Introduction:
Digital games are increasingly recognised as psychologically meaningful tools beyond entertainment. This study integrates clinical psychology and interactive media by exploring how video game character design may regulate state anxiety through the lens of Self-Discrepancy Theory (SDT).
Purpose:
This study aimed to investigate whether designing a video game character could reduce state anxiety by regulating self-discrepancies.
Method:
Ninety-four participants (aged 18-26) were randomly assigned to either an experimental group, where they created a character in Baldur's Gate 3, or a control group, where they played Sudoku. State and trait anxiety were assessed before and after the intervention using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and self-discrepancies (actual-ideal, actual-ought, actual-undesired) were measured using the Integrated Self-Discrepancy Index (ISDI).
Results:
Participants in the character design group showed a significant decrease in state anxiety compared to the control group. Regression analyses indicated that higher actual-ought self-discrepancies predicted greater reductions in anxiety within the experimental group. However, perceived similarity between the designed character and various self-representations did not significantly predict anxiety change.
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that video game character creation may offer a short-term emotional regulation mechanism for individuals experiencing self-discrepancies. Therefore, character design in video games may offer a novel, low-cost, and short-term digital intervention for anxiety regulation by engaging self-representational processes. These findings extend SDT into applied clinical contexts and highlight the psychological potential of interactive media, and invite further exploration into gamified therapeutic techniques.