Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, Utah State University, Logan, Utah.
Department of Anthropology and Geography, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.
Games Health J. 2020 Aug;9(4):265-272. doi: 10.1089/g4h.2019.0118. Epub 2020 May 12.
We examine the extent that videogame avatars provide players with opportunities for identity exploration, aiming to test the findings of self-discrepancy theory research on the user/avatar relationship with novel cognitive anthropological methods. Specifically, we examine if avatar traits are (more representative of players' ideal rather than actual self) or (more representative of players' actual self) as a function of players' self-esteem. Utilizing cognitive anthropological methods, we examine the relationship between and . We first asked 21 respondents to list traits they associated with their various selves. We then asked 57 new respondents to perform four pile sorts of the salient items from these lists (1 unconstrained sort of like-traits, and 3 sorts of terms indicative of respondents' ideal/actual/avatar self). Analysis of this "free list" and "pile sort" data allowed us to clarify (in a manner sensitive to gamer culture) relationships between respondents' various conceptions of self, including how those relationships were modified by self-esteem. Illustrative quotes from the interviews further clarified these relationships. Paired -test analysis shows that informants as a whole describe their avatar compared with actual selves with fewer negative terms (). Low-esteem players what they deem as positive traits onto their avatars, while simultaneously avatars' negative traits by minimizing them. Compared with low-esteem gamers, high-esteem players associate significantly more positive attributes with their various selves- and -while describing avatar compared with actual selves with fewer positive terms and comparable numbers of negative terms (the latter a process of ). Results point to the necessity of theoretical accounts that recognize that avatars may reflect a complex relationship with the user's actual and ideal self, without assuming that avatar play frees gamers from offline social, psychological, or bodily constraints.
我们考察了视频游戏角色在多大程度上为玩家提供了身份探索的机会，旨在利用新颖的认知人类学方法检验用户/角色关系中自我差异理论研究的发现。具体来说，我们检验了作为玩家自尊的函数，角色特征是否更能代表玩家的理想自我而不是实际自我，或者更能代表玩家的实际自我。利用认知人类学方法，我们检验了 和 之间的关系。我们首先要求 21 名受访者列出他们与各种自我相关联的特征。然后，我们要求 57 名新受访者对这些列表中的突出项目进行四次堆分类（1 个不受限制的相似特征分类，以及 3 个表示受访者理想/实际/角色自我的分类）。对“自由列表”和“堆排序”数据的分析使我们能够以对游戏文化敏感的方式澄清受访者各种自我概念之间的关系，包括这些关系如何被自尊所改变。访谈中的说明性引语进一步阐明了这些关系。配对检验分析表明，总体而言，受访者用更少的负面术语来描述他们的角色与实际自我相比（）。低自尊的玩家将他们认为的积极特征投射到他们的角色上，同时通过最小化角色的负面特征来掩盖它们。与低自尊的游戏者相比，高自尊的游戏者将更多的积极属性与他们的各种自我和角色相关联，同时用更少的积极术语和可比数量的负面术语来描述角色与实际自我相比（后者是一个过程）。结果表明，有必要建立理论解释，承认角色可能反映了与用户实际和理想自我的复杂关系，而不是假设角色扮演可以使游戏者摆脱离线社交、心理或身体上的限制。
