Assignment #10: My Second Life

In Yee & Bailenson’s paper; “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior” the authors attempt to solve the question “As we change our self-representations, do our self-representations change our behavior in turn?” Through the use of Second Life, I decided to create an avatar, and after exploring the game for about an hour, analyze whether or not my experience with the game was consistent with Yee & Bailenson’s hypothesis that our self-representations change our behavior.

The first thing you do when you open up a Second Life account is choose a name. When I first had to choose a name I was surprised that there were only a certain amount of last names one could choose, you couldn’t use a made up last name, which surprised me. I went with Bethesda Ballyhoo, just because it sounded awesome. I think it might have female connotations, but I liked the name. I then had to choose a base avatar, in which I chose the boy next door avatar. After a few more steps, I was finally registered and ready to jump into my second life. The first thing that caught me by surprise was that when I was asked to type in my name and password, rather than it being my real name which I registered with, I had to use my avatar name, which caught me off guard. I completed my tutorial and began to play!

As I entered the game I was surprised by how complex the controls were, there were buttons to teleport, change clothes, talk, walk, fly, and lots of other actions to get used to. In the tutorial I had learned how to use a torch, but it took me almost five minutes to put it away. I began by flying, because let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to fly around every once and a while. Following the joy of my first flight, I began to try to walk around and interact with other members of the community; however the tasked proved much harder than I had imagined. I walked up to several members and greeted them with a cheery “Hi!” or “Hello!” unfortunately I didn’t receive any responses or have any conversations with other members on Second Life. Another thing of note during my second life experience was the over sexuality of the system. Most avatars were either scantily clad women, or attractive men, but I came into the game expecting this, however what I didn’t expect was the over sexual advertisements in the game, you could purchase underwear, lingerie, and even genitalia for your avatar.

I feel my actions in Second Life were affected by the avatar that I chose, and that this would fall under the hyperpersonal model. While I was in Second Life, my avatar was slim and attractive, giving me some sort of “confidence” in my own behavior to walk up to any avatar in the game and say hi. This type of activity would fall under behavioral confirmation. While some may disagree, stating that behavioral confirmation would only occur after I talked with other people, I feel that even though I didn’t get a chance to interact with others in the community, the sheer fact that I felt able to walk up to any of the other avatars shows that I had become more confident through my avatar. This action can lead to hyperpersonal attributes, as I would begin to exude my confidence outward, and then it would intensify through behavioral confirmation. In Yee & Bailenson’s study, they look at the relationship between attractiveness of an avatar, and self-disclosure. I feel my actions would confirm their study, as due to the attractiveness of my avatar, I was more likely to contact other avatars and attempt to begin to have a conversation with them. Overall, Second Life was not only a lot of fun, but an eye opening experience into the world of avatars computer mediated communication.

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