An Embodied Cognition Approach for Understanding Role-playing

This paper proposes an embodied and grounded cognition framework as a unifying theory for understanding role-playing, arguing that character immersion and "bleed" (the spillover of a character's emotions into the player) emerge naturally from how cognition operates rather than from special game-specific mechanisms. The authors critique existing accounts of immersion and the widely cited definition of bleed, contending that characters can only affect players if they are grounded in the player's own cognitive processes rather than existing as independent entities. Their central claim rests on the premise that action, perception, and thought draw on overlapping motor and sensory systems, a position supported by evidence from tool-recognition neuroimaging, mirror-neuron research, and studies of facial-expression mimicry.

Building on Barsalou's Perceptual Symbol System, the paper treats "simulators" as modality-specific, multimodal knowledge structures capable of generating varied simulations. It argues that role-playing shares core features with pretence play, including a fictive world layered over reality and a character construct built on Smith's person schema. Drawing on Walton's Reality and Mutual Belief Principles and on Lankoski's and Montola's work on rules, character construction, and embodiment, the authors contend that these cognitive mechanisms offer a more cognitively grounded explanation of role-playing experience than conventional game-studies or social-science accounts. Live-action role-playing receives particular attention, since the player's body directly constrains how a character can be portrayed.

The framework is applied to case studies of Call of Cthulhu, Gang Rape, and Ground Zero, drawing on prior analyses by Montola and Hopeametsä. The authors conclude that immersion, bleed, and affective mimicry arise because players act as their characters, and they propose embodiment as a candidate background theory for role-playing research. The study is explicitly limited: it offers no new empirical data of its own, relies on reinterpretation of existing analyses, and acknowledges that embodiment cannot account for every aspect of role-playing. Its theoretical foundations include grounded cognition, simulation theory, and research on emotional contagion.