Impulsivity and internet gaming disorder symptoms

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money usage afterwards. Sustainable usage did not have a statistically significant relationship with impulsivity, either.

A small subset of highly engaged players was extracted from the sample, those who had a) played through all the character routes and b) used money at least a few times being

categorised as highly engaged players. These players consisted of 20.5% (n=70) of players. In terms of money usage, they expectedly had used more money total (p=0.000, d=1.387) and their largest single-time purchase was bigger than that of non-hardcore players (p=0.000, d=1.207). They were also more likely to have used more money than initially planned

(p=0.049, d=0.291), though interestingly not in line with previous results that linked spending more money than planned and regretting money usage afterwards, highly engaged players did not report regretting their usage any more frequently than other players. Highly engaged players also did not have different IGD-20 or BIS-11 results compared to the other respondents, nor were they more likely to be of one gender, a certain age, have a certain relationship or employment status or to have different earnings when compared to the rest.

Overall, some evidence was found to support a relationship between spending behaviour in- game and symptoms of internet gaming disorder, namely with variables indicating

problematic usage. Those who reported having an instance of using more money than they meant to on the game, or regretting usage afterwards, as well as those who were unsure whether they had, had higher average IGD-20 and BIS-11 scores than those who reported not having such instances. These results, while interesting, were of relatively low impact with mostly small to medium effect sizes. Whom I categorised as highly engaged players did not seem to behave differently from the overall sample when it came to their IGD-20 and BIS-11 scores, though their spending habits differed somewhat with unsurprising differences

between hardcore players and the rest.

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Chart 8. Perceived impulsivity and IGD-20 scores.

Perceived impulsivity, however, had no statistically significant effect on whether the respondent has used money in-game, the total amount of money used or the largest single- time purchase. It did, however, have a relationship with whether the user has ever spent more money than expected (p=0.031) with the likelihood of answering “yes” rising the more impulsive the respondent viewed themselves to be, though no statistically significant differences were found between individual groups and the effect size was small (η²=0.051).

Perceived impulsivity, however, did not have a relationship to whether or not the respondent has regretted their usage afterwards. Likewise, perceived impulsivity had no relationship with the perceived sustainability of money use. It did, however, have a strong (p=0.000) statistical relationship to the BIS-11 score with a very large effect size (η²=0.538), suggesting that BIS- 11 measured what was in line with the respondents’ perception of what impulsivity is (see chart 9).

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Chart 9. Perceived impulsivity and BIS-11 scores.

When it came to correlation analysis, almost all tested variables correlated positively with each other, with statistically significant results, but the correlation strength and effect sizes were rather small. Overall, IGD-20 results correlated positively with BIS-11 scores (r=0.323).

While statistically significant (p=0.000), the correlation was small with a small effect size (r²=0.104) which would indicate that while a relationship can be established, the dependency is probably of very small importance. This relationship is illustrated in chart 10.

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Chart 10. Scatterplot depicting the relationship between IGD-20 and BIS-11 scores.

The relationship between the IGD-20 score and the three dimensions (motor, attentional and nonplanning) of BIS-11 tool was also measured. While most of the results had a statistically significant positive relationship, only one out of three of the dimensions between IGD-20 scores and BIS-11 broke the threshold of r=0.300, indicating at least a weak correlation. The relationship between IGD-20 total score and the attentional dimension of BIS-11 was weak but statistically significant (p=0.000, r=0.406) and had a moderate effect size (r²=0.165). All of the nine dimensions of internet gaming disorder symptoms (withdrawal, deception, escape, displacement, conflict, problems, tolerance, persistence and preoccupation) were tested against BIS-11 total scores. While all results were statistically significant with a positive r- value, none of them reached 0.300 to indicate at least a weak correlation.

Similarly, several dimensions of the BIS-11 and IGD-20 tools were cross-examined against each other in search of a correlation. However, these tests did not yield anything worth reporting. While these tests yielded some statistically significant results, their very low r- values mean that the relationship could not be considered even weak. As such, the importance of these findings must be labelled as non-existent, or at the very least, severely limited.

Overall, those who perceived themselves to be impulsive had higher IGD-20 scores on average, and their perceived impulsivity seemed to be in line with their BIS-11 scores,

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indicating BIS-11 measures what the respondents view as impulsivity. Perceived impulsivity, however, did not have much effect on the respondents’ usage of money in-game. Correlation analysis between IGD-20 and BIS-11 scores yielded few results with notable correlation. A weak positive correlation between IGD-20 and BIS-11 scores and a weak positive correlation between IGD-20 scores and the scores on the attentional dimension of BIS-11 was

established. The rest of the correlation analysis between subsections of both BIS-11 and IGD- 20 tools, while conducted, did not correlate strongly enough to be reported. Most scores had a statistically significant positive correlation, indicating that as the scores on one tool rise, so do the scores on the other, but aside from the results named, this relationship is of minor importance with r-values smaller than 0.300.

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