Generally, the study finds that players grow attached to NPCs and develop feelings for them which they express in a variety of ways--nothing we, as players of games, don't already know, but perhaps stated with a bit more specificity. I am not making the stereotypical "I didn't need a study to tell me that" complaint--just commenting on how interesting the study might be to the average reader. There's little or nothing surprising, here, but it's still worthwhile to do the research and get some results we can refer to.

One somewhat more interesting observation:

It would be good to explore this a little more. Is it, as the authors speculate, due to a difference in the way men and women (who are statistically more likely to choose a male or female Shepard, respectively, and so are more likely to be commenting on Tali or Garrus, respectively) approach games? Or could it be merely an artifact of the writing? Or, perhaps an artifact of the voice acting--I felt that Jennifer Hale's voice acting made Shepard feel much more like a distinct individual than Mark Meer's. It would be useful to know whether the difference is due only to some specific feature of the games in question, whatever that feature may be, or if it points to something more general.