The Relationships of Cognition, Playfulness, Enjoyment and Identity Expression in Computer Gaming

Contributing to playfulness, enjoyment, cognitive and identity domains, the paper examines the role of need for cognition and playfulness towards the enjoyment and identity expressiveness. From a survey with 221 respondents, the result unveils that need for cognition (NFC) enhances the likelihood in experiencing playfulness in computer game. Experiencing playfulness then leads to encountering enjoyment, and subsequently enjoyment positively influences the likelihood of expressing both social identity and self-identity, especially for male. Hence, playfulness mediates NFC influencing enjoyment, and the path of playfulness and enjoyment mediates playfulness influencing expressing social identity and self-identity. The findings imply that the extent to which an individual gamer enjoy playing computer games will determine how likely they share their identity to their gaming peers.