Social identity and social norms among video game users

Abstract

Hundreds of millions of people play online and offline video games. It is important to clarify who we describe as video game users or gamers. Certain approaches everybody who plays video games can be described as a gamer. Behaviors and perceived norms of significant others influence people’s behavior, therefore it is important to explore how social influence impacts users in massively multiplayer online games. The goal of our study was to explore bullying-related norms and factors related to gamer identity. Four hundred fourty-nine video game users answered our online survey. Our results suggest that „gamers” spend more time playing, and they spend more on microtransactions. Norm exploration revealed that the behaviors used in this study are prevalent and important for the users, and pluralistic ignorance is present among gamers similarly to other contexts.