Assignment 10: The Proteus Effect on Second Life

There are constantly new opportunities for social interaction on the internet. With each the advent of new cyber space comes new ways to interact with people and patterns of behavior to examine. The phenomenon of behavioral confirmation, behaving in a way that confirms people’s expectations of a person (Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid, 1977) has been applied to many psychological situations. As virtual environments became popular and people were able to create representation of themselves online in the form of avatars, certain new ways of applying behavioral confirmation can be seen. The Proteus Effect attempts to explain how an “individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them” (Yee & Bailenson, 2007).

I chose to explore the virtual environment Second Life, an internet space where one can create an avatar, interact with other people’s avatars online, chat with people, and perform other actions within the virtual space. In Second Life, a person can control nearly every aspect of their avatar’s appearance—from the size of the space between his/her teeth, to height of their socks. I chose to create the avatar named Allegra Compton and dressed her in a very short mini skirt and tight shirt. I gave her long bleach-blonde hair and overall attractive facial features. Once I entered Second Life and began wandering around Orientation Island (where most avatars begin to learn Second Life techniques) I noticed that most of the avatars on the island I considered to be attractive as well.

Within the first few minute of my time on Orientation Island I walked directly up to several of the other people there and said hello. After discovering the “flying” feature on Second Life, I flew to a more removed part of the island and found a male avatar there who appeared to be doing something with a large balloon. I landed from my flight and went over to him and said “hi, I’m new here…what are you doing?” He replied “trying to find monies” and quickly walked away from me, clearly preoccupied.
I also decided to use the search feature to look for places to go where I might find other avatars that looked like my own. Then I teleported myself to a clothing store that had clothes for only the most beautiful avatars.

I do think my behavior as an avatar displayed the Proteus Effect. My willingness to walk right up to avatars and say hello is related to Yee & Bailenson’s first hypothesis in their paper, which says that attractive avatars walked closer to other avatars than did unattractive avatars. It is most apparent in the fact that I felt as if I could walk up to another avatar that was clearly preoccupied and not looking to chat. I was confident enough in my avatar’s appearance not to care what he did.

My action in teleporting to the clothing store also exhibits a facet of the Proteus Effect. Although the Proteus Effect is related to SIDE theory, the Proteus Effect emphasizes the fact that certain behaviors would exist even when my avatar was alone, whereas SIDE theory emphasized the presence of a group’s social norms affecting behavior. When I teleported to the clothing store, I did not know what kind of people would be there, or if I would find any people there. Yet, I still behaved as the attractive avatar I was.

I think it is also worthy to note the implications behind the fact that I chose to be an attractive avatar in the first place. I was excited at the prospect of exploring Second Life and I wanted to interact with several other people in this virtual environment. I figured that the best way to do so was to create an attractive avatar. This focuses in on a major difference between my experience on Second Life and the experience of the participants in Yee and Bailensen’s study. I was able to choose my avatar’s appearance, whereas Yee and Bailensen’s participants were not. This difference aside, I do think that the Proteus Effect was present in my behavior here.