Based on what was mentioned in class about people’s self-perception of their vr avatars, I learnt that for each individual, characteristics such as gender, skin colour, appearance and race are not self-determined. Now, the advent of VR has changed this fact. In the virtual world, you can choose the colour of your skin at will and decide for yourself whether to be a man or a woman or even not human. For example, in the game vrchat, players can upload their own models as their avatars, which is why many of the beautiful girls in this game open their mouths as male voices.
With a VR headset, you will not be able to see your real body. vr is special in that it allowsIt allows us to ignore our original body and replace it with a new self-image. As depicted in The Matrix, in the near future, people will spend a lot of time in VR worlds, living with others in a new self-image.
Studies have shown that a person’s looks and body shape tend to influence their behaviour, for example, good-looking people tend to have more confidence. Avatars and other virtual images used on social networks also tend to have an impact on the psychological state of the user. So do VR avatars also affect people’s psychological perceptions and therefore change their behaviour?
I read about research by Harvard academic Nick Yee, who discovered a phenomenon known as the Proteus effect.Proteus is an ancient Greek mythological creature that can constantly change itself.Yee wants to suggest that people’s behaviour is influenced by their fictitious images in the imaginary world.
A 2009 experiment by Yee, Bailenson and Ducheneaut explored the effect of avatar appearance on user behaviour. In this experiment, some of the subjects’ avatars were relatively unattractive, while others had higher value avatars. The subjects chatted as avatars in the virtual world for 20 minutes and were found to be more confident in their avatars. The evaluator recorded the amount of personal information revealed by the subjects and found that those with higher face value revealed more personal information.