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). (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.