11 Benefits of Roleplaying: Emotional, Social, and Cognitive

There are many unique use cases and benefits of roleplaying, whether you’re trying to improve your professional development, your personal social skills, or something else entirely. 

In our comprehensive guide, we’ll give you everything you should know about the benefits of roleplay, including what you can use roleplaying for, the emotional, social, and cognitive advantages, and how you can improve your skills.

What Can Roleplay Be Helpful for?

No matter what stage of life you’re in, roleplay can be a helpful tool for almost anything. Have an upcoming presentation or interview? You can use roleplay to practice. Planning to ask for a raise at work? Roleplay with a friend to practice what you want to say. The possibilities for what roleplaying can be used for — especially with the emergence of AI roleplay — are endless.  

In professional spaces, roleplay is used in workshops, courses, and trainings, especially in industries like customer service and healthcare. It’s also used in schools, from grade school to university, to help students better understand concepts. Roleplaying can even be used in therapy. 

Regardless of how you use it, roleplaying comes with specific benefits that are well worth the effort. 

Emotional and Social Benefits of Roleplay

When considering the overall benefits of roleplay, the emotional and social advantages are often first-of-mind. Roleplaying usually provides a safe, semi-controlled environment for folks to socialize and this comes with a whole host of benefits. Here’s what you should know.

Better relationships with others

First and foremost, roleplaying can help forge stronger bonds between people. On one hand, roleplaying games can provide social opportunities for people to meet and connect, leading to friendship. Many RPGs require collaboration skills and teamwork for success, and this helps people build better relationships, both in and outside of games. They can even provide a sense of community.

However, you can also leverage individual roleplay sessions to build stronger relationships with others. For example, practicing your social skills via roleplay can improve your ability to engage in small talk and listen empathetically (more on that below!)

Improved empathy and ability to empathize 

Although some people are born with a natural ability to empathize, for others, empathy is a learned skill. Either way, one of the best benefits of roleplaying is that it can help you develop a stronger sense of empathy. 

For example, RPGs often involve people filling the roles of various characters. This can give you a different perspective on how to better understand others. Roleplaying for social skills can also help you better relate to the perspectives and experiences of other people. All of this, coupled with knowing how to listen with empathy, can help roleplayers connect with other folks on a more significant level. 

More self-confidence 

Though it might come as a surprise to some folks, roleplaying can also improve your self-confidence. For people who aren’t confident, a lot of that stems from a sense of self-doubt. For people who roleplay — especially in social role plays or situations — gaining confidence in these social scenarios can make a world of difference. 

For others, the ability to speak in public is a more significant issue. Many folks struggle with public speaking and lean into individual roleplay sessions as a means of practicing. People can practice their public speaking skills in a totally controlled, risk-free environment to build their confidence. 

Roleplay and roleplay games also allow folks to express themselves differently than they would in more professional settings, like at school and work. 

Better communication skills

Of course, one of the most recognized benefits of roleplaying is improved communication skills. Everyone from students to sales reps and language learners use roleplay to strengthen their ability to communicate. During a roleplay session for example, roleplayers can use their active listening skills to home in on what others have to say. This also helps them react and reply more thoughtfully than they might if they weren’t actually listening. 

The more you roleplay (especially with others), the better you’ll be at expressing your thoughts, ideas, and beliefs clearly. You can also get practice in specific scenarios, like compromise, negotiation, or selling tactics, for example. 

The Underrated Psychological Benefits of Roleplaying

Some of the lesser-known benefits of roleplaying are psychological. In other words, it benefits your mental health and wellbeing. Here are just a few of the psychological benefits of roleplay. 

Less anxiety and stress

One of the most underrated psychological benefits of roleplaying is the decrease in stress and anxiety that often comes with it. Some folks leverage their roleplay sessions for mindfulness. They get so focused on their roleplay experience that they can let go of the daily stressors that might cause worry or anxiety. 

For others, roleplay can be a form of escapism, especially when it comes to creative, social roleplaying. Some folks have creative roleplay sessions after work or school that serve as a temporary means of escape from their stress or stressful events of the day.

Increased emotional intelligence

Both solo and social roleplay can boost a person’s level of emotional intelligence, too. Roleplaying alone or in a group of friends can give you a more controlled environment to practice your social skills, for example. As mentioned above, it can also help you develop a better sense of empathy, which allows folks to understand how others may feel.

