“My avatar behaves well and this feels right”: Ideal and ought selves in video gaming

Prosocial and violent games were investigated in relation to empathy with avatars and amount of postgame donation. Participants who played a prosocial game demonstrated greater empathy, while those who played a violent game said they would donate a greater amount of money. Flow was found to be a function of the 3-way interaction between game type, self-perception, and regulatory focus. Higgins’s (1987) regulatory focus and self-discrepancy (1997) theories are used to explain the underlying theoretical mechanisms behind these results