The emerging adolescent World of Warcraft video gamer: A five factor exploratory profile model

Abstract This exploratory study discovered personality patterns among emerging adults (EA; aged 18–25) who played World of Warcraft (WoW). The authors examined differences between the 44-item personality measure Big Five Inventory (BFI) and emerging adult play style and specialization of WoW players through latent profile analysis (LPA). The authors focused on the specifics of participant’s play style (Player VS Player, Player VS Environment, or Role-Playing), specialization of character (Tank, Healer, Damage), and whether EA WoW video gamers met criteria for an antisocial personality profile (see Markey and Markey, 2010). A total of 465 EA WoW players, participated in the study. The author’s findings, based on LPA, discovered profiles amongst the participants utilizing ANOVAs to statistically investigate differences. The authors found the following three different main profiles overall across play styles and specialization: Extroversive, Introversive, and Ambiversive. This study asserts personality may play a role in understanding the video gamer and there may be at least three personality types of gamers who play World of Warcraft (WoW). Furthermore, there was no support for antisocial personality scores of EAs in WoW players when compared to suggested markers of antisocial personality factors (see Bean and Groth-Marnat, 2014; Markey and Markey, 2010).

[1]  Ching‐I Teng,et al.  Personality and motivations for playing online games , 2008 .

[2]  C. Carver,et al.  Perspectives on Personality , 1988 .

[3]  Karen E. Dill,et al.  Video games and aggressive thoughts, feelings, and behavior in the laboratory and in life. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[4]  O. John,et al.  Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German , 2007 .

[5]  Jeroen J. A. van Boxtel,et al.  A predictive coding perspective on autism spectrum disorders , 2013, Front. Psychology.

[6]  O. John,et al.  Los Cinco Grandes across cultures and ethnic groups: multitrait multimethod analyses of the Big Five in Spanish and English. , 1998, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  Andrew K Przybylski,et al.  The Motivating Role of Violence in Video Games , 2009, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[8]  P. Costa,et al.  Adding Liebe und Arbeit: The Full Five-Factor Model and Well-Being , 1991 .

[9]  E. J. Phares,et al.  Introduction to Personality , 1984 .

[10]  L. R. Goldberg.  THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARKERS FOR THE BIG-FIVE FACTOR STRUCTURE , 1992 .

[11]  J. Jansz.  The emotional appeal of violent video games for adolescent males , 2005 .

[12]  Tracy Fullerton,et al.  Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Third Edition , 2014 .

[13]  D. McAdams,et al.  The Person: An Introduction to Personality Psychology , 1994 .

[14]  J. Arnett.  Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties , 2004 .

[15]  Bengt Muthén,et al.  Latent Variable Analysis: Growth Mixture Modeling and Related Techniques for Longitudinal Data , 2004 .

[16]  Cheryl K. Olson.  Children's Motivations for Video Game Play in the Context of Normal Development , 2010 .

[17]  Joseph Hilgard,et al.  Individual differences in motives, preferences, and pathology in video games: the gaming attitudes, motives, and experiences scales (GAMES) , 2013, Front. Psychol..

[18]  Nicholas L. Crookston,et al.  yaImpute: An R Package for kNN Imputation , 2008 .

[19]  Paul J. C. Adachi,et al.  A longitudinal study of the association between violent video game play and aggression among adolescents. , 2012, Developmental psychology.

[20]  Jon Radoff,et al.  Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games , 2011 .

[21]  R. Engels,et al.  The benefits of playing video games. , 2014, The American psychologist.

[22]  Anthony M. Bean,et al.  Video gamers and personality: A five-factor model to understand game playing style. , 2014 .

[23]  E. Erikson.  Identity, youth, and crisis , 1968 .

[24]  Ambiversion: characteristics of midrange responders on the Introversion-Extraversion continuum. , 1979, Journal of personality assessment.

[25]  J. Arnett.  Emerging adulthood. A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[26]  E. Erikson.  Childhood and Society , 1965 .

[27]  R. Ryckman,et al.  Theories of personality , 1989 .

[28]  Patrick M. Markey,et al.  Vulnerability to Violent Video Games: A Review and Integration of Personality Research , 2010 .

[29]  G. Arbanas.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) , 2015 .

[30]  Daniel J Bauer,et al.  Local solutions in the estimation of growth mixture models. , 2006, Psychological methods.

[31]  B. Muthén,et al.  Deciding on the Number of Classes in Latent Class Analysis and Growth Mixture Modeling: A Monte Carlo Simulation Study , 2007 .

[32]  Maria E. Jabon,et al.  The Expression of Personality in Virtual Worlds , 2011 .

[33]  C. Ferguson.  Evidence for publication bias in video game violence effects literature: A meta-analytic review , 2007 .

[34]  O. John,et al.  Paradigm shift to the integrative Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and conceptual issues. , 2008 .

[35]  S. Gosling,et al.  Development of personality in early and middle adulthood: set like plaster or persistent change? , 2003, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[36]  Linda M. Collins,et al.  Latent class and latent transition analysis , 2009 .

[37]  R. L. Atkinson,et al.  Hilgard's Introduction to Psychology , 1999 .

[38]  Stefan Greuter,et al.  Towards personalised, gamified systems: an investigation into game design, personality and player typologies , 2013, IE.

[39]  C. Ferguson.  Violent Video Games and the Supreme Court Entertainment Merchants Association , 2022 .

[40]  Lewis R. Goldberg,et al.  The Comparative Validity of 11 Modern Personality Inventories: Predictions of Behavioral Acts, Informant Reports, and Clinical Indicators , 2007, Journal of personality assessment.

[41]  Samuel D. Gosling,et al.  Personality Profiles Associated with Different Motivations for Playing World of Warcraft , 2013, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[42]  Nick Yee,et al.  Motivations for Play in Online Games , 2006, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[43]  Oliver Brdiczka,et al.  Inferring personality of online gamers by fusing multiple-view predictions , 2012, UMAP.

[44]  Andrew K. Przybylski,et al.  Competence-impeding electronic games and players' aggressive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. , 2014, Journal of personality and social psychology.