If you’ve ever spent time in online chat rooms, forums, or games, you’ve probably noticed the little pictures posters use to represent themselves. Sometimes, they’re real photos but often, they’re cartoons, movie characters, animals, or pretty much anything you can imagine.
For most sites, it’s pretty easy to change that picture (called an Avatar) – you just select which picture you want to represent you, upload it to the server with the click of a button, and presto – you’re someone completely different.
A recent study by Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University looked at how the avatars we choose affect our online behavior.
They assigned an avatar to two groups of students using a virtual reality headset. The students then had less than a minute to see what their new selves looked like before stepping into a virtual room with another avatar. The avatars differed in height or attractiveness.
The results?
Those in the first group were told to negotiate with the other avatar in the room to split a pile of money between them. The researchers found that people given a taller virtual persona were more aggressive negotiators, while those assigned shorter characters were more likely to acquiesce to a deal that was not in their interest. They also found that people with less attractive avatars stood, on average, 1 metre further away while talking to the other character than those assigned attractive ones.
It’s interesting how quickly we can adapt based on how we think others perceive us, isn’t it?
Source: New Scientist (subscription required)
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