Wishful identification in videogames and the effect on aggression among adolescents (Konijn, Bijvank & Bushman, 2007)

In this study, they investigated on game characters, mainly the protagonists, effect on adolescent boys as role models. Indeed, we often look up to other people who serve as a role model in order to interact with society, how we ought to act in different situations, how to talk with other people, etc. So who do we look up? That depends on what you’d like: say your parents, a celebrity, a fictional character (say Sherlock Holmes or Gil Grissom from CSI), you get the picture. So anyone, real or fictional, can be a role model for children and prior research has been done on older media. Anyways, they want to see if game heroes have any effect on players in terms of aggressive behaviours. Their findings suggested that participants are more aggressive when they played violent video games and when they identify with the main character within said game. The effect is pronounced with realism and immersiveness.

There are two types of identification explained in the study: similarity identification and wishful identification.

• Similarity identification is identification where a person’s role model has similar characteristics to one’s own, which leads to liking that character more than anyone else. For example, a nerd is likely to identify a nerdy character in a show. Or macho guy like a character who acted like a tough guy.

• Wishful identification is where characteristics of a character are attractive to that person who does not have them. For example, a weakling likes someone who’s strong and has guts to act out while he does not possess them.

So, like I mentioned before, what people identify with will likely learn their behaviours and attitudes. So in most violent video games, heroes behave in an aggressive manner. The researchers did make a good argument that boys are generally rewarded for what we see as gender-typical behaviours. For example, being tough, competitive, bravery, the saying “boys don’t cry”, etc. So, in a sense, heroes in violent video games engender both similarity and wishful identification since they display manly characteristics. This is relevant for adolescents who are searching an identity.

So what makes video games different from television and other media, well first the player plays the protagonist him/herself. In my opinion depending on game’s narrative, a player may either go through the story linearly and the character will develop accordingly without much player input. Or the game is open-ended, like Grand Theft Auto, where the player while may identify the character, but player has input into the character’s development. Say a criminal becomes reformed thanks to the player’s actions and vice versa. But this is my opinion.

According to the researchers, there are characteristics as the level of identification one may develop: violence and realism. Violence because being aggressive is what men are like, right? As they pointed out in their paper, “real men are not sissies”. Realism, unless you have lost your sense of reality, is where you know that being Master Chief of Halo is impossible because he’s a fantasy superhuman, while being a member of a SWAT team or the tragic Max Payne is something possible and easier to relate to. So, in a sense, what determines realism isn’t solely graphics, but that these heroes are believable and possible. Although the researchers believed graphics to be a key to realism and immersion, therefore wishful identification, but I don’t buy it with my earlier reasoning.

Other factors included are player traits like aggressiveness and sensation seeking. I guess activities that satisfy these traits attract people to them and video games are one of them and would likely generate identification.