We’re always looking for new ways to glean insight into ourselves, how and why we operate, and how we could improve: it’s why there are so many online personality tests at the ready. Many of these are multiple-choice quizzes that take a percentage of your answers to see how far you sway for each of the Big Five personality traits. Still, your everyday activities and entertainment preferences may reveal some aspects of your personality. Of course, this isn’t an exact science, and some just play games because of their brain benefits, but the requirements of being good at or committed to certain forms of games can reveal key personality traits that make you who you are.
Strategic board games
While you could throw in many different forms of strategic board games into this section, from Risk to Monopoly – if we’re just discussing the classics – but the epitome of strategic board games remains chess. While it’s well worth learning some beginner strategies to get a foothold in the board game, chess is inherently simple but with a tremendous amount of depth that influences each outcome. Strategists and mathematicians have studied it for decades, with committed players even willing to fork out tens of thousands on luxury chess tables. Still, the dedication and notable skill in chess can be an indicator of your personality’s inherent fondness for competitiveness, looking ahead to prove yourself over your peers, and ability to plan well ahead of time.
Trading card games
Trading card games are often just seen as randomized packets of paper with nice artwork, but for those who throw themselves into TCGs, it’s all about the collecting and the competing. There are many card games out there right now. Not only is there great art, but the games themselves are also easy to pick up but complicated enough to encourage mastery. TCGs give a sense of ownership and control over one’s destiny as you pay to unwrap randomized packets and then decide how to manage assorted cards into competitive decks.
That said, many purely play the role of the collector, which offers a different take on a personality. Collectors could be considered introverts by nature, with Carl Jung describing them as contemplative and reserved – as may be the case from someone who enjoys the accumulation of their own sets. Jung also describes collectors as having behaviors akin to our early ancestors who would collect and hoard food for survival – which could be inferred from collectors doing so to see the values increase.
Card games versus the house
Card games have been around for centuries, with the playing card deck now being a staple of home entertainment as well as the casino scene. The vast majority of games are completely randomized without much user input, but since the advent of basic strategy and the publication of The World’s Greatest Blackjack Book, blackjack has become the game of choice for certain personality types.
A key factor here is that the game sees players essentially take on the house to defy the house edge through skill. For example, in a casino online environment, among the slot games and jackpots, the Table Games section is loaded with live and video blackjack games, all of which have an explanation of the rules to study in order to try and beat the dealer. Playing blackjack hints at you reveling in the underdog mindset. This state of being pits you against the odds and the greater entity at hand, such as the casino, and can be a large part of the appeal for competitive, strategic personality types like yours.
On paper puzzlers
If there’s one form of puzzle game that’s been able to take the world by storm in recent years and lend itself to a certain personality trait, it’s Sudoku. The game of placing numbers into squares, which has its origins in 1783’s Latin Squares by Leonhard Euler, can be played on the gaming website, but many still like to go about it with paper, a pencil, and an eraser. Regardless of how you play, few would deny that the allure is the frustration, the challenge, and breaking through to solve the puzzle – regardless of how few numbers are on the initial sheet. It’s been found that these people turn cognitive effort from being aversive into a rewarding and valuable experience, which lends these personalities to enjoy hard work and intellectual challenges.
The games that you decide to dedicate yourself to, or even have an affinity for, can give away a bit about your personality and reveal how you may react in similar situations elsewhere.
David Tobin did his degree in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. He is interested in psychology, mental health, and wellness.