I Am My Avatar
Can your avatar control how you behave?
Kayvon Sharghi jumps into virtual reality to find
out. Illustrated by Kelly Finan.
| Illustration: Kelly Finan |
Every Wednesday night, the avatar
named CeNedra Rivera hosts a gathering with her friends in the
online virtual community Second Life.
Recently, CeNedra's event was a lingerie theme party. Cenedra's
creator, "Vanessa" (not her real name), asked her girlfriends
to dress their avatars3D characters, complete with self-styled looks
and personalitiesin the sexiest outfits they had in their virtual
closets. The next morning, when Vanessa arrived at work, she saw
an image of CeNedra on her computer dressed in a sheer black teddy,
stockings, a thong, and high heels. Vanessa loved how sexy her
avatar looked. Then she realized something: CeNedra made her feel
sexy in real life. In the year since she
joined Second Life, where people interact in virtual environments
solely through their digital characters, Vanessa admits to doing
things she wouldn't normally have done. She grew more social and
went out on dates. Her confidence increased and she became flirty
with men. On shopping trips, she tried on items that she normally
wouldn't wear, but that her more adventurous digital self might.
Indeed, the sexier CeNedra became in Second Life, the more confident
Vanessa felt in her own skin. Inadvertently,
Vanessa was exploring a provocative question about human behavior
that scientists at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) have just
started to address: Can a person's avatar influence their personality?
Jeremy Bailenson, the lab's director and
assistant professor of communication at Stanford, thinks the answer
is yes. His research suggests how you perceive yourself in a virtual
environment can subconsciously carry over into the real world.
Bailenson has shown that a person's behavior can change offline
within minutes of immersion in a virtual environment. How this
works is still unclear, but the VHIL researchers are trying to piece
together theories of the underlying psychology. Avatars 'R' Us Avatars may
be the next big thing on the Internet. By 2011, some researchers
estimate, 80 percent of Internet users will have a 3D avatar
participating in a virtual environment. Corporations like Toyota,
Intel, and MTV have already poured cash into advertising and marketing
campaigns to reach the growing number of customers in virtual realms
such as Second Life. Hundreds of universities have opened virtual
campuses and research centers in different online communities to
test how the new medium can be used for recruiting and education.
Millions of people already spend time in virtual
environments. Second Life has 9 million residents, with new users
registering each day. The online game World
of Warcraft is even more popular, with more than 11 million
subscribers. Regular users spend an average of 22 hours online
each week in these virtual communities. At
Stanford, Bailenson and his Ph.D. students are trying to determine
how spending so much time online as an avatar will affect a person's
behavior in real life. They use a $25,000 fully immersive head-mounted
display to transport test subjects into custom-made virtual
environments. | Photo: Courtesy
of Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Stanford University |
Head-mounted display used at the
Virtual Human Interaction Lab. | |
| In one recent
study, Bailenson's team tested how an avatar's attractiveness
influences personal behavior. Volunteers were assigned an avatar
that was attractive or unattractive, then placed inside a virtual
room. They were told to have their avatar look into a mirror
briefly, and then interact with other avatars in the room. Just
like in real life, attractive avatars were more outgoing, friendlier,
and showed greater confidence than unattractive ones. The attractive
avatars also engaged people at a closer distance and provided more
information about themselves in conversations. Unattractive avatars
behaved in the opposite way, keeping farther away from others and
saying less. The results appeared in the June 2007 issue of the
journal Human Communication Research. In
a follow-up study, to appear in Media Psychology, volunteers
were placed in a room in real life immediately after the experiment.
