To be perfectly honest, I had a hard time figuring out Second Life. I had never used it before, or anything else where you could make your own avatar. I couldn’t figure out how to change my avatar besides the initial one we could choose, so I’m not sure how my interactions in Second Life would have been different had I been able to figure it out. Also, my computer was going ridiculously slow when I had Second Life open, so I was getting really frustrated when I tried to do something and it happened about an hour later. However, I thought the avatar I initially chose was pretty attractive, (the girl next door) but most of my interactions were not in line with what Yee and Bailenson (2007) found in their study.
Yee and Bailenson found that if you had a more attractive avatar, you were more likely to approach others and there was more self-disclosure between attractive avatars. First of all, I didn’t approach anyone because I trying to figure out what I was doing, but a couple of male avatars approached me. However, because I was getting really frustrated with my computer and with Second Life, I was not in the mood for very much self-disclosing, and wasn’t as friendly as Yee and Bailenson would have predicted, and the Proteus Effect and Behavioral Conformation did not affect how I acted.
Although in my case, I didn’t see any evidence of the Proteus Effect or Behavioral Confirmation, I realize this was largely due the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. My confusion and frustration overrode any desire I might have had to be friendly. I wouldn’t be surprised if people who had experience using Second Life or other online video games had results that were more along the lines of what Yee and Bailenson found.
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-my-second-life.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-i-like-my-first-life.html
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4 comments:
I had much the same experience as did you in Second Life. It was very difficult for me to load Second Life, and once it did load it kept freezing; so I definitely understand your frustration with beginning the game. Your situation certainly did not make for the ideal conditions to test Yee and Bailenson’s Proteus Effect as you point out in your response. Even if you had not experienced such confusion, I think that if you were anything like me, you probably still would have had a somewhat difficult time confirming the Proteus Effect with your Second Life interactions. This is what happened to me, as I felt that I was purposefully adjusting the majority of my interactions to increase interpersonal distance and self-disclosure because my avatar was more attractive. I think that this is likely to have occurred for many people completing this assignment because most of us read the Yee and Bailenson findings before approaching our avatar interactions on Second Life.
Anne-
I can tense your frustration solely by the wording of your blog entry! I completely understand how you felt as I experienced similar difficulties and had also never experienced an online game in which you had to use avatars. After first signing up online then downloading the program onto my computer, I found myself trying to log into the program for about thirty minutes. Eventually I had to uninstall it then reinstall the program and it finally worked. I think that Yee and Bailenson did not take this into account when conducting their study and if they had, they may have gotten different results. However, I do feel that your experience did support a part of Yee and Bailenson’s findings in that several men approached your attractive avatar thus conforming to a behavioral confirmation. None of them knew about your frustrations as detailed expressions are hard to portray in CMC but they approached you nonetheless. Since the men probably viewed you as attractive, they figured you were also friendly so they then approached you. I agree with you that you did not personally fulfill the Proteus effect due to your frustrations.
Hi Anne. I really enjoyed reading your blog. I completely understand where you come from by being frustrated and confused playing Second Life. I think not knowing how to do anything affects how you interacted with other avatars, no matter how attractive or unattractive your avatar is. This exact situation happened to me as well. I had never played Second Life and had no idea what I was doing. I also agree with your point that if someone knew what they were doing, they would fit more into the lines of Yee and Bailenson paper.
Hi Anne,
What stinks about online games is that when you finally have the game installed onto your computer, you may frequently experience problems running the program. Online games such as Second Life, tend to slow down your computer and in many cases will not allow multiple programs to be open or your computer freezes as a result. I realize that as a beginner it is hard to start playing online games without any previous knowledge of using it. Due to your experience just in starting your "Second Life," it was hard for you to relate to Yee and Bailenson's study.
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