A Psychology Bachelor’s Degree Final Project conducted at the UAB has analysed the relationship between psychopathic traits and playing styles among adolescent registered chess players. This research provides an initial approach to understanding the implications of personality within a competitive context.
By Óscar Delgado López (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona).
Psychopathic traits have been widely studied in clinical and forensic contexts, but their potential relationship with performance in competitive activities such as chess remains an unexplored field. In this context, the research supervised by Albert Bonillo Martin, director of the Departament de Psicobiologia i Metodologia de les Ciències de la Salut, conducted an analysis to explore the possible relationship between psychopathic traits and different playing styles among adolescent registered chess players.
The study involved four registered players aged between 13 and 17, who completed the short version of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM). This measure defines psychopathy according to three dimensions: boldness, associated with emotional resilience; disinhibition, related to impulse control; and meanness, defined as an instrumental orientation towards obtaining resources and/or advantages. At the same time, the participants were classified according to their playing style based on the model proposed by Müller and Engel.
The idiographic analysis identified distinct patterns among the participants. Players with a more offensive and dynamic playing style obtained higher scores in the dimensions of boldness and disinhibition, while the player classified as having a more reflective style showed the lowest levels of disinhibition and moderate scores in boldness and meanness.
Although the small sample size does not allow general conclusions to be drawn, the results suggest that certain personality traits could influence how chess players approach decision-making during a game. Specifically, high scores in boldness and disinhibition could favour a more aggressive and risk-oriented playing style.
These results represent an initial approach to a largely unexplored line of research and highlight the need to conduct studies with larger samples in order to confirm these observations. Understanding how personality traits may relate to different playing styles could broaden knowledge of decision-making in competitive contexts and contribute to the development of more comprehensive models of chess performance.
