Choosing My Avatar & the Psychology of Virtual Worlds: What Matters? (original) (raw)
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Avatar creation in virtual worlds: Behaviors and motivations
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights a b s t r a c t Avatar creation has become common for people to participate and interact in virtual worlds. Using an online survey (N = 244), we investigated both the behavioral characteristics and major motivations for avatar creation in virtual worlds. Our results suggest that a majority of the participants had multiple ava-tars; these avatars' appearance did not merely resemble the human players; and their personality did not necessarily mirror the player's real personality. Furthermore, participants on average spent over 20 h per week and often interacting with others in the virtual worlds. Our exploratory factor analysis yielded four major motivations: virtual exploration, social navigation, contextual adaptation, and identity representation.
Avatars ’ Appearance and Social Behavior in Online Virtual Worlds
In this article, we investigate the effects of avatars' appearance on user social behavior in online virtual worlds. In particular, we study appearance differences in social communication preferences and behavior in virtual public spaces. For this purpose, we have employed virtual ethnographic methods, which is an adaptation of traditional ethnography for the study of cyberspace. We employed nine users who used four different avatars and we observed a cumulative of more than two hundreds social encounters. The results of the study indicate that avatars' appearance is an important factor in determining the social communication patterns between users in online 3D worlds. In particular, we found that users with more elaborate avatars had a higher success rate in their social encounters, than those users with the default avatars. The implications of this study raise several issues for the design of avatars, as well as for the study of social communication in online 3D worlds.
Body and mind: a study of avatar personalization in three virtual worlds
2009
An increasingly large number of users connect to virtual worlds on a regular basis to conduct activities ranging from gaming to business meetings. In all these worlds, users project themselves into the environment via an avatar: a 3D body which they control and whose appearance is often customizable. However, considering the prevalence of this form of embodiment, there is a surprising lack of data about how and why users customize their avatar, as well as how easy and satisfying the existing avatar creation tools are. In this paper, we report on a study investigating these issues through a questionnaire administered to more than a hundred users of three virtual worlds offering widely different avatar creation and customization systems (Maple Story, World of Warcraft, and Second Life). We illustrate the often-surprising choices users make when creating their digital representation and discuss the impact of our findings for the design of future avatar creation systems.
The sense of " being there " that Virtual Reality/Worlds may promote in users depends on multiple factors, one being the relationship between users and the digital figures representing their agency/identity in the simulation (i.e., avatars). Avatars offer innovative resources for psychological assessment, such as clues about users' self-conception. However, avatar customization may vary depending on the Virtual World context it has to enter. We hypothesize that users may have different attitudes towards avatars created for different contexts; feel more or less represented by different avatars; and that such difference may be influenced by sex, self-esteem (evaluation of one's own self) and self-curiosity (disposition/interest to increase knowledge about one's own inner world). 87 students (45 females) created two avatars to be used in two different virtual contexts (i.e., Leisure vs. Job) and then responded to questions regarding attitudes towards both their own avatars, namely Similarity to Self, to Ideal Self, Attractiveness, and Difficulty in Customization. Moreover, they filled in validated questionnaires on self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale) and self-curiosity (Self-Curiosity Attitude-Interest Scale). Results showed that Leisure-avatars were perceived easier to customize and more similar to self than Job-avatars. Analysis involving sex as another variable showed that this difference emerged in females specifically. Moreover, Leisure-avatars were also perceived more similar to ideal self than Job-avatars when controlling for self-curiosity. Discussion deals with implications for avatar assessment, in that attitudes towards avatars can be influenced by the virtual context, and by individual characteristics such as one's own disposition to understand him or herself.
Are You Your Avatar? Users' Perception Toward Their Avatars in The Sims Social Game
Pujo Sakti Nur Cahyo , 2021
This study aims to examine how people build their identity in virtual world and how they perceive their virtual identity through virtual interaction. By applying observation and interviews as method of data collection, this study found that people tend to create avatars that are different from their physical appearance in the real world. Their desire to create an ideal body is the main reason they construct their virtual identity. In addition, most users think that their virtual identity and virtual interaction has nothing to do with their real world.
International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences
This study investigated the worldview of a group of Malaysian higher education students, identified as SL1M residents, in the virtual world of Second Life over a period of more than two years, from 2012 to the present. Examining the representation of the participants' senses, thoughts, and actions via their avatars, the purpose of this study is to investigate the worldview elements that contribute to the behavior modeling from the virtual world that result in the development of the so-called ePersonality. Within an ethnographic framework, the study utilized Kozinet's model of Netnography to characterize the online communities and groups in the virtual world, where people are represented by avatars. Six active, closely knit, and devoted members of the SL1M group were selected based on two a priori criteria and interviewed online via the Second Life platform to capture data. Coding was necessary for an insightful analysis of the transcribed interview. The researcher utilized two distinct categorization procedures. First, the researcher coded each interview separately using seven columned templates, and then the data were coded using Atlas.ti to search for themes and sub-themes that were not captured by manual coding. This study's findings revealed that elements such as fantasized character, attractive appearance, personal intention, development of false identity, and dual personality, among others, contributed to the development of their ePersonality by modeling their virtual world behavior. The study highlights the need for additional research to ascertain the effect of virtual platforms on the development of alternative personalities among Malaysian college students.
The effects of Avatars’ Gender and Appearance on Social Behaviour in Virtual Worlds
2010
In this article, we investigate the effects of avatars' appearance on user sociability in virtual worlds. In particular, we study gender and appearance differences in social communication preferences and behavior in virtual worlds. For this purpose, we have employed the virtual ethnographic method, which is an adaptation of traditional ethnography for the study of cyberspace. Although we only employed nine users who used four different avatars, we observed a cumulative of more than two hundreds social encounters. We found that users with the more elaborate avatar had a higher response rate in their social encounters, than those users with the default avatar. Most notably, female users selected to speak with male avatars much more frequently, when using the attractive avatar, which indicates a self-confidence effect induced by the appearance of the personal avatar.