Link to the paper: Researchgate.net/GirlsCantPlay
About authors:
Linda K. Kaye: PhD in Psychology, lecturer at Edge Hill University. She is currently Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Cyberpsychology Section. Her research specialism is in the area of cyberpsychology and social identity and stereotypes in digital gaming.
Charlotte R. Pennington: PhD, an experimental social psychologist and lecturer in Psychology at Aston University, Birmingham. Her research spans two broad themes: 1. Intergroup relations, including prejudice, discrimination, and social stereotyping and 2. Social context and alcohol consumption behaviours.
There was always something about the gaming community. It was charactarized as being male, undesirable, associated with a lower status. In 2009, within a sample of games, 40% did not include any female characters. The game culture stereotype was highly masculinized, full of violent content, sexualized gender stereotypes which are not popular themes amongst females. Women are also often perceived as passive, dependent on men and less competent in general. These may be the reasons why females were historically marginilized from the gaming community. The lower number of female gamers reinforce the males‘ perception and behaviour. Thus, the stereotype of „a woman equals a bad gamer“ was born. Could these stereotypes effect the actual females‘ gaming performance?
Stereotype threat and multiple social identities
In the study by Kaye and Pennington, they decided to find out, how the negative stereotype towards female gamers affects their performance, how to use a different social identity to reduce the effect, what is the implicit (sometimes unconscious) attitude of females and males towards gaming competence according to gender and if that attitude changes by reinforcing the negative stereotype.
Firstly, the authors established two terms to operate with. The ‚stereotype threat‘ refers to situations where someone’s worse performance is caused by a stereotyped attitude towards them. Then, individuals have a personal identity and a social identity which is tied to belonging in a valued group. It brings a heightened self-esteem which can bring better results. The positive social identity of female gamers can be threatened if compared to their male counterparts. What can help is to disassociate with the stigmatized group (of the ‚bad female players‘) and identify with a different, more neutral group (such as ‚gamers‘), using the „multiple social identities“ strategy.
Three control groups, three different conditions
60 females, mostly ‚casual gamers‘, were randomly and equally assigned to one of three groups. The first group was exposed to a stereotype threat condition by saying that „research has demonstrated that males are more competent in gaming than females“. They claimed then, the goal of the research was „whether males are more competent than females at all types of gaming“.
With the second group, they examined if an appropriation of a positive social identity can improve the gaming performance despite the stereotype threat. The group was told, „research has demonstrated that males are more competent in gaming than females, however, this negative stereotype does not apply to you. That is because you are an experienced game player, and as such, you are competent compared to those who do not play games“.
In the third group, 20 male participants were also included. This time, the instructions did not cover any negative stereotypes regarding gameplay competence, just claimed to be researching gameplay performance in a range of different populations.
All three groups were tasked to do three things: Firstly, fill out a questionnaire about social identity. Secondly, take the Implicit Association Test which can expose even unconscious associations towards a certain group – in this case, they were matching positive and negative attributes to ‚female online gamers‘ and ‚male online gamers‘. Thirdly, they had to play a 2D PC game which was designed specifically for this study. It was a “jump and run side-scroller” – the participants operated a penguin across a maze with a series of obstacles, and collected coins. The goal was to collect as many coins as possible within a time limit.
Houston, we have a problem – its name are stereotypes
Regarding the game performance, the results are showing that there was no significant difference between the performance of the the first group, where they emphasized the gender stereotype (men are better players than women), and the females from the group 3, where no gender stereotypes were mentioned. Also, male gamers outplayed both the group 1 and females from the group 3. On the other hand, the second group, where ‚multiple identities strategy‘ was applied („you are good gamers“), was more successful than group 1 and 3 and almost reached the levels of male performance. It is worth mentioning that 95% of female participants confirmed they were aware of the negative gender stereotype towards female gaming performance. That means, the group 3 could be also affected by the stereotype threat.
Talking about the implicit attitudes, overall, female participants from all 3 groups consider female gamers more competent than male gamers. On the other hand, male gamers consider themselves more competent than female gamers.
To summarize, if women already know about the negative stereotype towards female gamers, they don’t get worse, if someone else tells them there is a study that says that. But if you identify with another social group with higher level of competence (‚a good gamer‘), you can get better results. Also, women think women are better at gaming, men think men are better at gaming.
On a final note from a female online gamer
This is a very important issue in the game studies and gender studies. I have never understood why game industries have ignored the female audience for so long which resulted in fewer female gamers in the first place. I am a female online gamer and my teammates are always surprised that I am not a guy. Furthermore, I cannot stand sexism or jokes about sexual violence which is unfortunately a common practice in the online horror games community.
I believe, there is more and more research about female gamers and their situation in the game community. Moreover, the stereotype threat is a great method how to analyse negative stereotypes towards other marginalized groups. It is important to face the stereotypes we believe in and to start changing our attitude.
Written by Zuzana Šubrtová
Super Masaryk Bros and Sisters 