Setting the scientific stage for esports psychology: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Competitive gaming, better known as electronic sports (esports), is rapidly growing in popularity. We systematically reviewed the available literature regarding the psychological aspects of esports using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) evidence-based reporting checklist and a Population, Intervention, Comparator, and Outcomes (PICO) framework with the following inclusion criteria: (i) published between 1994 and 2018; (ii) empirical investigation (as the current state of research is dense with positions and opinions but has few empirical investigations); and (iii) focussed on esports games that are associated with either cognitive performance or game performance. The goal of our research was twofold: to present a summary of the empirical evidence addressing the psychological characteristics of both cognitive and game performance in esports, and to integrate esports in the field of sport psychology. More specifically, our goals were to highlight the interplay of psychological aspects of performance and esports and to clearly define the theoretical foundations of the psychological aspects of esports performance. Underlining the differences from video gaming will inform future research directions and stimulate the development of high-quality practice in the applied field of sports and exercise psychology.

KEYWORDS:

• Esports
• cognition
• performance
• sport psychology
• game performance

Acknowledgements

We thank the Performance Psychology group for their critical feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We thank Anita Todd for English editing. Also, we would like to thank the participants of the discussion session at the FEPSAC Congress in Münster (July 15–20, 2019), who provided valuable remarks for the improvement of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Full names of all games discussed in this review can be found in Table 1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service [DAAD] under grant doctoral programmes in Germany; Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.