Build Resilience by Fighting Zombies

This case describes a game-based experience for learning about Psychological Capital (PsyCap) assets, namely, Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism, and Psychological Hardiness, for large class sections of over 40 students using the board game Zombicide (2nd Edition). Arranged into six teams, students navigate a simulated zombie crisis, where each team commands a single survivor character with asymmetric capabilities and resources. The six student teams must optimise the actions made by their survivor miniature figurines on the game map – moving, scavenging supplies, and managing tactical combat with zombies – to complete the objectives of Zombicide’s Mission 1: City Blocks, and escape through the shared exit point on the map.

The mechanics of the board game’s zombie apocalypse function like a random generator of adversity. During gameplay, the instructors act as Game Masters and gradually add pressure on the teams as the game progresses. The student teams may thus treat the gameplay as a sandbox for them to experience the PsyCap assets that arise with the game dynamics and practise the hardiness attitudes of staying committed to goals, maintaining their sense of control over circumstances, and reframing obstacles as learning opportunities. During the debriefing segment, the students are guided to internalise the interplay between their PsyCap assets and Hardiness attitudes, as well as explore how this psychological synergy builds and sustains individual resilience.

The key learning objectives of the case are: analyse and apply Psychological Hardiness Theory by identifying how its three attitudinal components – Commitment, Control, and Challenge – manifest when facing systemic stressors; understand PsyCap assets – trait and state-like Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism; and create leadership strategies for crisis management by tracing how individuals’ PsyCap assets and Psychological Hardiness may interact to enhance their Resilience.

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