yet open to imagery emerging from what he

called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious contains the archetypes of the past

and, Jung speculated, might even point to an interconnected consciousness to which all humans

are linked. Jung charted similarities cross-culturally between certain archetypal symbols in

religion and culture, including geometric shapes; elemental and natural forces, such as trees, the

earth, and the sun; animals such as snakes, bears; and repeating roles such the Great Mother, the

Trickster, the Sage, etc. Ultimately, whether these symbols are embedded in our genetic material

or merely arise in culture as memes, they are recognizable in modern popular culture and emerge

in RPGs quite often, particularly in the fantasy genre.

When accessing archetypes through active imagination, the individual can engage in a form of

dialogue with these symbols, who are sometimes embodied as characters. Jung (1976) believed

that archetypes are unknowable in their complete form and such interactions revealed only

aspects of the archetype. After interacting with aspects, individuals must reconcile their previous

identity with this transformative information through a process called individuation. This process

requires dedication, work, and facing the darker side of one’s unconscious, which Jung termed

the Shadow. Thus, consciousness for Jung involves several layers: the persona, or outer shell,

often accompanied by expected social roles; the personal consciousness, or ego identity; the

personal unconscious, or repressed elements of the psyche, including the Shadow; and the

collective unconscious (see Figure 13.2).

[Figure 13.2 here]

Jung’s theories were quite influential in humanistic psychology. They offered a path to the

transpersonal, to rise above the human condition and strive toward a higher state of

consciousness (cf Assagioli 1965; Maslow 1943). They also influenced mythologists like Joseph

Campbell, whose book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1947) tried to unearth a similar

universal narrative and spiritual structure across myths, popularized by screenwriters like George

Lucas using Campbell’s hero’s journey as a blueprint for plotting. Along these lines, Beltrán has

explored role-playing as a way to recover myth, ritual, and the hero’s journey in a secular world

(2012), also discussing the potential benefits and drawbacks of enacting the individual and

collective Shadow aspects of the unconscious through role-playing narratives. Fantasy RPGs like
D&D feature strongly archetypal characters inspired from mythic sources and in their character

progression system effectively model an extended hero’s journey in which characters may

eventually ascend into godhood: the ultimate expression of the transpersonal. Expanding upon

the work of Larsen (1996), who studied larpers as indicative of a modern enactment of mythic

imagination, Page (2014) has articulated three levels of myth in larp: the World Myth, which

describes the metaplot; the Heroic Myth, which indicates the role of the character; and the Player

Myth, which refers to the stories told after the game that become part of the understood overall

fiction.

Overall, psychoanalytic theories offer explanatory potential for exploring certain ever-present

questions inherent to the role-playing experience: From where do characters emerge? What is the

nature of their personalities? Who are role-playing characters in relationship to the self?

Summary

This chapter has provided a cursory overview of some of the psychological concepts relevant to

the role-playing experience. We have examined this from two perspectives: the scientific one and

an experiential and interpretative view. For the former, we discussed some core concepts such as

the role that pretense play has in human development, and the theory of mind. We also discussed

how scientists are trying to understand what happens “in the brain” when people role-play as

well as what we know about the motivations that people have for role-playing, as explained by

behavioral psychology. The first half of the chapter concluded with an examination of the

concerns that are often expressed in the media regarding role-playing: is it dangerous

psychologically? There seem to be no dangers specific to role-playing, in fact there can be many

benefits as it is used in psychodrama and psychotherapy, but this is hard to determine

empirically. In the second half of the chapter we assumed an experiential view and discussed the

phenomenology of role-playing and how different psycho-analytic theories can be useful in

helping us try to understand what the experience of role-playing is like, and what it’s relation to

consciousness is. We also examined some psychological concepts, such as bleed, that have been

developed to better articulate the psychological relationship between players and their characters

as they play.

