Beauty Advantange: Stanford Study Suggests Attractive Avatars Influence Real World Behavior And Attitudes

If you make your avatar better looking than you really are, are you just denying reality-- or does your more attractive avatar start influencing your self-perception for the better?  The latter seems to be the case.  In 2006, Stanford researcher and virtual worlds expert Nick Yee published a study demonstrating that we replicate our unwritten eye contact/personal space rules in virtual worlds like Second Life.  Last year, Nick put out the results of his latest experiments, and they're just as groundbreaking: briefly put, he found that people using physically attractive avatars tend to exhibit more self-confidence, both in-world... and in the real world.  The study was noted in a recent Newsweek column, "Our Imaginary, Hotter Selves", and having somehow missed the report when it came out in 2007, I just contacted Nick for more info, and a couple screenshots from the experiment.

"[T]hese are avatars we use in our Vizard-based system," Nick tells me. "The faces are made from a frontal and profile photograph of actual students (via 3DMeNow). We conducted the study using an immersive VR system (using goggles)."  A link to his report is here, describing a phenomenon he calls "the Proteus effect", after Greece's identity-changing demi-god.  When embodied in a physically attractive avatar, volunteers were more willing to talk about themselves, and move closer to other avatars, showing more open, self-confident friendliness.  By contrast, people controlling plainer-looking avatars remained more distant.

Since these results were derived from a controlled, non-online environment, Nick and his team applied them in nature, so to speak, in World of Warcraft.  Did it make a difference if a WoW player had an attractive, taller avatar?  Again, they found similar results:

The more attractive characters were, the higher level they achieved. Also, the taller characters were, the higher level they achieved.

Even more striking, Nick reports this phenomenon persisted in the material realm:  outside the VR environment, volunteers were shown a dating website, and asked to select profiles of people they thought would be interested in them.  Again, the volunteers with attractive avatars selected more attractive profiles, while volunteers with plainer avatars dated down, so to speak.  This Proteus effect even carried over to a simulated money-related negotiation, with attractive avatar volunteers demanding a better deal, and plainer avatars settling with less.

As an academic, Nick has to caveat and qualify his results, emphasizing, for example, that "the findings do not clarify the underlying psychological processes that drive the effect."  As with his study on personal space, however, I suspect veteran SL Residents will intuitively grasp his Proteus Effect as quite plausible.  The implications, of course, are just as powerful.

Images courtesy Nick Yee.  Newsweek hat tip: JeanRicard Broek's W00t.

Comments

[Ann Otoole]

Nobody cares what I look like.
In real life or in “the Second Life® virtual world”.

See... You have to matter for anyone to really care at all.

One of the most interesting avatars I have ever spoken with was a libSL guy who manifested as a 0.5*0.5*0.5 plywood sphere smoking a cigarette. I didn't think the avatar appearance made any difference at all. The individual behind the avatar was very intelligent and well spoken and that is what really counts.

People that have this appearance fetish in which they think more or less of a person because of appearance are also prone to racism and discrimination against the physically challenged because people using a wheel chair don't meet their standards for a perfect ken or barbie doll.

So who is the better person anyway?

And does my appearance make you think I am anymore strong than I really am? (default image displayed at http://www.annotoole.com note: no other links or content there so not spamming a web site.)

I think not.

Interesting research though.

[Cyn Vandeverre]

I suspect that this applies to "mainstream" -ish people, not creative or outside-the-box types -- such as those who would be comfortable as a plywood sphere.

[Princess Ivory]

To address Cyn Vandeverre's comment:"I suspect that this applies to "mainstream" -ish people, not creative or outside-the-box types -- such as those who would be comfortable as a plywood sphere."

I think that creative types will develop their own standards of attractiveness. For example, there may be many creative women who would find a man represented as a plywood box attractive. His choice of being a plywood box says much about how he sees himself, and makes him much more fascinating than the "mainstream" Adonis, or Barbie with big boobs. I would be far more interested in getting to know him, and learning why he sees himself as a plywood box.

I am sure there are other examples as well that would support this point of view.

Princess Ivory

[Extropia DaSilva]

I read about another experiment involving our reactions to digital images of people.

In this one, people are asked to look through various mugshots and pick out the face they find most attractive.

Consistently, people choose the face that is (although they don't know it) their own face digitally altered to be the opposite sex.

[Hentai Solaris]

The only thing you naysayers, you proponents of the "plywood sphere" set, demonstrate is your own dysfunctional and disproportional abhorrence for ANYthing or anyONE you perceive to be "mainstream".

What it says to the rest of us is, you are either so starved for attention, and basically self-centered that the ONLY way you can 'compete' with those in more 'normal' avatars is by "dressing" yourself up in something so garish, so outlandish, that you will be guaranteed to be the center of attention...much like the more flamboyant dandies in a GAY PRIDE parade.

In other words, the exact OPPOSITE reasoning you THINK you're doing it for. In a virtual world where everyone can be as attractive as they wish, the only TRUE differentiator becomes your conversation, NOT your outlandish choice of avi.

Which means those of you who seek to be the most different, are, in reality, the most "common" of all. As for the women who are attracted to the plywood box, it is not attraction...It is mere curiosity to find out who would dare to try to garner more attention than themselves.

By choosing to "hide" behind the box, the wearer reveals himself to be the most Narcissistic one of all.

Finally, the absurd notion that "People that have this appearance fetish in which they think more or less of a person because of appearance are also prone to racism and discrimination against the physically challenged because people using a wheel chair don't meet their standards for a perfect ken or barbie doll." is just the height of idiocy, not to mention the ramblings of an uneducated, and rather ignorant mind.

Before you make such assertions, at least TRY to familiarize yourself with basic behavioral theory.

People are attracted or repelled not because of CONSCIOUS choices, but because it is hardwired into the organism, DUH!

As for "who is the better person?"...simple

Everyone is better than you, Ann...because they don't even quantify any one person as HAVING to be better (or worse) than any other....

Sucks to be you, don't it? Ouch!