Before taking this class, I had never even heard of Second Life. Finally having the motive to explore, I decided now was as good a time as any to see what all the hype was about.
I found that the avatar I created resembled and exaggerated many of my features in real life. My avatar was tall and blond, though I think I added a bit more to my height, just for fun. It took a bit of patience to get everything started, but once it began I had lots of help from others when I was able to socialize.
In the beginning I felt very confident. I had no hesitations talking to other people and even talking about myself, although I did not reveal that I was experimenting for a class. After a while, I began to wonder whether my height made a difference in the way I acted and presented myself online. I shrank my height to see if the Proteus Effect would have an impact on the way I talked in Second Life. Although the change was not significant, I noticed a bit more hesitation. In real life I am so used to being able to at least be eye level with most of my friends that looking up created a forfeiture of some of my confidence. My results did in fact represent the study of Yee & Bailenson
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4 comments:
Hey Jenny! Like you, I too had no experience with Second Life before this blogging assignment. I really think it's interesting that being significantly shorter than others within the virtual environment affected your confidence. I would imagine that this choice in avatar appearance would make initiating conversations with others much more difficult. How do you think other changes in your avatar would've affected your social interactions? What if you had looked drastically different than your real appearance, other than simply your height?
That's interesting. I too would feel somewhat weird if I were playing a game and I had to talk up to all the people around me. What's strange is that I'm short for most people (5'8") and in person, that makes me feel more confident when I talk to others. I usually feel really awkward when I have to talk to other people who aren't at the same level as I am. I think this is because of self-consciousness and how virtual spaces fail to emulate that. When we're living in a 2-dimensional world and looking at other characters, it's easy to dominate and see it happening. For me at least, in person, I think it's kind of weird when I'm in a dominant position talking to people.
I prefer equality in that scenario.
-smiley face-
Jenny,
This was my first time using second life too and it is certainly a different online experience. I definitely prefer face to face. I think that changing your height was a great way to better understand the work of Yee & Bailenson. When I used second life it seemed that everyone I met appeared equal in height to my avatar. It is interesting that you experienced the Proteus Effect and had more hesitation when appearing shorter.
I think you did a nice job in isolating a factor to view using Yee and Bailenson. Your post was very clear and it seemed like you got good results. I thought that an accurate representation of your physical self would not really change your behavior online. At first, I thought you were going to write about the behavior of your avatar relative to your real self. It seems like you did some of this mirroring before you changed your height. It would probably be better if you added some more detail about that experience.
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