Matthew Cerasia
Professor DeNigris
General Psychology
27 February 2018
Critical Thinking Essay 1
After reading through the articles in the Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, I chose
to review “A Literature Review on Video Games, Perception, & Identity” by Kathleen Falcon for this
assignment . In her article Falcon analyses the influence that video games can have on . However, this
article moves away from studying how video games can cause people to be more violent or aggressive as
that is one of the most popular topics in video game literature, and focuses on other themes in video game
research such as “attachment and empathy, identification, and gender roles and biases” (Falcon 1). In the
review Falcon begins by discussing how individuals playing video games can become attached to or even
empathize with the characters they control in game. Firstly she defines a video game avatar as a “in-game
representation of the player” (Falcon 1), and points to a 2012 study by Coulson, Barnett, Ferguson &
Gould that examined how a virtual character's attributes such as physical appearance, sociability, and
overall usefulness in game can create the opportunity for “genuine attachment between a player and
virtual characters” (Falcon 1). Flacon later goes onto describe how these three attributes leads to empathy
between the avatar and player can cause the player to feel as if the accomplishments made by the
character in game may cause similar feelings of accomplishment in the real world.
In the following sections of her review, Falcon analyses videos games’ influence on individual
identification and gender roles and biases. She begins by citing a 2014 study that stated “Online video
game environments can often become the breeding grounds for a person to create a new social identity”
(Gabbiadini, Mari, Volpato, & Grazia Monaci, 2014). It is explained that in video games, because it is not
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the real world and players do not know entirely who they are playing with or because the video game
environment is much different from the real world that “a person may be shy and reserved in their daily
lives, but in the online game environment, they could be boisterous and energetic” (Falcon 2). The article
continues by stating how different types of games, competitive/noncompetitive, single, or multiplayer
player games all can affect how players identify with themselves or their in game characters. In her final
topic Falcon discusses gender biases and sex roles in video games, focusing on how female characters and
presented and treated in video games. Falcon points out that female characters in video games have a
“low amount of clothing being worn compared to their male counterparts” (Falcon 4), which expresses
the sexualization of these characters in game compared to male characters. She also addresses how it is
far more common for a male character to be displayed on the cover of games and as the main character of
a game compared to fem...
