Non-Player Character Theory Shows How We Misunderstand Thinking

It is increasingly common in online communities to jokingly or insultingly refer to others as automated characters, like those in video games. This is a flawed and overly simplistic representation of people that is common both in pop culture and cognitive sciences.

How did we get here? The confluence of ideas in cognitive psychology, computing, and video games is fascinating and illuminates some fundamentally flawed ideas about cognition and human agency.

Popular Culture and New Media

Pop culture in the 21st century spans far more platforms and channels and blurs more boundaries than in the 20th century. We find representations of human characters far beyond traditional forms of media like films, television, radio, and novels. Today, popular culture spans a much broader range, including video games, sports, memes, social media, and even pornography. These forms of media shape how we understand ourselves and perceive others.

The video game concept of an NPC, or non-player character, has leapt from video game terminology to broader internet culture. In games, NPCs are predictable, pre-scripted characters that follow narrow and strict behavioral patterns without agency. Online, calling someone an NPC suggests they lack originality or independent thought, operating on autopilot.

We can understand the concept of NPCs as more than just an insult. It taps into deeper questions about human psychology, particularly the theory of mind: the ability to infer thoughts, emotions, and intentions in others.

Theory of Mind Distortions

• Main character syndrome reflects a self-centered theory of mind. It’s the tendency to view oneself as the protagonist of a grand narrative, where others exist primarily as supporting characters. This perception diminishes the complexity of other people’s lives and intentions, reducing them to roles that serve the main character’s story.
• NPC theory is another distorted theory of mind, imagining others as largely governed by automatic, unconscious processes while viewing the self as uniquely capable of active and deliberate decision-making: agentic for me, autonomic for thee. This view dismisses others’ inner complexity, casting them as little more than predictable, scripted actors in the observer’s world. Instead of being driven by the main character, others are seen to be governed (or manipulated) largely by broader cultural, political, or commercial forces.

Both concepts highlight how theory of mind can be warped by cultural narratives and psychological misconceptions. They oversimplify the messy, nuanced reality of human cognition, turning people into caricatures, as soulless NPCs or supporting characters in someone else’s drama.

These ideas can be traced to major psychological debates, controversies, and flawed research of recent decades.

From Priming to Nudging: How Social Psychology Lost the Plot

Some schools of psychological research have emphasized that much of human thought and behavior is governed by unconscious, autonomic processes that influence our actions without our awareness.

Influential and popularized studies on priming claimed that subtle cues could dramatically shape people’s behavior. For example, participants primed with words related to old age were said to walk more slowly afterward. The researchers concluded that words they thought to be associated with old age (like sentimental, rigid, and Florida) influenced behavior unconsciously.

Many of these studies failed under scrutiny, as subsequent research couldn’t replicate their findings. The replication crisis revealed that many iconic studies, including those on priming, were less valid and generalizable than initially believed. These flawed studies reinforce the idea that human behavior is predictable and externally controlled, which is a central assumption of NPC theory.

Despite flaws with priming research, the idea that people’s behavior is governed by autonomic processes has persisted and shaped popular understanding of how the mind works.

Concepts like nudge theory suggested that subtle changes in choice presentation could influence behavior without conscious decision-making. However, these ideas remain controversial, and large meta-analyses have found little evidence of the effectiveness in these subtle nudges influencing behavior.

This view of the mind as dominated by automatic processes persists, directly connecting to the NPC metaphor. If actions are seen as driven by external cues and preprogrammed routines, it’s easy to view others as walking algorithms. Other people’s cognition often gets compared to the sprites and daemons of video games.

Theory of Mind Essential Reads

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The Dead Internet Theory: Why Being Online Feels Empty

Priming studies and nudge theory share a common flaw: They overemphasize the unconscious, automatic aspects of human behavior. This mechanistic framing aligns with the NPC metaphor, reducing human agency to external programming.

The Brain Is Not a Computer

Another contested idea fuelling NPC theories of mind is the cybernetic view of the brain, which compares the mind to a computer running prewritten programs. While it may be interesting as a shorthand, this model poorly represents processes like memory and decision-making, processes that depend on attention, focus, and the limits of embodied experience and perception, which are fundamentally different from mechanical operations.

NPC theory requires a mechanistic view of the brain. Reduce cognition to programs governed by genetics, culture, media, or environment, and individuality and agency vanish.

Real-world cognition is far messier than these metaphors suggest. Human beings aren’t governed by simple cause-and-effect relationships or rigid programming. Even behaviors that seem automatic are embedded in a rich network of intentions, emotions, and social contexts.

Understanding Human Agency

The appeal of the NPC theory reveals a fundamental challenge in how we think about agency, consciousness, and human volition. On one hand, recognizing the automatic components of behavior has practical value. We breathe, digest, and blink without consciously thinking about it.

But, when overapplied, these ideas risk stripping people of their agency, reducing other people’s complex decision-making process into automated video game characters driven only by social, cultural, and commercial pressures.

Flawed psychological research hasn’t helped. Despite the replication crisis, shaky ideas from priming to nudge theory remain influential. Rather than expanding our understanding of the complexity of human cognition, some researchers cling to metaphors that reduce others to automated caricatures.

Other people aren’t running on autopilot as much as some commentators—and some psychologists—originally assumed.