Who Are You Online?: A Study of Gender, Race, and Gaming Experience and Context on Avatar Self-Representation

Theauthorsconductedanexperimenttodeterminetheeffectsofgender,race,onlinevideogaming experience,andtheexperimentalcontextinwhichparticipantsplayedthevideogame(onlinevs. offlinevs.noinformationcontrol)onavatarselection.Thequalitiesoftheavatarcomparedwerebased oneightobjectivedifferencesbetweenavatarsandindividuals:attractiveness,skintone,height,girth chestsize,waistsize,hipsize,andheight.Aspredicted,thosewithonlinegamingexperienceselected avatarsthatweretaller,thinner,andmoreattractiverelativetotheirrealselvesthandidparticipants withnoprioronlinegameexperience.Non-whiteparticipantsselectedavatarswithlighterskin-tones, whereaswhiteparticipantsselectedavatarswithdarkerskin-tones.Surprisingly,maleparticipants selectedshorteravatarsthanfemalecounterpartsdid. KEYWORdS Avatars, Body Image, Gender, Self-Presentation, Video Games

[1]  Crystal L. Hoyt,et al.  Immersive Virtual Environment Technology as a Methodological Tool for Social Psychology , 2002 .

[2]  K. Williams,et al.  Cyberostracism: effects of being ignored over the Internet. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  Jeremy V. Pitt,et al.  Avatars in social media: Balancing accuracy, playfulness and embodied messages , 2008, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[4]  Rosanna E. Guadagno,et al.  Beauty in the Background: A Content Analysis of Females in Interactive Digital Games , 2012, Int. J. Interact. Commun. Syst. Technol..

[5]  H G Pope,et al.  Muscle dysmorphia. An underrecognized form of body dysmorphic disorder. , 1997, Psychosomatics.

[6]  Scott E. Caplan,et al.  Looking for Gender: Gender Roles and Behaviors Among Online Gamers , 2009 .

[7]  R. Unger.  Toward a redefinition of sex and gender. , 1979 .

[8]  Keith B. Maddox,et al.  Perspectives on Racial Phenotypicality Bias , 2004, Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

[9]  Rosanna E. Guadagno,et al.  My avatar and me - Gender and personality predictors of avatar-self discrepancy , 2012, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[10]  Nick Yee,et al.  The Demographics, Motivations, and Derived Experiences of Users of Massively Multi-User Online Graphical Environments , 2006, PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments.

[11]  Michael M. Franz,et al.  Latino Phenotypic Discrimination Revisited: The Impact of Skin Color on Occupational Status * , 2002 .

[12]  L. Cronbach.  Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests , 1951 .

[13]  J. Bailenson,et al.  The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior , 2007 .

[14]  Rosanna E. Guadagno,et al.  Even in virtual environments women shop and men build: A social role perspective on Second Life , 2011, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[15]  Robert J. Moore,et al.  Building an MMO With Mass Appeal , 2006 .

[16]  E. Stice,et al.  Thin-Ideal Internalization: Mounting Evidence for a New Risk Factor for Body-Image Disturbance and Eating Pathology , 2001 .

[17]  Diane J. Schiano.  Lessons from LambdaMOO: A Social, Text-Based Virtual Environment , 1999, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[18]  E. Higgins,et al.  Self-discrepancy: a theory relating self and affect. , 1987, Psychological review.

[19]  Katelyn Y. A. McKenna,et al.  Plan 9 From Cyberspace: The Implications of the Internet for Personality and Social Psychology , 2000 .

[20]  Charles M Judd,et al.  The role of Afrocentric features in person perception: judging by features and categories. , 2002, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[21]  R. Bigler,et al.  Shades of meaning: skin tone, racial attitudes, and constructive memory in African American children. , 1997, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[22]  Jon K. Maner,et al.  The Effects of Perspective Taking on Motivations for Helping: Still No Evidence for Altruism , 2002 .

[23]  John M. Darley,et al.  “I’m not as Thin as You Think I Am”: The Development and Consequences of Feeling Discrepant from the Thinness Norm , 2002 .

[24]  Frank Biocca,et al.  The Elastic Body Image: The Effect of Television Advertising and Programming on Body Image Distortions in Young Women , 1992 .

[25]  R. Mar,et al.  What Does My Avatar Say About Me? Inferring Personality From Avatars , 2015, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[26]  R. LaRose,et al.  A Social Cognitive Theory of Internet Uses and Gratifications: Toward a New Model of Media Attendance , 2004 .

[27]  Nessim Watson,et al.  Why we argue about virtual community: a case study of the Phish.net fan community , 1997 .

[28]  Sean White,et al.  The first noble truth of CyberSpace: people are people (even when they MOO) , 1998, CHI.

[29]  Silvan S. Tomkins,et al.  Scripting the macho man: Hypermasculine socialization and enculturation , 1988 .

[30]  Zizi Papacharissi.  The Self Online: The Utility of Personal Home Pages , 2002 .

[31]  S. Stern.  Expressions of Identity Online: Prominent Features and Gender Differences in Adolescents' World Wide Web Home Pages , 2004 .

[32]  Joseph R. Dominick.  Who Do You Think You Are? Personal Home Pages and Self-Presentation on the World Wide Web , 1999 .

[33]  Asimina Vasalou,et al.  Me, myself and I: The role of interactional context on self-presentation through avatars , 2009, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[34]  Anne-Marie Schleiner,et al.  Does Lara Croft Wear Fake Polygons? Gender and Gender-Role Subversion in Computer Adventure Games , 2001, Leonardo Music Journal.

[35]  Pratyusha Tummala-Narra.  Skin color and the therapeutic relationship. , 2007 .

[36]  E K Gunderson.  Body size, self-evaluation, and military effectiveness. , 1965, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  J. Walther.  Computer-Mediated Communication , 1996 .

[38]  Dmitri Williams,et al.  Virtual Cultivation: Online Worlds, Offline Perceptions , 2006 .