Assignment #10: Second Life and the Proteus Effect

I’ve never participated in any computer-based multi-player videogames, so my experience in Second Life was definitely an interesting one. I selected one of the basic female avatars with the “Nightclub” label. After naming her “Monica,” I did not make any other alterations or upgrades to improve her appearance. Before I downloaded Second Life, I had intended on making many adjustments in my avatar’s appearance in order to make her as attractive as possible. However, once I was given the initial basic selections I realized that I only had the option of choosing tall, skinny, pretty female avatars. They each may not have conformed to my personal ideas of beauty, but they were all uniquely attractive. It was clear to me that Second Life gave me really no choice but to choose a “youthful, in shape, and attractive” avatar, as Yee and Bailenson (2007, pg. 287) point out in their article on the Proteus Effect.

According to Yee and Bailenson (2007), the Proteus Effect is the process in which an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them. In their study, Yee and Bailenson discovered that participants in a virtual reality environment walked closer to confederates if they believed themselves to be attractive avatars. Participants also exhibited more self-disclosure and intimacy if they believed their avatars were attractive. Lastly, participants who believed they were taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task. These changes in behavior due to the Proteus Effect occurred even without the effects of behavioral confirmation because the confederates with whom the participants spoke were always blind to the attractiveness and height experimental conditions.

When I was in the online social world of Second Life, I tried to determine whether my selection of attractive “Nightclub Monica” had any affect on my behavior in the videogame space as Yee and Bailenson found. As a tall, young, attractive female avatar, I guess I could say that I walked closer to other avatars in the Second Life environment. There were only a few avatars that I actually spoke to, but with those few I did end up sharing a lot of information about myself. Most of that information was made up, but nevertheless I was showing increased self-disclosure. I also exhibited increased confidence in the way that I just began conversations with the other avatars with much more self-assurance than I would have in a face to face interaction.

While I know that I showed changes in my behavior that were consistent with Yee and Bailenson’s findings, I think that I really only made such drastic confidence changes because I had read their article and was aware of their findings prior to my experience in Second Life. When I interacted with other avatars, I constantly had the thought in the back of my mind that “I was a tall, young, pretty avatar and that I should not be afraid to approach other avatars.” As I look back and analyze what influenced my avatar’s behavior, I do accept the fact that my attractiveness may have indeed influenced my behavior more than I think it did. However, I think that a third party perspective watching the interaction is really necessary to properly determine the Proteus Effect.

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http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/assignment-10-second-life.html
http://comm245red.blogspot.com/2007/11/10-hit-and-run.html