A demonstration of superior judgement? Exploring league of legends players' performance in risky and ambiguous decision-making tasks

Abstract

In three studies, we investigated how League of Legends (LOL) game experience and game skill relate to players' performance in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART), and Probability Discounting Task (PDT). Additionally, the present study examined the relationship between players' in-game risk preferences and their performance in three types of decision-making tasks. To achieve this, we utilized a self-developed League of Legends Risk Propensity Scale (LRPS) to characterize LOL players' in-game risk preferences. The LRPS demonstrated appropriate reliability and validity in this study. Overall, our results indicated that the differences between LOL players' and non-players' decision-making performance were significant only in the PDT. Moreover, among LOL players, the relationship between game skill and decision-making performance was significant in the IGT (especially in the last sixty trials) and the PDT, but not in the BART. Furthermore, LRPS scores could predict performance in the PDT, but not in the IGT or BART. Our results suggest that experience and game skill in LOL are primarily linked to players' performance in risky decision-making tasks. Similarly, participants' in-game risk preferences in LOL are only related to their performance in the risky decision-making process, not in the ambiguous decision-making process. We propose that LOL players' in-game ambiguous decision-making processes may exhibit domain-specific characteristics.

Keywords

• MOBA game
• Decision-making
• IGT
• BART
• Probability discounting task