They were instructed to look at nine photos of people and choose
two of them to ask on a date. People who had their egos stroked
by having been assigned more attractive avatars chose better-looking
dates than those who had been given less attractive avatars, the
researchers found. The effects of embodying an avatar's qualities
in real life lasted up to an hour after treatment, Bailenson says,
though it's possible the feeling may last even longer. This explains why people with a sexy looking avatar
may experience feeling sexy offline, says Nick Yee, a former doctoral
student at the VHIL and lead author of both papers. Yee and Bailenson call this the Proteus Effect:
An avatar's appearance online can trigger behavior stereotypical
of that appearance offline. In CeNedra's case, the connotation of
sexiness arises from seeing the photo of her avatar dressed in
lingerie. It's analogous to someone who is put into a taller avatar
in a virtual world," says Yee. "They feel more confident
even when they're outside the virtual world. More
recently, Bailenson's team has shown that a person's real-life
behavior can be improved by the behavior of his or her avatar. The
researchers found that volunteers watching an exercising avatar
that incorporates a 3D picture of their own face will exercise more
and lose weight in real life. The study has implications for
treating diseases such as obesity, says Bailenson, who published
the work in the March 2009 issue of Media Psychology.
Virtual therapy Some
clinics already use virtual technology for behavioral therapy and
treating phobias and disorders. The Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego,
California, uses the same head-mounted displays as the Stanford
researchers. The center's therapists build custom virtual environments
to treat a range of problems, from fear of flying to anxiety and
attention deficit disorder. Other simulations help cancer patients
cope with chemotherapy-related side effects; the therapists also
use virtual reality to treat returning soldiers who suffer from
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Compared
to a traditional method of therapy that employs asking questions
and encouraging a patient to retell the experience over and over,
virtual reality treatment is a way to immerse someone in an environment
to help them talk about what they've gone through, says research
scientist Albert Skip Rizzo of the University of Southern California's
Institute for Creative
Technologies in Marina del Rey. Rizzo
specializes in developing virtual reality tools that help wartime
PTSD victims. Some of the virtual environments he's created are
set in the city streets of Iraq or the desert convoy roads of
Afghanistan. In these environments veterans are exposed to the
same sights and sounds that triggers their mind to experience a
traumatic event that can then be re-framed by the therapist. Unlike
online virtual communities like Second Life, extrasensory inputs
such as tactile and olfactory stimuli can be added, making the
experience even more immersive. The technology, Rizzo says, is not
limited to any one disorder. Researchers can craft custom environments
to encourage change in a given behavior. A
true Second Life Can virtual reality also
help treat victims of domestic violence? Along with depression,
victims of domestic violence can experience PTSD that produces
flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, and avoidance of traumatic triggers.
For women who've had abusive male partners, interacting with a
member of the opposite sex can stir up painful and intrusive images
of the abuse in their minds, making recovery difficult. "Vanessa" joined Second Life because she
was in an abusive relationship. When her partner was being released
from prison, she created a new life online in the form of CeNedra.
Many people come to Second Life for the fun of creating palace-like
homes with ocean views, trying out exotic hairstyles, and flying
freely like a superhero in an endless virtual sky. Vanessa joined
to experience the things she struggled to do in real life, like
once again trusting men and falling in love. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't realize
how lucky I am that my son and I are alive, she writes on her online
blog, CeN's
Two Cents. Although she was fortunate to escape the violent
hand of her partner with only a few scars and injuries that have
faded or healed, she says the psychological trauma will stay with
her forever. But for Vanessa, Second Life
has offered what counseling sessions could not: a way to transition
back into having normal relationships with people. Second Life
allows me to safely interact with people in ways I still can't in
my first life, she writes. Rizzo has seen
this phenomenon grow as virtual reality environments have become
more convincing and immersive. The controlled settings can act as
stepping-stones to help victims who suffer from traumatic events
work their way back into society, he says. Interacting with male
avatars using text chat in Second Life is an example of how a
domestic abuse victim suffering from PTSD could gradually overcome
