I am lucky I started watching The Office a couple of weeks ago because otherwise I would have had absolutely no clue what to expect when I entered the virtual world of Second Life. For those of you who don't know what Second Life is (and believe me, you are not alone!), it is an online virtual community that allows people to represent themselves using a 3D animated figured (also called an avatar). You can use commands to make your avatars do things- such as clap or whistle.
You use your avatar to participate in activities of "real life" such as buying clothes, talking to people, and dancing. But what also attracts users to Second life, in my opinion, are all the things you maybe can't do in real life- such buying your own island and even flying.
Second Life also allows you to design your avatar's appearance in whichever way you choose- whether or not its accurate with how you actually look in the real world.
I for instance am a short, brown hair, blue eyed female. I borrowed my friend's avatar for this assignment, who is dark, tall, and handsome. Not to mention pretty buff.
Exploring the world of Second Life was quite the adventure. I am not at all technologically savvy, so it took me almost the entire hour to figure out how to fly and gesture. I tried interacting with several people, but very few of them were responsive partly because they were also trying to figure out Second Life. I even met someone who was Portuguese but for obvious reasons the conversation went nowhere!
I did run into a girl named Jaz on Orientation Island (the place where you start off when you first join second life) who taught me a lot. My interactions with Jaz were interesting- she said she was 21 and a massage therapist. Let me offer two key moments:
1. I offered to walk/fly her off of orientation island (being the nice dark tall and handsome gentleman I was).
2. Later, she was playing around with her outfit and accidentally took her shirt off completely. I responded with the gesture of a whistle and hand clapping.
What explains my behaviors? The paper entitled "The Proteus Effect" by Yee and Bailenson (2007) hypothesizes that digital self representations change behavior. The purpose of this paper is to test whether people conform to norms based on their identity, independent of the effect of behavioral confirmation. Behavioral confirmation occurs when a person acts a certain way to confirm another person's beliefs about them. The paper successfully shows The Proteus Effect, which is when people behave in a certain way relative to their identity/self representation whether or not other people are there to have certain expectations of how they should behave. The paper specifically explores, and proves, that participants with more attractive avatars stand closer and self disclose more, and taller avatars act more confident.
In my situation in Second Life, I was obviously fulfilling a male role through my character and acted how I thought a male would/should act in the situation without necessarily thinking about it. In this respect, my avatar identity definitely affected my behavior in Second Life. However, it is hard to test The Proteus Act here because I was interacting with another avatar who could obviously see me and had expectations as to how I, a male, would behave (behavioral confirmation). It would be interesting to see how I would act if I chose a less attractive male the next time I logged on. Comparing and contrasting my behaviors as a less attractive male could shed some light on The Proteus effect if I behave differently when talking to the same girl. In the same regard, however, she might act differently towards me because I would be less attractive, and therefore I might act differently in order to confirm her beliefs.
Another interesting component of Second Life is the idea of anonymity. I would compare this to wearing a Halloween costume that completely disguises your identity- if you go out, you can do things that you may never have done if people could see your face. In real life I wouldn't have hit on a guy in the same way I hit on Jaz in Second Life!
I feel that I didn't interact with Jaz long enough to speculate about my behaviors in regards to self disclosure and standing distance because I didn't exactly know what I was doing in Second Life (the game is much more complex than it sounds!). In general, it is difficult to speculate how my avatar's appearance affected how I behaved other than gender differences. While many of the factors that are mentioned in The Proteus Effect paper play a role, it is also difficult to isolate whether or not behavioral confirmation is the culprit behind my Second Life behavior.
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Diane, good job on your post. I liked how you drew the analogy between Second Life and wearing a Halloween costume around. I feel like for many users, their behavior in Second Life is significantly more outgoing with fewer social boundaries. This is possible for a few reasons, one is that for some people there is not anticipated future interaction with anybody in Second Life, for others creating a new identity is a simple as registering another avatar. In both cases the consequences for their actions decreases greatly. I think your interaction with Jaz was quite interesting though you did not talk about how much self disclosure you went through. Did you tell her that you were not actually male? If they had found out that you were female, would it change their perception of you? One thing about Second Life is that the possibilities are endless in how you interpret the game. It would be interesting to roleplay as your ideal soul mate (that tall, dark and handsome man) and find “yourself” in another Second Life user.
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