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Sex Roles (2010) 62:721733 DOI 10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Keeping Abreast of Hypersexuality: A Video Game Character Content Analysis
Edward Downs & Stacy L. Smith
Published online: 2 September 2009# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract This study examined male and female sexuality in video game characters. The top 20, best selling console (Microsoft Xbox, Sony PlayStation2, and Nintendo Game-Cube) video games from the U.S. market for fiscal year 2003 were content analyzed. The 60 video games yielded a total of 489 separate characters with an identifiable sex for coding. Chi-square analyses indicated that female characters (n=70) were underrepresented in comparison to their male counterparts (n=419) as hypothesized. In comparison to male characters, females were significantly more likely to be shown partially nude, featured with an unrealistic body image, and depicted wearing sexually revealing clothing and inappropriate attire as also predicted. Implications for these findings are discussed using social cognitive theory as a theoretical anchor.
Keywords Video games . Sexuality. Content analysis . Social cognitive theory
Introduction
This content analysis set out to chronicle depictions of male and female characters sexuality in popular console video games. Just as with traditional media such as television,
movies, and print media, video game players may pick up cues from video game characters that create or strengthen cognitive scripts about gender roles and sexual objectification (for review, see American Psychological Association 2007). Because video games are an increasingly popular media pastime (Roberts et al. 1999; Kaiser Family Foundation 2002), it is important to know how male and female characters are portrayed. Social cognitive theory provides a theoretical grounding to understand how game players may learn sexual stereotypes through modeled behavior in video game play (Bandura 2002). In the present study, characters from 60 console video games were coded on a number of various overt sexuality variables, including; sexually revealing clothing, nudity, unrealistic body proportions, appropriateness of attire, breast size, and waist size. Frequencies were tallied and chi-square analyses were conducted to determine: (1) if male and female characters were equally represented in video games (2) if male and female characters were portrayed differently with respect to their sexuality (3) if the ESRB rating system adequately filtered out sexuality variables by rating and (4) whether or not sexual...