Before this class, I had never heard of Second Life, so I was amazed by the options available in this virtual world. I chose to create an avatar of a promiscuously dressed female in the program Second Life. How exciting it was to alter the slightest features on my avatar, from the volume of her hair to the width of her neck. Initially Second Life reminded me of my Sim playing days when I would create families and build houses, but Second Life connects you with people from around the globe.
When designing my avatar, I was cognizant of the social implications of her mini skirt and tube top outfit. My purpose was partly to attract the attention of others and partly to experiment with a character different from myself. Back when I played the Sims, I had the same goals in mind when creating characters, but little did I realize how my choice of avatar influenced my behavior and the personality I assigned to the avatar. In an online virtual world, the choice of avatar becomes even more important as others will interact with your avatar according to level of attractiveness and perceived personality.
Yee and Bailenson in their article “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior” note that users conform to the stereotypes or expectations of their personally crafted avatar. As a promiscuously dressed female, I did adhere to the stereotype. I was quick to approach male participants in night-club environments. I knew that many of them would be receptive to my avatar, Sarah, because of her looks. People attribute good looks with other positive characteristics such as an outgoing nature and intelligence. Nonverbal expectancy violations theory implies that when good looking people overstep social boundaries such as maintaining personal space, a positive valence is created because the individual is attractive whereas a negative valence would be created if the individual were unattractive. Because of these blatant overattribution effects, people interpreted Sarah’s actions as confident as opposed to creepy.
Yee and Baileson state that since an avatar is the primary identity cue in an online environment, we can expect that the avatars influence how we behave and interact with others. Since all users are anonymous in Second Life, deindividuation or reduced social context cues give people more leeway in how they represent themselves. They feel free to express a distinctively different personality through their avatar because of the afforded anonymity of the online space. Combine this social freedom with pressure to conform to the behavior that the group environment expects of you, and the Proteus Effect is likely to emerge in online spaces such as Second Life. However, people will conform to the individual identity cues emitted by their avatar, even without the element of group pressure.
Self-perception theory states that we conform to the behaviors expected from our avatars not only because of group pressure but also because of the creator’s self-evaluation. The Proteus Effect takes place even when an individual is alone because we screen ourselves to make sure our character’s actions are in line with the perceived stereotypes attached to the character.
Although I did enjoy my experience as Sarah in Second Life, I doubt I will return to the virtual world. It was interesting to see the social implications of my promiscuous avatar design surface as more outgoing and aggressive personality traits. The Proteus Effect holds true in many aspects of Second Life because people try to idealize social interaction situations by conforming to social expectations of their characters.
Comments:
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10_13.html
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10_7261.html
No comments:
Post a Comment