It's not only the game, it's also the player: The role of player personality in violent video game preference

In contrast to the effects of game content, violent video games have less been researched with regard to players' preferences for these games, and whether these preferences are related to certain personality characteristics. Using a novel brief and uni-dimensional self-report measure, the present research examined the role of personality factors and preferences for violent video games. A scale of five items was administrated in two studies that involved 292 and 180 respondents, respectively. The same scale with two additional items was presented to 190 respondents in the third study, which included measures revealed by prior research to be relevant for understanding violent video game motivation and preference. More specifically, we measured participants' trait aggression, the Dark Triad traits of psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. To test for the scale's discriminant validity, trait empathy was also included. In line with other findings in the literature (e.g., Greitemeyer, 2015), results obtained with the self-report measure indicated that players with a propensity for games featuring violent themes show callous, impulsive and exploitative attributes, whereas narcissism was not a significant predictor. However, and as already suggested by some authors (Hartmann, Möller, & Krause, 2014), a lack of empathy was found to predict violent game preferences. The present findings are important with regard to future research on video games that should focus more on the players and their gaming motivation than on the effects of playing alone.