Avatars and Personality

An article from the Huffington Post titled "Know Thy Avatar: Good and Evil in the Gaming World" described the experimental findings of psychological scientists Gunwoo Yoon and Patrick Vargasat on the subject of how games affect personality in real life. Volunteers were asked to play a game, each a different role (heroic or villian) for 5 minutes. Then they proceeded to eat and serve either spicy of sweet foods to the other volunteers. The test itself seems too shallow to actually give a semi accurate outcome whether or not immersion on games affects real life personalities.

However, the topic itself is an interesting one to study.  Does playing a certain type of character affect how a person is in real life?  I've personally seen the effect on children and immature adults.  I remember specifically an embarrassing moment in my childhood when I just finished watching Hercules in theaters.  After the movie ended, I told my mom "I feel like I'm dead", referring to how a majority of the story had to do with mortality.  Along the same line, I read a comment regarding someone's reaction to seeing the movie Frozen, where the viewer just walked outside of the theater.  The parent told her to put on a jacket.  The girl proceeded with one of the lines "The cold never bothered me anyway!" and turned her back to the family.  Although these are movie examples, it expresses how immersion can make people feel like one with the movie.

I can see this being a problem with children being exposed to violent games, but only very young children and gullible adults.  I say this because those are the very impression-able people.  I believe that in games that involve the player to pick their own character/personality generally choose a morally good persona.  This is more likely because this character represents themselves.  Although it is easy to make a fake character for yourself, it's still you behind it all.  If anything the new character brings out the best in people because the character is a display of what the player wishes they looked like, or rather personifies their actual personality, making them feel more confident.  This seems to be the case in the MMOs I've played anyways.