Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not: The impact of the quantity of identities in identifying with fictional characters

Recent experimental research has found surprising findings of identification with fictional characters. While these findings are looking at how identification functions with different identities are interesting, it does not explore the effect of the quantity (rather than specific quality) of the fictional character's identities. This experimental research investigated if participants identified more strongly with a shallow fictional character or a richly defined one. The outcomes of the limited past research in this area are inconsistent with each other. Two hypertext fiction story games were used as an experimental stimulus, slightly modified for different participant groups. Almost 230 participants took part, and repeated measures ANOVA analysis was carried out. The novel results found good evidence that readers identify more with richly redefined characters. This has practical application for informing literary creation and challenges existing computer game design rhetoric. The lower identification of other/non-binary participants merits further study, but it may be practically challenging to recruit a sufficiently large number of participants.