According to a study published in Games for Health Journal, when used as part of an emotional intelligence training program, videogames can help teenagers in evaluating, expressing, and managing their own emotions after the training.
The article entitled “Can Videogames Be Used to Promote Emotional Intelligence in Teenagers? Results from EmotivaMente, a School Program” was co-authored by Claudia Carissoli and Daniela Villani, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan, Italy). The researchers developed an emotional intelligence training program that integrated videogames as experience-based learning tools. The experimental group of teenagers participated in eight sessions and their emotional competency was evaluated before beginning the program, at the end of the training, and three months later. The researchers provide recommendations for future research based on the results of this study.
“Games for health have been designed to address an increasing variety of issues. A relatively new health issue is emotional intelligence, which has implications for various health problems, including coping with stress,” says Tom Baranowski, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of Games for Health Journal, from USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center, and Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. “Carissoli and Villani created a videogame, EmotivaMente, to enhance emotional intelligence among adolescents, perhaps the group that could benefit most…
Here is what Carissoli and Villani concluded on their research:
EmotivaMente helped adolescents to improve emotional skills. Results confirmed that videogames can be useful to promote EI in adolescents at school, if integrated with a guided and assisted framework…
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