Avatars: Virtual Personas and Perception

Thirteen-year-old Desmond, better known in cyberspace as Captain Obvious, is modifying his avatar in the online role-playing game Borderlands II. He calls the character Butch. Butch will be making his way through a series of quests on the far-off planet Pandora while wearing an eye patch and a dockworker’s skull cap. Desmond describes Butch as “psychotic.” But when other players look at Butch, are they drawing conclusions about Desmond? Research suggests that they might be.

Avatars can be chosen for any number of reasons, including as a way to draw attention to yourself, to give others a glimpse of your interests, or to capture some aspect of your personality (Suler, 2007). The characteristics of selected avatars are important to both behavior and perception. Researchers who looked at players in the massive online role-playing game Second Life suggest that avatars are “highly controlled information transmitters, well-suited to strategic self-presentation that can be used to communicate any of the selves” (Bélisle & Bodur, 2010). Put simply, specific cues in avatars communicate certain aspects of the self. For example, male avatars with long hair or stylish hairstyles were widely perceived as more extroverted, whereas those with jeans, gray shirts, long-sleeved shirts, or black hair were perceived as introverted. So when players choose specific attributes for avatars—from the way they look to what they wear—it’s likely that they are making their choices in order to convey specific personal attributes.

But what if you didn’t design the character yourself? Could your online behavior be affected by the cues of a randomly assigned avatar? Maybe. Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson (2007) found that people’s behavior was affected by the physical characteristics of the avatar assigned to them. For example, people who were assigned to more attractive avatars self-disclosed more and talked more intimately with others than those assigned less attractive avatars.

For Desmond and Butch, of course, things may be more complicated. Second Life is a virtual world that is supposed to mirror ours, complete with its own economy, culture, religions, and relationships. Borderlands, however, is a scripted fantasy story that occurs on a faraway planet. Long-sleeved shirts may suggest introversion on Second Life’s virtual Earth, but it’s unclear what they might indicate on the planet Pandora.