YoungRes: A Serious Game-Based Intervention to Increase Youngsters Resilience Against Extremist Ideologies

Extremist ideologies are proliferating nowadays in both political and social levels. Considering that youngsters are in a development stage where they are still conforming their own social identity, they become especially vulnerable to these ideologies' influence. Therefore, it becomes critical to provide them with the psychological skills to rationalize and resist those influences. Video games, which are already a technology commonly consumed by these generations, provide a way to motivate and engage youngsters. Therefore, implementing these video games in interventions to increase psychological resilience represents an opportunity to create an innovative learning approach. Following this motivation, this paper has three main objectives: adapting a traditional emotional intelligence training program to a novel serious game based intervention, called YoungRes; providing a metric to measure the student' evolution based on in-game behavioural patterns, instead of indirect measures; and evaluating the impact of the intervention itself after its implementation. To do so, an 11 sessions intervention was applied to 36 students from two primary schools in Spain. Quantitative and qualitative data was extracted from the experience, consisting on data extracted from the player's behaviour and a final survey. A detailed statistical analysis carried out showed two main outcomes: first, the serious game based intervention was very appreciated by the students, specially by those who frequently play video games; second, the intervention allowed to improve several emotional intelligence competences, such as active listening and controlled breathing, as well as to promote knowledge about the Islamic culture. Finally, the authors discussed about how the game could be improved for future applications in schools.

Automated summary

Extremist ideologies are spreading in today's society, affecting both the political and social levels. Young people, in particular, are vulnerable to these influences due to their developmental stage. Therefore, it is crucial to equip them with psychological skills to rationalize and resist these ideologies. Video games, already a popular technology among young generations, can be used as an innovative approach to motivate and engage youngsters in interventions to increase psychological resilience. This study adapted a traditional emotional intelligence training program into a serious game-based intervention called YoungRes and evaluated its impact on students. The findings showed that the intervention was well received by students, especially those who frequently play video games, and resulted in improvements in emotional intelligence competences and knowledge about the Islamic culture.