Transformed Social Interaction: Exploring the Digital Plasticity of Avatars

What does it mean to be you? How drastically can a person change and still remain, in the eyes of either themselves or their peers, the same person? Until recently, these questions were typically asked in the context of philosophy, psychoanalysis, or science fiction. However, the increasingly common use of avatars during computer-mediated communication, collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) in particular, are quickly changing these once abstract questions into practical quandaries that are fascinating, thought-provoking, potentially paradigm shifting for those who study social interaction, and potentially devastating to the traditional concept of human communication. Historically, even before the advent of computers, people have demonstrated a consistent practice of extending their identities. As Turkle [1, p. 31] points out:

[1]  T. Brock,et al.  COMMUNICATOR-RECIPIENT SIMILARITY AND DECISION CHANGE. , 1965, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[2]  D. Byrne.  The Attraction Paradigm , 1971 .

[3]  R. Fry,et al.  The Effects of Feedback and Eye Contact on Performance of a Digit-Coding Task , 1975 .

[4]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Point of view and perceptions of causality. , 1975 .

[5]  J. Dovidio,et al.  The subtlety of White racism, arousal, and helping behavior. , 1977 .

[6]  A. Kendon.  Studies in the behavior of social interaction , 1977 .

[7]  Shelley Masion Rosenberg.  Bodily Communication , 1978 .

[8]  James Shanteau,et al.  Probability of acceptance in dating choice. , 1979 .

[9]  M. Goldman.  Effect of Eye Contact and Distance on the Verbal Reinforcement of Attitude , 1980 .

[10]  J. P. Otteson,et al.  Effect of Teacher's Gaze on Children's Story Recall , 1980 .

[11]  John T. Cacioppo,et al.  The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion , 1986, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.

[12]  J. V. Sherwood.  Facilitative Effects of Gaze upon Learning , 1987 .

[13]  A. Rodney Wellens,et al.  Heart-Rate Changes in Response to Shifts in Interpersonal Gaze from Liked and Disliked others , 1987 .

[14]  M. Argyle.  Bodily communication, 2nd ed. , 1988 .

[15]  Howard Rheingold,et al.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 2000 .

[16]  Steve Benford,et al.  User embodiment in collaborative virtual environments , 1995, CHI '95.

[17]  Mark H. Davis,et al.  Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: a merging of self and other. , 1996, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[18]  J. Bargh,et al.  Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype-activation on action. , 1996, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[19]  D. Hindman.  The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier , 1996 .

[20]  S. Turkle.  Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet , 1997 .

[21]  Frank Biocca,et al.  The Cyborg's Dilemma: Progressive Embodiment in Virtual Environments , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[22]  T. Busey.  Physical and Psychological Representations of Faces: Evidence From Morphing , 1998 .

[23]  Mel Slater,et al.  Small group behaviour in a virtual and real environment , 1998 .

[24]  T. Chartrand,et al.  The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[25]  J. Loomis,et al.  Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology , 1999, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[26]  Thomas Vetter,et al.  A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces , 1999, SIGGRAPH.

[27]  Steve Benford,et al.  The COVEN Project: Exploring Applicative, Technical, and Usage Dimensions of Collaborative Virtual Environments , 1999, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[28]  William Gibson,et al.  All Tomorrow's Parties , 1999 .

[29]  Mel Slater,et al.  The impact of eye gaze on communication using humanoid avatars , 2001, CHI.

[30]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  Intelligent Agents Who Wear Your Face: Users' Reactions to the Virtual Self , 2001, IVA.

[31]  Ralph Schroeder.  Social Interaction in Virtual Environments: Key Issues, Common Themes, and a Framework for Research , 2005 .

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

[33]  Ralph Schroeder,et al.  The social life of avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments , 2002 .

[34]  Ralph Schroeder.  The Social Life of Avatars , 2002, Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

[35]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  AUTHORS' RESPONSE: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology: Just Another Methodological Tool for Social Psychology? , 2002 .

[36]  Yugo Takeuchi,et al.  Effects of echoic mimicry using hummed sounds on human-computer interaction , 2003, Speech Commun..

[37]  J. Loomis,et al.  Non-Zero-Sum Gaze in Immersive Virtual Environments , 2003 .

[38]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  Examining Virtual Busts: Are Photogrammetrically Generated Head Models Effective for Person Identification? , 2004, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.

[39]  Jeremy N. Bailenson,et al.  Transformed Social Interaction: Decoupling Representation from Behavior and Form in Collaborative Virtual Environments , 2004, Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments.