Skip to Content

Joystiq

NTU study on MMO gender selection to be published

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.]

Massively Features




Weekly Columns


Events Calendar

Name Date
Earthrise Launch Q2 2010
APB Launch Q2 2010

Massively Podcast

New episodes every Wednesday. Now playing:
Episode 87, for Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010.



Archive | RSS | iTunes | Zune

Our Writers

Elizabeth Harper

Editor-in-Chief

RSS Feed

Shawn Schuster

Managing Editor

RSS Feed

Dan O'Halloran

Features Editor

RSS Feed

View more Writers

Featured Galleries

One Shots
Champions Online: Revelation
LotRO Volume 3, Book 1 gallery
Star Trek Online Collector's Edition unboxing
Dungeon Fighter Online
Dungeons and Dragons Online Update 3
Runes of Magic: Demon Stronghold
Star Trek Online Character Creation
CES 2010: Lego Universe screenshots