LogInIn some areas, gamers have even shown stronger capacities.
Without a doubt, one of the most persistent and common stereotypes about gamers is that they are somehow psychologically different from non-gamers when it comes to interaction with other people, exemplified by both casual high school banter about "that gamer dude acting weird" and extreme claims such as "he committed this or that crime because of GTA/Call of Duty/insert-a-video-game-name-here."
Attempting to challenge this stereotype are researchers Ekin Emiral and Yildiz Bilge, who recently published a paper analyzing gamers and non-gamers in areas such as personality pathologies, object relations, defense mechanisms, and emotion regulation, aiming to see whether the two groups are actually different.
As part of their research, the duo analyzed data from 345 gamers (people who spend 8+ hours gaming per week) and 407 non-gamers (fewer than 8 hours per week). The data itself was collected via several established self-report measures, including questionnaires and scales assessing personality disorders, emotion regulation difficulties, defense mechanisms, and object relations.
In terms of object relations – considered crucial for healthy psychological development and interpersonal functioning – the study found no meaningful differences between the two groups, showing that the way people relate to others is not contingent on whether an individual is a gamer or not.
The research also found that gamers showed stronger capacities in certain areas, such as defense mechanisms, where gamers reported more frequent use of mature defenses, like humor, sublimation, and anticipation, while non-gamers reported greater use of neurotic defenses, such as suppression and reaction formation.
"The central takeaway is that gamers are not inherently more pathological than non-gamers," Ekin Emiral told PsyPost. "In fact, in some domains they even demonstrate stronger capacities. Of course, there are problematic gamers – as earlier research has documented – but this should not be generalized, since in any group of people we will find individuals struggling with a variety of difficulties."
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