Psychology of AVs?

Short Version: Does anyone know a good scholarly resource for learning about why people choose the representations they do?


Long Version: When I made Eben's skin, I used a website called faceresearch.org. They have a nifty tool that will "average" faces from photos you upload, or from the stock photos they have for research.

Anyway, at first it was just a cool way to make a somewhat handsome face for my skin, but there are articles there that talk about the psycology behind it: What people consider attractive, what eyespacing is perceived as normal, what defines a masculine face in common view....

It got me to thinking about AVs in SL. We all pick varied appearances, some changing many times a day, but has there been an organized effort to catalog particular AVs to particular groups without relying on generalizations and stereotypes?

Beyond that, I always see these "surveys for Psych class" here on the forums. Anyone published their findings?

At the very worst, this will degenerate into a "Hi Eben. My AV looks like "X" because "Y" happened in my RL..." and that's fine too. I'm not above storytime.

Ask people. In SL preferably, since it seems more personal and you're more likely to get more information (Generally speaking). There is no one place where people go to answer such questions, or anything like that.. just meet people, talk to them, and ask them why.

With all the polls and research questionnaires I've seen here on the forum and inworld... Someone should have written something by now! (>_<

Or... Maybe... After collecting the data, they just decided we're all too quirky, threw their arms in the air, and gave up. (^_^)y

Someone did a poll on this subject recently.

That's what I'm thinking. Direct interviews and polls are nice, but...I dunno...I was wondering if it had progressed beyond personal inquiry to Science with a capital "S."

It's doubtful you will ever really know. The extremes of gender and age play will always stay silent in these sorts of surveys. And they are the ones to definately tip the scales here. I read some 30-40% of all females are males in SL. I don't know if it's true. But a tonne will switch ages, genders, even humanoid forms. I have a few avies I use. I have my default who is actually modelled after myself. As close as I can get it anyway. And a few others that are all over the map. From bots to humanoids, all male, but very unnatural. So 'by day' I am pretty much myself. Which is an odd thing really. Maybe that says even more than if I was a total freak.

Funny you mention that. The whole reason I posted is because Eben was in a dance club. T-shirt, jeans, glowsticks, but no fancy accessories. I was dancing next to two nekos, a goth, and some elven guy. Which is scarier: A cat-guy, a vampire, an elf, or a mid-westerner?

I know it's reasonable to expect Goreans to be primarily European, simply because John Norman's books aren't that common in the east, and vice-versa for AVs based on Manga.

I hate to hit hot buttons just to promote discussion, but as often as child AVs and the like get bashed on, wouldn't it be nice to have some research somewhere saying "yes, as a group they are wholesome people, primarily composed of Canadians?"

Surely with all the smart people we have here, someone's taken a closer look at it. Otherwise, what are all those polls for?

Hi,

This Journal has been a work in progress for almost a decade. Most of the research was done on Palace Chat but it's pretty dead on for the behavior in any virtual world. Technology changes...human being don't

http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html

Yes generally it takes a while in SL too I suspect to know what form you are in theis world, so everyone changes a lot in first year or so.
Maybe 30-40% of females are males, which is still a lot different to say COH or WoW where 90% of female AV's seem to be males and it's and accepted thing and damn funny watching newbs find out after they spend 30minutes hitting on someone in the team.
But in SL I suspect there is a high ratio of actual female players compared to other MMO's.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for! I found the section on Types of Avatars very interesting. Thanks!

The midwesterner, hands down.

I'm an ugly midwesterner because I just don't like people, apparently. =)

This was a good read, though geared more toward WoW. Thanks!

New book just out available on Amazon.com

Being Virtual, who you really are online.

by Davey Winder

Not academic but interesting.

No so scholarly it seems, at least it doesn't touch on the reasons, but there was this poll relating to choosing fantasy avatars: http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2008/01/31/poll-most-adults-dont-want-fantasy-avatars/

Sound familiar? (^_^)y

Nah. I think a closer bet is

Hmm. interesting…just had a looksie and may now be compelled to read something outside of SL

There are some interesting studies coming out of the Palo Alto Research Center.

Also, there is a seriously large experiment pending out of Stanford, but the data hasn't been crunched yet. It was suppose to be published last year.

This should be a sticky thread, it's dead interesting.

The U of Minnesota got 60TB of data from Everquest 2. Let's wait til they come out with a report.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090227130934.htm

You might try doing a google search with the link: operator like this:

link:http://www-usr.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/psycyber.html

This will give you a list of pages that include links to that site, which would be likely to have the sort of information you are looking for.

This all reminds me that the people that do this sort of work pull habits out of rats.

Pep ("All are lunatics, but he who can analyse his delusion is called a philosopher" - Ambrose Bierce)

That's actually kind of creepy. You have to assume they are studying us here in the same way. Also interesting is that the study is partially funded by the US Army. Probably looking to see what avatar traits make good soldiers?

Actually they are looking for future terrorists ( grins)