Further Reading

Bowman, Sarah Lynne. 2010. The Functions of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create

Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Lieberoth, Andreas, and Jonas Trier-Knudsen. 2016. “Psycological Effects of Fantasy Games on

Their Players: A Discourse-Based Look at the Evidence.” In The Role-Playing Society: Essays

on the Cultural Influence of RPGs, edited by Andrew Byers and Francesco Crocco. Jefferson,

NC: McFarland. doi:978-0-7864-9883-3.

Meriläinen, Mikko. 2012. “The Self-Perceived Effects of the Role-playing Hobby on Personal

Development – A Survey Report.” International Journal of Role-Playing 3: 49-68.

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Image Captions

Figure 13.1: A diagram of role-play studies terminology. Design by Sarah Lynne Bowman. Art

by Mat Walker (2014).

Figure 13.2: A visualization of Jung’s layers of consciousness from a modern perspective

integrating Durkheim’s collective consciousness. Design by Sarah Lynne Bowman. Art by Mat

Walker (2014).

Box Inserts

Box Insert 13.1: Role-Playing Games and Violence

Most research on cognitive effects of games has attempted to understand the links between

videogame play and aggression. Some claim there is a causal connection (cf. Anderson and

Bushman 2001) while others deny it (cf. Ferguson 2007). Oftentimes, it is the interactive aspect

of games that is the concern. For example, comparing the aggressive recess behaviors of students

immediately after playing a violent game with others who only watched the same game session,

researchers found the active play component to have a significant effect: the designated players

displayed more aggression than did the designated onlookers (Polman, de Castro, and van Aken

2008). Thus, the interactive component, including immersion into a character viewpoint, is likely

important if and when games lead to cognitive and behavioral changes. In role-playing studies,

this transfer of feelings or behaviors from a role-playing game to real life is called “bleed”.

However, meta-analyses of studies related to aggression and games indicate that the findings are

strongest in the short term, with no documented links to overt violence and few links to

antisocial behavior that cannot be more reliably predicted by factors such as home environment

and sociodemographic data (Ferguson 2007; Griffiths 1999). It is unclear how these findings
might apply to RPGs specifically. Compared with other games used to study violent or antisocial

content, role-playing games offer character enactment and fictional co-creation. Examining the

relationship between immersion into character and world, as well as behavioral or hormonal

changes, would serve to better help us understand the relationship between involvement,

immersion, and bleed, concepts to be discussed later in this chapter (see also Chapter 22).

Box Insert 13.2: Psychological Safety

Player communities (mostly for larp and TRPG) have developed psychological safety

mechanisms to reinforce the protective framework of the game (e.g. Bindslet and Schultz 2011;

Koljonen, Munthe-Kaas, Pedersen and Stenros, 2012; Pedersen 2015; Koljonen 2013). As larp

designer Troels Pedersen recently expressed, “Your larp’s only as safe as its safety culture”

(2015). In other words, the tools do not make a game inherently safer, but they do signal to the

community that a culture of safety is desirable, reinforcing the protective framework of the

magic circle.

Safe Words (Nordic Larp Wiki 2015)

• Brake: Used to indicate that someone is at, or near, their limits. Play continues but should

not get more intense.

• Cut: Indicates that play should immediately stop

• Man Down (used in UK larps): Stop physical activity to address possible injuries
 X-Card (Stavropoulos, n.d.)

An index card with an “X” on it. Player can use the card to “edit out anything that makes them

uncomfortable with no explanations needed”.

Workshops (pre- and post-game) and Debriefs

Collaborative or social activities help participants get to know one another outside of the context

of the game and develop trust between the ensemble of players. Also used to ease people into

play so that the intensity is less of a shock. Post-game structured debriefing sessions allow

players to express pent up emotions and externalize their thoughts in a serious manner. Post-

game dining or parties, often accompanied by war stories about the game, allow players to bond

over shared narratives in an out-of-character context. Furthermore, some players write letters to

their characters, journal entries, or play reports after game sessions as methods to externalize

feelings.

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