PERSONALITY TRAITS AND ALEXITHYMIA IN MMORPG’S AND MOBA’S PLAYERS

In the last few years you can, more and more, attend the spread of two types of videogames online, in particular: MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) and MMORPG (Massive(ly) Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). Referring to a several empirical researches has emerged that the use of videogames mentioned above, it is often related to different types of dysfuction and diseases, such as: internet addiction, alexithymia and a deep impulsivity. Referring to the foregoing, the research involved 908 partecipants recruited from different forums. Partecipants were administered an array of tests self-report online, composed by the following tests: IAT, TAS-20, BIS-11 and PID-5-BF. On average, case study doesn’t show an alexithymia’s construct (m= 44.95; dst= 12.11) neither an internet addiction (m= 52.13; dst= 14.12), even if with in-depth analysis it’s possible to observe many pathological cases. From further analysis is emerged that the time spended to play videogames and the kind of videogames influence some personality traits and the impulsive disposition in every different ages. In gender difference, men show higher scores on difficulty identifying feeling (m=11.78; p=0.001), while women show higher scores in the negative affectivity scale (M=5.30 p=0.01) and detachment (m=3,65; p=0.01). Moreover, the types of videogames used is crucial in the development of alexithymia. The outcomes of our research lead to suppose that in addition to the time spend playing videogames the types of games used reflect the personality feautures of players.