Communication in virtual environments: The influence of spatial cues and gender on verbal behavior

Verbal behavior differs in high and low-spatial cue virtual environments.Male and female participants interacted with a confederate in each environment.Text analysis of conversation logs revealed differences by gender and environment.Both factors influenced linguistic metrics, particularly measures of collaboration.Results suggest that spatial cues benefit social connection in virtual environments. As communication technologies continue to evolve, more people will engage in virtual social interactions. With this trend comes an increasing need for research on behavior within virtual worlds. This study contributes to that agenda by focusing on the influence of physical attributes of a virtual setting and gender on verbal behavior expressed by mixed-gender dyads in a virtual world. Computerized text analyses revealed linguistic differences as a function of both the physical and social complexity of virtual settings and gender. The latter differences included both quantitative and qualitative features of written communication. These results add important new discoveries to the literature on virtual psychology and highlight the value of using text analysis tools to investigate virtual interactions.