Icebreaker Typology and Effectiveness in Interpersonal Relationships
Shunsuke Kokubu (AY 2012)
Currently, group work takes place in a variety of group sizes and academic areas. One activity designed to improve the effectiveness of group work and to break the ice between strangers is the icebreaker. Icebreakers are simple games that involve the use of the head and body, and many have been proposed. However, such studies do not describe clear selection criteria for icebreakers, nor do they describe the clear effects of the icebreakers chosen. The reason for this may be that there is currently no proposed typology of icebreakers. Therefore, with the aim of supporting everyone's ability to select the icebreaker that best suits their needs, this study conducted a typification of icebreakers, built an icebreaker recommendation system, and promoted understanding of icebreakers with a small number of proposed games as revealed by the typification, in order to verify the effectiveness of the icebreaker recommendation system.
For the icebreaker typology, items relevant to classification were extracted from 889 icebreakers in seven related books to create a unified item, and 889 icebreakers were classified based on this item. From this categorization process, the characteristics of the icebreakers, the goals of the icebreakers, and the objectives of the icebreakers were derived. The icebreaker recommendation system was constructed using the data obtained from the categorization work to enable faceted search. The system is based on the data obtained from the typing work. Through this work, we demonstrated that the icebreaker data obtained from the typology work can be adapted to a faceted search interface. In addition, we constructed the only recommendation system that enables faceted search of 889 icebreakers. In investigating the effects of icebreakers, we focused on icebreakers with self-disclosure as an achievement goal, whose development was delayed, and examined their effects on the amount of self-disclosure and self-disclosure resistance using a game with two representative methods. The results showed that the icebreaker tended to increase the "orienting aspect" of self-disclosure, the "physical self", and the "existential self". The icebreaker was also found to have a strong effect on reducing resistance to disclosure, especially on the other-oriented aspect of self-disclosure, further demonstrating the effectiveness of the icebreaker in achieving the goal of self-disclosure.
This study provided clearer selection criteria for icebreakers; however, refinement of the classification items and reclassification of the categories and their replicability still need to be determined. The effectiveness of the recommendation system itself needs to be verified, as well as its language support to encourage more users to use the system. The effectiveness of icebreakers needs to be verified for several other categories of icebreakers. We believe that the recognition of the domain will deepen as various insights are added in the future.
(Translated by DeepL)