Boosted mood

Roleplay can even improve your mood. With roleplaying games, for example, people can focus on enjoying the gameplay instead of events earlier in the day that cause stress, anxiety, or worry. Plus, if it’s a tabletop roleplay game or a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG), people can connect with others to share the experience. Social interaction — even virtual interaction — is known to boost moods. 

The Cognitive Benefits of Roleplay

Folks also tend to overlook the cognitive benefits of roleplay — AKA, the benefits to the way you think and process information. Here are some of the most essential cognitive advantages of engaging in a bit of roleplay. 

Better problem-solving skills

Roleplaying can help folks develop better problem-solving skills, both individually and within groups of roleplayers. Specifically, people can practice making more informed decisions in a safe environment. In roleplaying games, for example, every action has a potential consequence. Playing these games can improve your ability to make sound decisions. 

Not only that, but it helps with strategy and planning, too. Folks often have to think ahead or think on their feet to create strategies and tactics for success. Depending on the exact roleplay scenario, it can also help build your conflict resolution skills. 

Improved critical thinking

Roleplayers can also improve their ability to think critically through roleplaying. For example, any kind of roleplay involves the ability to take in and evaluate information. In RPGs, before making decisions, players consider the available information, including how relevant and credible it is. Depending on the situation, it can sharpen your ability to identify trends or patterns that crop up, too. 

Roleplaying — both educational and creative — helps people safely question their pre-existing assumptions or beliefs. People can consider alternative viewpoints and challenge what they think they know simply by roleplaying with others. 

Boosted creativity 

Although people often think of imagination and creativity as skills you’re born with, you can also develop and increase your capacity for creativity through roleplaying. With creative roleplay especially, such as with live action roleplaying or games like Dungeons & Dragons, people can stretch their creative muscles through storytelling, world-building, character development, and more. 

Generally speaking, creative roleplay is a safe space for experimenting with different plot lines or narratives. In both RPGs and LARPing, you can let your imagination run wild and explore fictional worlds. The more you dive into your creative side, the easier it is to leverage those creative skills.

Better memory 

A more surprising benefit of roleplay is the improvement in roleplayers’ memory. Roleplay can actually help beat the forgetting curve by building your active recall abilities. Depending on the exact kind of roleplay, you can even leverage immersive learning to get a better idea of a concept through simulations. 

Even with games like D&D, the spaced repetition of reviewing information each session can boost your memory. 

How to Reap the Benefits of Roleplay with Yoodli

If you’re looking to reap the benefits of roleplaying, you’re in the right place. There’s no better tool to do so than with Yoodli. 

Yoodli is a roleplay platform and speech coach that leverages conversational, AI-powered roleplay to improve the user’s skills. Yoodli offers all different types of roleplay, from sales call simulations to realistic small talk and even dating.

In fact, well-known companies like Google and Dale Carnegie have leveraged Yoodli for training, certification, and work enablement. 

No matter what your use case is for roleplay, Yoodli’s got you covered. Folks can choose an existing roleplay scenario from Yoodli’s database or they can use Yoodli’s platform to build their own from scratch. Once they’re ready to go, users will engage in some back-and-forth conversation with their AI-generated partner. You can even tweak the personality of your AI partner so you’re able to practice with all sorts of personas, from frustrated to stressed and friendly.  

Not only that, but Yoodli provides personalized, in-depth assessments of how your roleplay went. After the roleplay ends, users receive instant feedback on how the roleplay went so they’ll know exactly where they need to improve. 

Learn how you can reap the benefits of roleplay and start for free with Yoodli at https://yoodli.ai/.

The Bottom Line 

The potential benefits of roleplaying are essentially endless. From the cognitive advantages to the social perks, roleplay can be a versatile, practical tool for improvement. Using a tried-and-true roleplay platform like Yoodli will make all the difference. 

Sources

• Northern Illinois University: “Role Playing.”
• Mount Sinai: “First-in-Human Study Reveals Dopamine and Serotonin Have Overlapping, Yet Distinctive Roles That Influence Social Behavior.”
• University of Maine: “Tabletop Roleplaying Games, and Depression, and Social Anxiety.”
• Infonomics Society: “Enhancing Critical Thinking and Communication Skills.”