NTU study on MMO gender selection to be published

by Tateru Nino Mar 4th 2008 at 7:00AM

Filed under: Culture, News items, Comics, Roleplaying, Academic, Virtual worlds

The Inquirer is carrying news of a soon-to-be-published study by Nottingham Trent University called Gender Swapping and Socialising in Cyberspace, which is expected to be published in the US Journal Cyberpsychology and Behavior.

The study shows that women were more likely than men to select a male avatar, with half of men (54%) choosing female avatars, and 70% of women crossing the gender divide as male avatars.

The study explores the reasons given by participants for selecting avatars/characters across genders, and the differences between male and female motivations for selecting alternate genders.

[Thanks to Megatonik for catching this one as "Study says MMO players are gender-confused" - even though it actually never says anything like that. Thanks also to the Plywood Webcomic archives for the image.]

Tags: academic, comics, culture, cyberpsychology-and-behavior, gender, genderman, megatonik, nottingham-trent-university, plywood-webcomic, roleplaying, the-inquirer, virtual-worlds