Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Denis McKeown 

BSc [Hons] Applied Psychology

I am a recent Applied Psychology graduate and completed my research paper on the role of sports psychologists in esports. I am currently doing a QA and Game Development internship which has allowed me to utilise lots of UI/UX skills learned during my time in IADT. I hope to continue working within the realm of video games and esports, but who knows what the future holds

Project Description

This project looked at the role of sport psychologists in the realm of esports. It is widely known that professional sports teams utilitse sports psychologists to gain an edge over their opponants, but with the emergence of the new professional video game scene, I wanted to look at what these sports psychologists do for esports players. By looking at research surrounding psychologists in traditional sports and doing interviews with those working in esports, I came across lots of information into what these psychologists really do


Project Outcomes

There were a variety of different outcomes to this research. They were broken down into different headings: approach (how the psychologist went about their work / philosophy), esports issues (major issues involved with working in esports), and applied work (actual work done by psychologists). Each heading had multiple subheadings which were chosen as a result of the interviews and covered the main research objectives.