‘Men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross’: Gender differences in shared-religion bias in identifying with fictional characters

This experimental research investigated if men and/or women have an own-religion bias in their strength
of identification with fictional characters. Past research on this topic in psychology, literary studies, and
game studies is limited and the expectations from identity theory are unclear. A hypertext fiction story
game was used as an experimental stimulus, slightly modified for different participant groups. Almost 400
participants took part and ANOVA analysis carried out. The novel surprising results found no strong
evidence of own-religion bias in identification for either gender but did produce good evidence of gender
bias in identification. This reveals new complexities in identification research and suggests models from
social identity theory may not generalise to identification, with practical application for informing literary
creation.