10 - Plastic People in a Plastic World

François Duc de La Rochefoucauld said, “We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.” This I feel is the most attractive quality of computer-based multi-player games in a virtual space offer: a way to escape from yourself and be someone else. If you remember my first post on this blog, when I was a little girl, I used to tell strangers my name was Becky and I always dreamed of having long, brown straight hair. In second life, my childhood dreams finally came true. Second life describes itself as being all about personal expression and having the opportunity to create an avatar which is “the most personal expression of all because it “is your persona in the virtual world” (secondlife.com/whatis). It gives people the chance to finally have that perfect nose, that six pack, or maybe finally become 6 inches taller.

Unfortunately, this plasticity of self-representation works both ways. Yee and Bailenson (2007) reflect on a number of great points and observations in their article. For instance, their comments about how computer-mediated communication lacks social cues and presence making the social environment an impoverished one. They also point out how relationships develop slower online and that people take part in behavioral confirmation and react to the expectations other people have for them. However, it was their conclusions regarding how our avatars affect our behavior and makes up for these poor environments that are particularly interesting. Their findings supported the Proteus effect, which said that our self-representations shape our behaviors. For instance, the more attractive the avatar, the more likely they were to approach people of the opposite gender, just like the taller the person, the more dominant the person acted.

Yet, what I found from my experience was that even though these avatars reveal an identity cue in this environment that has never existed before, its effect on behavioral confirmation and the rate of relationship formation is biased on the physical appearance of the avatar. This is obvious just by looking at the fact that you can change everything about your avatar at any time, even what kind of underwear it’s wearing. Why would they go to so much trouble allowing you to change every little thing about something that was not so important? Also, I found that relationships did not necessarily form faster in general, they just moved faster in particular directions than they would have. For instance, the prettier girl was more likely to be more physically revealing and act more sexually just like the guy going up to the pretty girl is going to act more charming and charismatic.

Overall, what we don’t realize is that you can’t separate it. You don’t want to become your avatar without keeping who you are, and the fact of the matter is that you can’t have it both ways. These virtual lives aren’t about substance, they are worlds on a plastic screen, and therefore, are only plastic at best.