Can Our Avatars Change Our Behaviour Outside The Virtual World?

There’s an interesting article over at The Wall Street Journal : Practice Personalities: What an Avatar Can Teach You. The article by Robert Lee Holz highlights research from the likes of Stanford University to suggest that not only can our avatars and inworld interactions change the way we behave, they can also be used to change the way we behave via role-playing in areas such as corporate diversity :

As digital experiments in identity, our personal avatars mingle real and virtual worlds in ways that scientists are only beginning to analyze. While data is scarce, emerging technology such as 3-D virtual reality goggles and more immersive computerized experiences promise to make avatars more common. Scientists and psychologists are finding new uses for avatars, including role-playing for corporate diversity training, for business conferences and for teaching.

I’ve seen this discussed before but there is a theory that people often create an extension of themselves when they create an avatar for a virtual world or game experience and that in many ways the customisation choices available reveal far more about a person that they realise. I’m not 100% sold on this theory as I’m often a Dwarf, Drow or Wizard. I would also like to be an Orc … actually some of the powers of those characters would be beneficial outside the virtual world, maybe they’re on to something :

American Scientific Blogger Jennifer Ouellette is quoted as saying :

Your brain will start to incorporate your avatar into your sense of self, the more strongly you bond with that avatar, the more it will impact your behavior in the real world.

Jennifer is very familiar with Second Life and is involved with Virtually Speaking Science, a podcast that takes place in Second Life. I’ve covered Virtually Speaking Science a couple of times.

The blurred lines between the virtual world and real world are likely to become even more blurry as virtual reality becomes even more immersive. Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory at Stanford University is quoted as saying :

When you see another avatar, you get the same psychological response as you would when you see a real person face-to-face. There is good reason to believe that our avatars change how we interact with others.

I’ve covered Jeremy’s views before too, mostly with regards to High Fidelity and how facial expressions can make the virtual world experience feel even more real.

Katrina Fong a psychology researcher at York University in Toronto is quoted as saying :

The perception of the avatar is a sum of impressions, rather than the individual items. As more things move into virtual environments, it will become more important to understand how we are perceived.

Umm I’ve covered Katrina Fong’s work before too, that was with regards to diversity in virtual worlds. Ok let’s turn to Nick Yee, a research scientist at Ubisoft whose work I can’t recall covering ….

We have seen over and over again that when you give people bodies [online], they care a great deal about how they look.

So it looks as if a lot of people care about how they are perceived and as we get more immersive, how we are perceived may well become more important. However surely a worry is that as we become more immersive, we will start to act more like ourselves and bring bad traits to our avatars, rather than bringing good traits from our avatars to ourselves outside the virtual environment. The researchers may need to keep an eye on that.

One would hope that good use of avatars to improve human behaviour will prevail, rather than the very sorry state of Social Networking where far too many people display repugnant behaviour in their interactions. Let’s hope that avatars win the battle of hearts and minds.

The article is a good read, there’s also a video version of the article. Interesting stuff.

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