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Preliminary Results of the 2019 Anime Survey
In the present paper we report preliminary results from the 2019 Anime Survey. The survey was conducted online, at AnimeFest (August 16-19, 2019) in Dallas, TX, and at Comic Con in London, ON (October 5-6, 2019). We are grateful to AnimeFest for hosting us and supporting this research project. Also, thank you to everyone who spread the word about the survey. A goal of these preliminary working papers is to provide the fandom with a brief overview of some of the basic findings. In the interest of keeping this short and interesting, we have gone through the results and found some of the most interesting and relevant findings for anime fans. Keep in mind that as the survey contained more than 200 questions, it would be impractical and unwieldy for us to write up every single finding here. Many of the findings not reported here will eventually be included in future papers. It is also worth noting that this 2019 survey is part of a larger, ongoing, multi-fandom project and we hope to be able to eventually compare these findings to findings from members of other fan groups!
Method and Participants
Paper-and-pencil surveys were handed out to anime fans at AnimeFest in Dallas, TX and at Comic Con in London, ON. At the same time, we posted this survey online and solicited volunteers from various anime-related websites. After removing participants that did not complete a majority of questions, the present data includes 448 participants from AnimeFest, 270 from Comic Con, and 301 respondents from online (N = 1019, 56.5% male, Mage = 26.79, SD = 8.08). Similar to prior years, the majority of respondents were from the United States (59.8%). However, we received responses from 43 different countries including Canada (28.6%), Germany (1.6%), and the UK (1%).
Preliminary Results
1. What are fans’ sex, gender, and sexual orientation?
Anime fans were asked to self-identify with any of the below categories. They could select all that they felt applied. Included are results from the prior year for comparison.
We also asked about sexual orientation. Participants were asked to pick the option that best describes them.
2. How many anime conventions have fans attended?
A minority of fans (13.8%) have never attended an anime convention. Participants completing the survey at a convention were instructed to answer “1” if this was their first convention. The results suggest that 14.1% of participants were completing the survey while attending their first convention.
3. What is the education level of anime fans?
As shown below, the majority of fans are either in college or have completed some form of higher education.
4. What is the socioeconomic status of anime fans?
We asked participants to indicate on a visual image of a ladder (see below) where they would fall relative to other people in their country with respect to socioeconomic status. The bottom are the people who are the worst off – who have the least money, least education, and the least respected jobs or no job at all. Being higher up on the ladder means being closer to the people at the top, while being lower means closer to the people at the bottom. The results suggest a relatively normal distribution, with most anime fans falling somewhere in the middle of the ladder.
5. Personality differences based on sample (i.e., con vs. online)?
Prior research (Ray et al., 2018: https://bit.ly/3a62k0g) showed that anime fans surveyed at a convention reported greater psychological well-being than those surveyed at home. We asked participants to complete the TIPI (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swan, 2003), a short measure of the “Big Five” personality dimensions (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). As shown below, participants sampled online reported significantly lower extraversion (“outgoingness”), agreeableness (“friendliness”), conscientiousness (being “organized” and a “thinker”), and openness (seeking out new experiences) than those sampled at a convention. The participants at AnimeFest and Comic Con did not differ from each other on these dimensions. When it came to emotional stability, the AnimeFest and online participants did not significantly differ, though they did score higher than Comic Con.
Rather than suggesting that people with a certain personality are more likely to attend a convention, one possible interpretation of these findings is that people attending a convention perceive (and rate) their personality differently. In other words, although anime fans tend to be introverted, when at a convention surrounded by like-minded fans they may feel less introverted. A longitudinal study would shed more light on this.
6. Is there a higher prevalence of autism in the anime fandom than in the general population?
We’ve addressed this question before (see Reysen et al., 2018: https://bit.ly/2xgZ6tR) where we found anime fans (2.7%) reported more diagnoses of people on the autism spectrum than one typically finds in the U.S. population (1.5%). Notably, bronies and furries also showed the same higher prevalence rate. In other words, this higher rate isn’t a unique feature of the anime fandom. In the present sample we asked about autism in two ways. When asked whether participants considered themselves to be on the autism spectrum, participants responded with either yes (12.4%), no (70.1%), or unsure (17.6%). When asked whether they have ever been formally diagnosed as being on the spectrum, the responses were yes (7.8%), no (88.1%), and unsure (4.1%). All of this data should be taken with a grain of salt, as it is based on participants self-reporting whether they have ever been diagnosed rather than relying directly on a clinician’s assessment.
