Personality Traits and Coping Strategies of eSports Players

Abstract

eSports has tremendously evolved within the last two decades. Myriads of competitions and tournaments are available for amateur and professional players. A pro-player is typically exposed to the stress situations during the competitions with huge number of visitors, critical in-game situations as well as long and tedious trainings. Pro-eSports teams used to engage psychologists for helping the players to overcome the psychological situations. However, there is a distinct lack of research on stressors and coping strategies in eSports which reduces the effectiveness of psychological assistance. The purpose of this study is to characterize the pro-eSports team players regarding their personality traits and coping strategies. We collected the data from pro-players of different teams, as well as from amateur players, and found significant discrepancies in coping strategies between the professional and amateur gamers. The most distinctive features of pro-players appeared to be a frequent use of the strategy of seeking social support and reducing the self-control in a difficult situation.