trigger episodes, he notes. Virtual warning
signs Although Second Life has helped Vanessa
cope with her real-life trauma, she still sees the potential for
abuse to happeneven without physical interaction. When people join a virtual community, especially
one as realistic as Second Life, their avatars may behave in ways
they normally wouldn't in the real world. In 2007, an avatar in
Second Life allegedly raped another character. Other deviant forms
of behavior have been reported in "mature content" areas
of the site, including child abuse and sadomasochism. Though
simulated, these behaviors still bear enough resemblance to the
physical world to create trauma and stress for the victims. But you don't have to wander into fetish clubs in
Second Life or have a twisted mind to inflict psychological harm
on others. It can even happen unintentionally towards friends, as
a Second Life avatar who goes by the pseudonym of "Juniper"
points out. Like most female avatars in
Second Life, Juniper's appearance is hyper-attractive and overly
sexualized. She's a tall blonde with a prominent bust who dresses
in clothes emphasizing her proportions. Because she's pretty, says
Juniper, her avatar gets a lot of attention from members of the
opposite sex as she walks around, goes shopping, or dances at
clubs. Soon it became hard for Juniper to
separate the experiences and compliments her avatar received online
from who she was offline. In real life it gave me the confidence
I didn't have, says Juniper. However, there was a darker side to
her newfound self-esteem. Allowing her alter ego to bring out the
worst in her online, she began disrespecting close friends in Second
Life. Looking back, she says, It caused me to hurt some people.
Just like in real life, feelings of sadness,
depression, and loneliness can easily surface online as a result
of psychological abuse, relationship problems, and self-perception
issues. The harm can become so severe that some people abandon
their online characterswho meant so much to them for months or
yearsand never return. Virtual reality
now offers the full spectrum of human experiences, from positive
to negative. Perhaps most notably, it can help people who have
exhausted all other possibilities in real life. For Vanessa, it
has offered what no amount of therapy over the years has provided:
confidence. For countless others who have found their soul mates
in online communities and taken that first step down the virtual
aisle together, it's allowed them to begin new lives they never
could have imagined for themselves. I do
walk a little taller, I do speak up a bit more, I don't avoid
attention like I used to, and I do smile a lot more. I know that
much, Vanessa writes. Although virtual reality may never heal her
deepest wounds, it has nonetheless made her a happier person, online
and offline. Story 2009 by Kayvon
Sharghi. For reproduction requests, contact the Science Communication Program
office. Top Biographies Kayvon Sharghi B.S.
(biochemistry) California Polytechnic State University, San Luis
Obispo Certificate (editing) University of Washington
Internship: National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory, Michigan
State University, East Lansing (multimedia) Before graduating from university with a science
degree, I received the best advice of my life: You should be a
writer. That didn't come from any adviser; it came from a Nobel
laureate. The funny thing is that I was interviewing the chemistry
Nobelist on camera when he said it. Nothing was mentioned of my
potential to be the next Charlie Rose, but he saw in me something
else I had always wanted to become. With
his encouragement, I abandoned the lab and continued my foray into
multimedia. I have found that it works hand-in-hand with writing
to create memorable pieces that help people understand science in
a way that's impossible through words alone. So whether in written
or recorded form, whether photographed or podcasted, I hope to make
science a part of our lives. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . Kelly
Finan B.S. (environmental science and
studio art minor) Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA Internships:
Sierra Nevada Research Institute, Wawona Station, Yosemite National
Park, CA, and National Aquarium, Baltimore, MD I was a high school student visiting Juniata College
when a dusty display case filled with ceramic sculptures of
foraminifera, radiolarians, and other forms of microscopic life
caught my eye. Propped up among the artwork was an aged piece of
paper bearing the words of Dr. Arthur M. Sakler: "Art and
science are two sides of the same coin. Science is a discipline
pursued with passion, art is a passion pursued with discipline."
I'd always avidly pursued both art and science, but it wasn't until
I spotted these words that I realized how easily my interests
dovetailed. I have since been unable to keep my major, environmental
science, and my minor, studio art, separated. Drawing an organism
improves my understanding of it, while my attention to detail as
an artist develops. I'm happy to be in the Science Illustration
Program, where I can take this concept and run! Top |