Psychology of League: The Blame Game
In general, there are three different ways in which someone can place the “blame” on a situation: through internal forces, external forces, and a mix of both. In this section we will go through what these forces are, how they relate to League of Legends, and how this information can be used to your advantage.
To begin, when people try to explain the cause of an event’s result there will be a focus around a specific force (a person, action, moment, or idea). An internal force is, simply put, the individual doing the explaining. Let’s say a student just received an A on an exam and is looking for the reason he received the grade. If the student used internal forces as the reasoning behind his grade, it would sound something like, “of course I got an A, I’m a master of this class!” As seen, the student focuses on himself for the reason he received a good grade. Internal reasoning is the typical method used by people whenever the result of some event was positive. Research has shown a correlation between people who use internal reasoning for positive outcomes and higher levels of self-confidence. However, it goes the opposite way for negative outcomes, where the correlation lies with those of lower self-confidence.
Meanwhile, an external force focuses on any force aside from the person doing the reasoning. This is the typical reasoning used for any negative result. Using the same student in the same scenario, had he used external reasoning it would sound like, “This class is too easy, that’s why I got an A.” The student focuses on the class rather than himself to explain his grade, making this external reasoning. People who use external reasoning for positive situations are often associated with having lower levels of self-confidence, while higher levels of self-confidence is found in those who use external reasoning for negative outcomes. In some situations a mixture of internal and external reasoning is used, and this is the rarest of the three to see. In the student’s situation, he could’ve used a mixture of the two to say while the class was easy, he only received such a high grade because he studied hard.
How does this relate to League of Legends? Well, there are several scenarios that are vital to the game which players often create some form of explanation. These scenarios include: barons, dragons, team fights, inhibitors, first blood, multi-kills, and the moment of the game’s end. More often than not, if any of these scenarios end positively, each player will attribute themselves for the outcome. Same goes for negative outcomes, except the players will blame their teammates or some other force. What most players don’t realize, however, is that how they form a reasoning greatly affects how they learn from the experience as well as how they feel after it, and both of these are highly impactful to future performance.
Let’s look at an example. During a game, an ADC is consistently dying early in teamfights to the enemy assassin and afterwards his team either loses the fight or barely come out even. With internal reasoning, the ADC could think, “I need to position better so I don’t get taken out so early, and go in once I see the assassin far enough away.” But with external reasoning they might think, “Why doesn’t my team peel the assassin from me! They’re so bad and it’s the only reason we lose!” It is quite obvious that with internal reasoning, the ADC evaluated the situation and personally improved off of it. Some people might argue that by requesting the team to try and peel off the assassin, it would still help the game and this may work. However, that’s teaching other players, which won’t be seen in any future games. By improving the individual, they will be helping 100% of their games, since they are always in it.
That was an example beginning with a negative outcome, but what for positive outcomes? Alright, let’s go with another example. A team tries to sneak baron and is successful, the individual in this case will be the support. With internal reasoning, the baron could be explained with “I established vision control making it so we could safely baron without the enemy team knowing.” This method would boost the player’s self confidence during that game and help in situations after, making it viable. However, another method with external reasoning would be something like, “Only reason we got baron successfully was because my team was ahead enough they could take it before the enemies noticed.” The player wouldn’t gain much self-confidence through this; however, it would open up a broader mindset for the individual to consider ways they could better help the situation further, for future games. Since supports don’t always deal that much damage, they could instead do smaller things such as: begin warding dragon or tower areas, show up in a lane to make the enemies think the team isn’t at baron, position to zone off any potential enemies, go to top lane and start a slow push, or position to help allies quickly get out of the area. Both methods end up being positive in their own way, and so it can be situational if the individual should go more for internal reasoning or external. But in a large majority of cases with positive outcomes, it is best to go a mixture of both, to gain the confidence as well as learn from the situation. As for when it’s better to go one extreme or the other, it depends on the individual’s standing in ranked. If they are in promotionals, it is better to go for external reasoning in this case for the short lived confidence to help them burst through and rank up. On the other hand, an extreme internal reasoning is better for when the player is on a losing streak or plateau, helping them to improve enough to begin climbing again.
Overview: In all situations no matter if the outcome was positive or negative, place a small bit of focus on yourself and search for any way which you could improve to make the situation better. Some games will be unwinnable, whether it is due to team compositions, a bad ally, one really good enemy or some other reason, never focus on it. Your mood will only be worsened by that type of focus, instead think on how you could have made that situation more tolerable. Do not blame your teammates for bad outcomes, nothing good comes out of it and it will not help your future games in any way, always use internal reasoning on negative outcomes. For positive outcomes, generally use a mix between internal and external to keep team morale high and learn even more for the next event.
Psychology of League: Introduction - http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/tips-tricks/N1Gu1fMO-psychology-of-league-introduction