7. How accepting is the community of LGBTQ+ individuals?
We asked participants to rate their perception that other anime fans have and that they themselves have being accepting or welcoming of LGBTQ+ people in the fandom (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). As shown below, the ratings for both perception of others and one’s own attitudes are above the midpoint of the scale (i.e., “4”). Thus, there is a general consensus that LGBTQ+ individuals are fairly welcome in the anime fandom. There is also a discrepancy between what people think other fans think and what their actual attitudes are. Or, to put it another way, the data suggest that anime fans are quite welcoming of LGBTQ+ people in the fandom but believe that other anime fans are less welcoming. This is an example of a phenomenon known as pluralistic ignorance.
8. To what extent do fans engage in positive and negative fantasies about anime?
People often have a tendency to assume that certain types of fantasies or certain fantasy activities are inherently unhealthy and troublesome based on the content or activity itself. More recent research suggests, however, that fantasizing is a healthy, normal, everyday occurrence for most people and can be healthy or unhealthy regardless of the content itself. Instead, researchers have argued that it’s less important to ask what people fantasize about or how they engage in fantasy and, instead, to ask to what extent the fantasy they do engage in tends to be excessive or cause problems in their lives.
To this end, participants rated four items assessing the extent to which fantasizing about anime is beneficial to them (e.g., “Fantasy activities involving anime content have had a positive effect on my life”) and four items assessing the extent to which fantasizing about anime has been a problem for them (e.g., “Fantasy activities involving anime content have been a source of a lot of problems in my life”; 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Fans in the present research indicated that fantasizing has a far more positive than negative impact on their life, with numbers largely mirroring those observed in other fandoms.
9. How frequently do fans fantasize about anime?
We asked fans how frequently they engaged in anime-related fantasy activities. As shown below, the responses are all over the board. Fans vary greatly in the frequency of fantasizing about anime – possibly as a product of different people having different definitions of what counts as an anime-related fantasy activity (e.g., “going to a convention” versus “drawing” or “viewing”).
10. Is frequency of consumption related to collectivism?
We assessed the frequency with which fans watch/read anime related material or consume news/reviews about anime (0 = never to 7 = many times each day) and compared it alongside measures of individualism (e.g., “I would rather make an important decision by myself than discuss it with my friends”) and collectivism (e.g., “I feel it is all right to depend on family and friends for many important things;” from 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree; Jetten et al., 2002). Anime fans reported slightly higher collectivism scores (M = 4.55, SD = 1.08) than individualism scores (M = 4.23, SD = 1.26). More importantly, watching anime (r = .05, p = .086) and reading news about anime (r = .03, p = .406) were not significantly related to individualism scores, but they were both significantly positively correlated with collectivism scores (rs = .11-.12, ps < .001). In other words, there is a small association between consuming anime related material and holding collectivist ideals.
11. How do anime fans feel about the fandom?
We included measures of private (e.g., “In general, I’m glad to be a member of the anime fan community”) and public (e.g., “In general, others respect the anime fan community that I am a member of”) collective self-esteem (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) on a 7-point response scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). Or, to put it another way, the extent to which people feel good about the groups they belong to and the extent to which the people think the public likes the groups they belong to. As shown below, fans tended to have greater private self-esteem regarding the fandom compared to public self-esteem. Prior research (Reysen & Shaw, 2016: http://fansconf.a-kon.com/dRuZ33A/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Sport-Default.pdf) showed that non-fans actually rated anime fans below the midpoint of a measure of prejudice, suggesting that the average person has a slightly unfavorable view of the fandom. The present results suggest that anime fans may recognize and accept at least some of the stigma directed at their group, though they may nevertheless overestimate the public’s positivity (or at least neutrality) toward anime fans. That said, fans feel a sense of self-esteem, privately, from being in the fandom.
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