Yee and Bailenson (2007) note that there may be a “Proteus Effect” in online multiuser worlds, where people may act how they perceive others may wish them to act, or “in line with self-perception theory, they conform to the behavior that they believe others would expect them to have.” At first, with the default clothing and stationed on Orientation Island, I was reticent to contact others, and no one walked up to me to start a conversation with me. Soon, I learned to customize my clothing to make myself taller and with more handsome facial features; now, with my “best face forward,” I felt that I could make a more favorable impression on others and I became more outgoing. My own limited experience with Second Life confirms this aspect of Yee and Bailenson’s research.
They also argued that self-disclosure would increase if the character in Second Life looked more attractive, because we would possibly perceive the person behind the avatar to be more attractive. Unfortunately, one hour in Second Life was not enough time to test this aspect, since I was more focused on meeting different people and exploring the world instead of having conversations with increasing levels of self-disclosure. However, I did notice that people conversed for seemingly longer amounts of time with more attractive and more customized avatars, since such avatars usually appeared to have spent more time in Second Life. The avatars with the most customization and detail in their facial features, clothing, and accessories most likely purchased such items with Linden dollars (bought with real dollars). This may show to the other, more experienced members that the avatar is dedicated and has put his or her own (real!) money into improvements for their avatar.
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3 comments:
Hi Joe!
Great post! I do not know much about Second Life (as I seem to be one of the very few who didn't do SL or WoW) but your observation of the relationship between avatar attractiveness and conversation length seems very logical and expected. In a world where your appearance makes a stronger impression than anything else, it is unsurprising that the Proteus Effect takes hold in very obvious manners.
I also liked how you mentioned the phenomenon of paying for Linden Dollars with real money, it just goes to show that some people care so much about their online avatar that they are willing to trade real money for virtual vanity items.
Hey Joe,
Great Post! I especially liked the way you analyzed the social characteristics of a player based on how much time they spent tweaking their character’s appearance. I think this idea has a lot of truth to it. Players who spend lots of time creating their character’s appearance may have a certain confidence about themselves in the game world than a player who doesn’t put in as much effort. I would think that these players would want to show off their “creation” to the world and this would drive them to be more social and approachable. It was also interesting how you said you became more outgoing after further customizing your character in the game. It appears that your experience matched Yee and Bailenson’s description of the Proteus Effect in that your actions were affected by your in-game appearance. Anyway, I think you did a great job with your post!
Good post Joe. I think you may be on to something with the fact that people who have the most customizations seemed to have the most communication with others, too. I think there is a definite correlation between the "dedication" to the game and the amount of inter-player communication. Also, I agree that paying real money to get Linden Dollars seems like the craziest waste of money I've ever heard of. I remember looking at the Second Life website and seeing that you could rent a personal island for the small fee of $1,675. I'm sure whoever dishes out that money REALLY gets a lot out of the game.
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