Personality and behavior in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game

•World of Warcraft players completed measures of personality and in-game behaviors.•Six components were extracted from the self-report in-game behavior questionnaire.•All six in-game behavior components were correlated with personality traits.•Player-versus-Player behaviors were negatively related to Honesty–Humility.•Immersion behaviors were positively related to Openness to Experience.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) present new and important opportunities for studying the connections between personality and behavior. Players of the MMORPG World of Warcraft were surveyed on their personalities and frequency of different behaviors within the game. An exploratory principal components analysis of a World of Warcraft in-game behavior survey revealed six components: Player-versus-Player, Social Player-versus-Environment, Working, Helping, Immersion, and Core Content. Significant correlations with HEXACO personality traits were found for each component. Player-versus-Player activities were primarily related to low levels of Honesty-Humility and also to high levels of psychopathic traits. Social Player-versus-Environment activities were primarily positively correlated with Extraversion, Working activities were positively correlated with Conscientiousness, Helping and Immersion activities were positively correlated with Openness to Experience, and Core Content activities were positively correlated with Emotionality. The authors discuss the implications of these results for future research and game design.