Testing the Evolutionary and Social Roles of Gaming Through Experimental Design and Mathematical Model

Gaming has been theorized to serve dual purposes: evaluating potential allies and rivals (evolutionary sciences) and fostering social bonds (social sciences). This study bridges the evolutionary and social perspectives by investigating these roles in strangers participating in gaming and role-playing activities. Twenty pairs of same-sex strangers with easy access to the campus (aged 18-40 years old) met three times, engaging in either a board game (Nine Men’s Morris) or a role-play scenario in which they acted as colleagues trying to reach a consensus about a specific topic. Before the first interaction and after each session, participants assessed their partner's desirable traits (peer’s value) and reported their perceived closeness (relational proximity). A causal mediation analysis, with relational proximity as the dependent variable, peer’s value as the mediator, and sex, activity type, time, competitiveness, and cooperativeness as independent variables, found no support for either hypothesis. Methodological constraints, such as relatively small sample size and limited interaction time, underscore the need for further exploration. Given a plausible evolutionary mismatch, we developed an additional mathematical model to outline the conditions under which these hypotheses would hold. Agent-based simulations were used to test the model, resulting in 3000 simulations of 50 generations each. Individual skills and the activities’ costs appeared as the driving forces of selection. Future research concerning gaming and its impact in long-term relationships should consider participants’ skills and knowledge about the game, its costs, and prioritize long-time observations.