Virtual environments like online videogames offer increasingly more people the opportunity to socialize purely within the digital plane. These interactions, often done through customizable avatars, have brought about the concept of the "virtual-self," understood as the multiple identities that can be expressed in virtual environments. This can take many forms and fulfill different psychological roles, from portraying the individual's ideal-self to allowing them to explore what it feels like to be someone completely different. In this study, we used a constructivist perspective to put forward a typology of the different ways in which players construe their virtual identities in online videogames. We administered the repertory grid technique to 202 online videogame players to measure their perceived discrepancies between their actual-self (how they see themselves), ideal-self (how they wish to be), and virtual-self (how they see their main character in a game of their choice). After conducting a cluster analysis, we found three main patterns of virtual-self construal. The projection-type, where players with a high actual-ideal discrepancy created a virtual character resembling their ideal-self; the exploration-type, where players with a lower actual-ideal discrepancy tended to create a character that was different from both their actual and ideal selves; and the proximal-type, where players created characters that were similar to their actual-self. This typology can be a useful resource for any videogame research that wishes to include an identity perspective, as well as in the diagnosis and treatment of internet gaming disorder.

中文翻译：

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屏幕内的我是谁？多人在线视频游戏中虚拟身份的构建及其心理功能。


在线视频游戏等虚拟环境为越来越多的人提供了纯粹在数字层面内进行社交的机会。这些交互通常通过可定制的化身完成，带来了“虚拟自我”的概念，被理解为可以在虚拟环境中表达的多重身份。这可以采取多种形式并扮演不同的心理角色，从描绘个人的理想自我到让他们探索成为完全不同的人的感觉。在这项研究中，我们使用建构主义的观点提出了玩家在在线视频游戏中解释其虚拟身份的不同方式的类型学。我们对 202 名在线视频游戏玩家实施了剧目网格技术，以衡量他们感知到的真实自我（他们如何看待自己）、理想自我（他们希望如何成为）和虚拟自我（他们如何在自己选择的游戏中看待主角）之间的差异。在进行聚类分析后，我们发现了虚拟自我解释的三种主要模式。投影型，实际与理想差异较大的玩家创造了一个类似于他们理想自我的虚拟角色;探索型，实际与理想差异较小的玩家倾向于创造一个与他们的实际自我和理想自我不同的角色;以及 proximal-type，玩家创建与真实自我相似的角色。这种类型学对于任何希望包含身份视角的电子游戏研究以及互联网游戏障碍的诊断和治疗来说都是一个有用的资源。