Hypothesis:
I believe we will find a strong correlation between rational thinkers who are also wargamers. This would suggest a field of respondents who are part of the "Rationals" sub-group of personality types (ENTJ/INTJ/ENTP/INTP). Despite the extroverted rationals, I expect to find an overall trend toward introversion within the wargaming community, perhaps explaining in part why it is so hard for the community to grow beyond niche status. Combined with the three functional requirements noted in the original article (interest in military history, detail-oriented behavior, and the intellectual factors), the actual percentage of the population predisposed to wargaming is miniscule. Taken in total, there are many restrictions which will always condemn wargaming to a tiny enclave of players, at least until someone changes the definition of wargaming, or until there are breakthroughs in how wargames themselves are developed and played.
Before laying out the specific and entire survey results, I would like to expand upon my hypothesis just a bit and explain my thoughts on just how the results supported or did not support that hypothesis. First and foremost, the data seems to absolutely support my theory that the majority of wargamers are indeed an introverted lot. An astounding 36.97% (237 people) of respondents put themselves in the INTJ personality type. Perhaps it is no coincidence that I myself am part of this INTJ sub-group, given the INTJ penchant for gathering and processing information. (some links on what it means to be INTJ – link link link link) The truly interesting facet of this particular survey result is that of the population at large, between 1 and 3% fall into the INTJ category. Statistically speaking, this shows a very significant part of our community is drawn from a very tiny subset of the entire population. While we all seem to know this to be inherently true (we are an odd lot, and have always known it!), this illustrates it in a more concise manner.
To complete my hypothesis about the Rationals sub-group, it turns out that the combination of ENTJ/INTJ/ENTP/INTP personality types accounted for 53.04% of the total number of wargamers. The vast majority were from the previously noted INTJ group, followed by the ENTJ and INTP groups, with ENTP far in the back with only 2% of the total. Indeed the Rationals sub-group constitutes the majority of the wargamer community who took part in this survey. (more about “Rationals†and other temperaments – link link) Again, this is greatly disproportional to the amount of Rationals present in the population at large.
These huge spikes in the personality types were very much in line with what I expected to find given my anecdotal experience in working and playing against other wargamers for the past 20 years. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see this hypothesis emerge with the incoming data.
