What is personality?
Every person has a unique
set of traits, beliefs, and schemata that make up the foundation of who we are.
The American Psychological Association (APA, 2017) refers to personality as “individual
differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.”
(para. 1). Nonetheless, depending on what aspect is being studied, the
definition of personality may evolve. For instance, in regards to video game
studies, Quick, Atkinson, and Lin (2012) describe personality as “a set of
individual characteristics that explain how a person will perceive video game
experiences” (p.13).
One of the most
well-recognized personality dimension and assessment tools is the Five Factor
Model (FFM). The five dimensions of
the FFM can be remembered by the acronym OCEAN:
- Openness to experience
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
When studying an
individual’s personality traits, the results of these dimensions are viewed in
a scale-like format. For instance, someone who scores high on the openness to
experience factor may be more willing to try a little known indie game, whereas
someone who scores low on the same factor may opt to save their money for the
new game in a series they are already a fan of.
Do certain personalities prefer certain genres?
Most
gamers tend to favor a specific type of video game, such as first-person
shooters (FPS) or role-playing games (RPG), but often play games in numerous other
genres. So why is it that gamers will continue to play games from one genre,
even though all of the games tend to stick to specific and similar game
environments and aspects. Triberti, Villani, and Riva (2015) posit “people seek
out entertainment that reflects and reinforces aspects of their personalities”
(p. 2). Perhaps the fact that your entertainment center is full of fighting
games reveals more about your personality than you know.
In
an effort to learn more about how personality traits and video game preference
correlate, DeGraft-Johnson et. al (2013) used the results of participants’ FFM
to analyze video game genre preferences. Game genres included in the study
were:
- Dancing
- Racing
- Fighting
- FPS
Researchers
found that the agreeableness and extraversion traits were positively correlated
with dancing genre video games. A negative correlational relationship between
conscientiousness and FPS was exhibited. However, no significant results were
found regarding game genres and the openness to experience and neuroticism
traits.
In
another study, Peever, Johnson, and Gardner (2012), similar to DeGraft-Johnson
et. al, used the FFM to study participants’ preference for specific game
genres. Numerous genre options were included: action-adventure, action RPGs,
board/card games, casual, education, fighting, flight, MMORPG, music, party,
platformer, puzzle, racing, real-time strategy, RPG, shooter, simulation,
sport, text-adventure, and turn-based strategy.
Results
showed that party, music, and casual games were positively correlated with extraversion
scores, while RPGs and strategy games were negatively correlated with the same
trait. The action-adventure and platformer genres were positively correlated to
openness to experience. And lastly, conscientiousness was positively correlated
with sport, racing, simulation, and fighting games.
While
these, and numerous other studies, have methodological downfalls or inconsistent
analyses, results provide researchers and game developers alike the chance to
learn more about gamers and genre-specific audiences. Therefore, if an
individual’s personality may affect the type of video game they prefer to play,
it may also affect how an individual interacts with any specific video game.
References
American Psychological
Association. (2017). Personality. American
Psychological Association.
DeGraft-Johnson, C.,
Wang, Y., Sutherland, M. B., & Norman, K. L. (2013). Relating Five Factory
Personality traits to video game preference. Human-Computer Interaction Technical Report, 1-15.
Peever, N., Johnson, D.,
& Gardner, J. (2012). Personality and video game genre preferences.
University of Minnesota. (n.d.). Five Factor Model. [photo].
