Journal publishes study on idealized video game characters
Doctoral students Nicholas Matthews and Teresa Lynch and assistant professor Nicole Martins are co-authors of “Real Ideal: Investigating How Ideal and Hyper-ideal Video Game Bodies Affect Men and Women,” published in the June issue of the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
The study examines how the hyper-muscular male and hyper-sexualized female characters within video games affect both women’s and men’s body image dissatisfaction using social comparison theory. The researchers concluded that idealized bodies reduced image dissatisfaction for women but increased dissatisfaction in men.
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