Transformed Social Interaction: Exploring the Digital Plasticity of Avatars

 Bailenson and Beall begin with two questions that get straight to the heart of the matter, "What does it mean to be you? How drastically can a person change and still remain...the same person?"  These bring to mind the work of author Terry Pratchett.  In one of his books (The 5th Elephant) a king explains about his father's axe.  Sharp as could be at one point, in time the blade became rusty and needed to be replaced.  Awhile later the handle split and was replaced.  Yet the object remained wholly his father's axe.  Though we may alter pieces of our personality, our core remains.  Never before has it been so easy to alter ourselves and 'try on' new identities than it is with the advent of collaborative virtual environments (CVE) and the avatar.

The authors refer to this ability as Transformed Social Interaction (TSI).  They divide TSI into three dimensions.

1. Sensory Abilities: Humans can acquire augmented perceptual abilities in digital environments.  These could be algorithms that provide real-time summary statistics about the movement and attention of others or the avatars of others that only you can see.
2. Situational Context: Each individual can adjust the geography of the room to suit his or her needs.  Imagine a classroom in which every students is at the front of the class with his or her peers behind.  Furthermore the ability to use 'pause' and 'rewind' features while an avatar is set to 'auto-pilot' greatly alter the ability to comprehend and be productive during interactions.
3. Self-Representation: As we have seen in other articles, the ability to alter the way in which one's avatar is rendered can have an incredible impact on online interactions.

It is on this third dimension that the chapter focuses.  They outline a number of ways that transforming one's self-representation can have drastic effects on online interaction.  The first of which is altering one's appearance based on markers captured from an audience member.  This will promote implicit feelings of similarity - which has been demonstrated to effect social influence. They continue with the concept of 'Team Face'.  Aspects of each team member's physical appearance are incorporated into an avatar that reflects all of them. Once again, this similarity has large effects on our perceptions of the interaction.

This science transfers nicely from the visual to the acoustic.  Voice can be transformed in various ways and for numerous ends.  The classic example of  using a voice changer to disguise one's voice is just one aspect of what the technology is capable of doing.  The author's believe that the effects of altering one's voice would be similar to that of altering one's physical appearance.

Bailenson & Beall continue by exploring the effects of digital chameleons - see an earlier post for more on how altering one's behaviour to appear similar to another person can alter the interaction between the two.

The author's finish by concluding that these dimensions make it difficult to trust online interactions.  What is real and what is virtual?  TSI offers users a vast amount of options when it comes to altering online interactions.  Those who fully understand the impacts of this are positioned to exploit those who are unaware.  with everything going online it will be important to be critical when accepting what one discovers online.  Even that political debate could be biased due to TSI.

Bailenson, J. N., & Beall, A. C. (2006). Transformed social interaction: exploring the digital plasticity of avatars. In R. Schroeder (Ed.), Avatars at work and play (pp. 1 - 16). Netherlands: Springer.