Intimidating or Friendly? How Players Represent Themselves With Character Appearances That Reflect Their Social Motivations

Games often allow players to customize their virtual representations, and players tend to restrict themselves to appearances that are considered socially acceptable. However, there are different ideas of what a desirable appearance is (e.g., strong versus cute) and different players have different preferences. Through two studies, we explore the link between self-reported motivations (i.e., explicit motives—affiliation, power, and achievement) and the desirability of various appearance attributes. The affiliation motive is associated with striving for approachable appearances, such as characters with friendly facial expressions. The power motive predicts the goal to create strong, mighty, and less approachable appearances, and achievement-motivated individuals are more likely to seek out unremarkable appearances. Affiliation-motivation positively predicted time spent in character customization and creating characters in line with beauty standards (i.e., thin characters). We further observe that certain players are influenced by character appearance when making playstyle decisions. The results indicate that appearance preferences are diverse but not random and that players are more likely to pick avatars and playstyles that communicate their social motivations to other players. Theoretical explanations from the perspective of Motive-Disposition-Theory are discussed.