Virtual-Self Identity Construal in Online Videogames
[eng] One of the most compelling topics in scholarly research over the years has been personal Identity, its formation, and its psychological functions. Our sense of identity helps us recognize ourselves and distinguish us from other people and gives us a sense of internal consistency and continuity...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/221302 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/221302 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/694571 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Identitat digital Constructivisme (Psicologia) Realitat virtual Online identities Constructivism (Psychology) Virtual reality |
| Sumario: | [eng] One of the most compelling topics in scholarly research over the years has been personal Identity, its formation, and its psychological functions. Our sense of identity helps us recognize ourselves and distinguish us from other people and gives us a sense of internal consistency and continuity over time. This need for continuity, while crucial for our well-being, can often conflict with our need for change, which is also essential for adaptation to our environment and for personal growth. Fortunately, this need for continuity is not as rigid as it would seem, different aspects of one’s identity can coexist. Thus, every individual possesses several “selves”, each fulfilling a different role (e.g., the "self” as a parent, a worker, a friend, etc.). Following this idea of identity multiplicity, the advent of online virtual environments has introduced the concept “virtual identity” or “the virtual self”. It refers to the aspects of an individual’s identity that are expressed online. The anonymity of the Internet and the capacity to customize how users present themselves allow them to manifest aspects of their identity that might diverge significantly from their offline selves without disrupting their sense of continuity. Consequently, virtual environments serve as useful platforms for the expression of different identities that fulfill various psychological needs. This thesis aims to explore how virtual environment users construe their virtual self and what different psychological functions this virtual self can have. To that aim, we conducted three studies. In the first study, we reviewed the available literature on virtual identity across different types of virtual environments, examining how it relates to personal identity. We categorized articles based on the type of virtual environment they focused on: social media, online videogames, avatar-mediated environments, and specialized environments (e.g., dating sites or professional networks). We conducted a quality assessment of the articles included and provided a narrative synthesis of the most notable findings. In the second study, we aimed to put forward and validate a typology identifying the different ways online videogame players construe their virtual selves. The typology was defined by the perceived discrepancies between our participants’ actual self, ideal self, and their online videogame characters (their virtual self). We administered the Repertory Grid Technique to 202 online videogame players to measure their actual-ideal, actual-virtual, and virtual-ideal self discrepancies, and we divided them into three clusters using k-means cluster analysis: · Proximal-type: Characterized by a low actual-virtual self-discrepancy. This category represents characters that are considerably similar to the player’s actual self, serving an instrumental function of extending their offline identity into the game rather than creating a new one. · Projection-type: Characterized by a high actual-ideal self-discrepancy, high actual-virtual self-discrepancy, and low virtual-ideal self-discrepancy. This category represents players who see themselves as distant from how they would like to be and create a virtual self that compensates for that by being closer to their ideal self. · Exploratory-type: Characterized by a low actual-ideal self-discrepancy, high actual-virtual self-discrepancy, and high virtual-ideal self-discrepancy. This category represents players who are already satisfied with themselves and choose to explore alternative identities that are not necessarily ideal for the performative enjoyment of adopting a different persona. |
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