The Expression of Personality in Virtual Worlds

Personality is an interesting thing. It can be experienced face to face, indirectly through the artifacts one leaves in personal spaces, even technologically across facebook and personal websites. The question follows then: how do our interactions in virtual worlds express our personality?

My last post spoke of the susceptibility of children to false memories created through their interactions with virtual worlds. The question that lingers is that of the real vs the virtual - what is real? If a person behaves one way during physical interactions and another in virtual interactions is one more 'real' than the other? Or are both just a function of the same personality expressing itself?

Yee et al (cited below) found that we express our personality in both behavioural and linguistic forms in virtual worlds. Yet they admit that their findings do not agree with previous studies on the issue.

They explored what the termed as the 'Big Five' personality factors: Emotional Stability, Extroversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Their findings suggest that how we behave in virtual worlds remains consistent over time - not in comparison to the physical world necessarily, however. On the contrary, the language we use tends to change more often. The authors of the study suggest that is because of situational interference in the measures they used. When an individual can, "Teleport from a poetry reading to a disco party" it is expected that one's language would change to reflect the different situations.

They continue to argue that is is the measure itself that failed as internet language is vastly different in nature from spoken or more formal written forms.

So what does this all mean? The important take away from this piece seems to be that how we behave in the virtual world is consistent over time. This suggests that rather than just putting on a new face we are exploring facets of our true selves. Our Avatars are not completely cut off from our physical mental states.

This would suggest that while some can changes Avatars as they would clothes, most of us are more personally invested in our online selves. What this study fails to tell us is just how these moments in virtual space correspond to our physical selves. Can predictions of personality based on online observances be used to predict behaviour in physical situations?

I remember the philosophy of dualism. The mind and body are thought to be separate but connected entities. Do our forays into virtual worlds extend this to a third self? Are we all made up of a mind, body, and Avatar?

Yee, N., Harris, H., Jabon, M., & Bailenson, J. N. (2010). The Expression of personality in virtual worlds. VHIL: Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Retrieved from vhil.stanford.edu

Virtually True: Children's acquisition of false memories in virtual reality

I recently had the opportunity to read a journal article by the title above.  What caught me on first glance was how pertinent it was to my teaching subject matter: media literacy.  Our students these days are more and more often presented with images of children in new and exciting situations.  When added to the repetitive nature of advertising and the ubiquitous media experience of today's child, I was very interested in seeing what the study had found.

The study begins by suggesting a simple way to categorize how media-rich a medium is.  Each medium can be broken down into four subsets - Feedback, Multiple Cues, Language Variety, and Personal Focus.  A virtual world scores highly as it can provide immediate feedback to the user; allows for cues both of a visual and auditory nature - and in more advanced units even touch and taste; includes spoken, written, and body language in as many different languages as the user can comprehend; and, with the right avatar, it can be a highly personal experience as a child can watch him- or herself carrying out an action.

What quickly caught my attention was the line, "The representation of the self can be a powerful factor in eliciting false memories in preschool and elementary children."  The study continues to find that while very young children are already highly susceptible to false memories, school-aged children are more prone to false memories that come from a virtual experience.

Many of my students are participants in numerous virtual worlds.  While not as personal and inclusive as the method used in this study, I have to wonder how children handle participating in both real and virtual worlds on a daily basis.  It is hard enough to teach children the difference between fantasy and reality at a young age - what happens if they remember doing things that they later find out are impossible in real life?

Yet the more important question is really this: If I remember swimming with sharks in a virtual world, is that a false memory? Did I have the experience or not?  While the authors of the study would point out that it is a false memory because I have never physically been in that situation, I have to wonder.  Is a virtual friendship less real than a physical one? Does there need to be a difference between the real and the virtual, or is it all just a part of the larger experience?

Segovia, K. Y., & Bailenson, J. N. (2009). Virtually true: Children's acquisition of false memories in virtual reality. Media Psychology, 12, 371 - 393.