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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 27, 2025

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Online Gamers

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Online Gamers

Published on: November 9, 2019

Proteus Effect Profiles: how Do they Relate with Disordered Gaming Behaviours?

Vasileios Stavropoulos¹, Halley M Pontes^2,3, Rapson Gomez⁴

¹Victoria University, Footscray, Australia. vasilisstavropoylos80@gmail.com.

The Psychiatric Quarterly

|March 7, 2020

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

The Proteus Effect (PE) describes how avatars influence gamers. This study identified three PE profiles, with one group showing increased gaming disorder behaviors linked to avatar influence on emotions and behavior.

Keywords:

Disordered gaming Gamer identity Gaming addiction Gaming disorder Gaming immersion IGD Proteus effect User-avatar bond

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Area of Science:

Psychology
Human-Computer Interaction
Game Studies

Background:

Gamers use avatars to represent themselves in virtual worlds.
The Proteus Effect (PE) links avatar characteristics to gamer behavior, potentially contributing to excessive gaming.
Distinct PE profiles and their relationship with disordered gaming remain underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

To identify distinct Proteus Effect profiles among World of Warcraft gamers.
To investigate the differential association of these profiles with gaming disorder behaviors.

Main Methods:

Assessed 1022 World of Warcraft gamers (mean age 28.60 years).
Utilized the Proteus Effect Scale (PES) to measure avatar influence.
Employed the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short-Form to assess gaming disorder behaviors.
Conducted latent class profiling to identify distinct PE groups.

Main Results:

Identified three PE classes: non-influenced-gamers (NIGs), perception-cognition-influenced-gamers (PCIGs), and emotion-behaviour-influenced-gamers (EBIGs).
NIGs showed minimal avatar influence. PCIGs reported perceptual avatar influence without emotional impact.
EBIGs exhibited significant emotional and behavioral avatar influence, with stable perception.
Gaming disorder behaviors were lowest in NIGs and progressively higher in PCIGs and EBIGs.

Conclusions:

Distinct Proteus Effect profiles exist among gamers.
The emotion-behaviour-influenced-gamers (EBIGs) profile is most strongly associated with increased gaming disorder behaviors.
Understanding these profiles can inform interventions for problematic gaming.