In this buzzfeed article ‘Allyson’ provides us with a number of gifs that depict the different facets of personality that manifest themselves in people who engage in board games. Though there is no empirical data behind this assessment of interpersonal relationships and board games; we have all dealt with ‘The scarily intense player’ or ‘The Trash Talker that Takes Things too Far’ and it is clear that they exist at this particular moment in or semester we are being called to ask ourselves why they exists.
The analogy to the phenomenon altered personality during the subjection of a board game is so accurate because of the effects of groupthink. First mentioned in Waller 's ‘Journal of Hate Studies’ groupthink describes the way humans interact in group with one another. Analysing group interaction from a board game is a ‘micro’ way of modeling society more generally. Like a board game society has rules, participants, and consequence for action. Another important aspect of board games is the fact that we all agree to
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Taking the example of Reserve Police Battalion 101 as example, even those who refused to commit murder were still crucial enablers of the holocaust. Without them provided their indifference the game could not have continued. Not only did the bystanders allow for the game to continue smoothly they actually add to its efficiency, waller tells us as humans we look for social cues in one another to distinguish what is appropriate. This phenomenon is the root of the bystander effect. Bystanders provide these social cues and attribute to the concept of the path of least resistance mentioned by Johnson. When we examine Johnson’s path of least resistance next to wallers explanation of the bystander effect we can see the inherent cyclical nature of societal