Researchers are looking to understand the potential impressions and their limitations of those we meet in a digital context. In a new study, the researchers specifically looked at what personality traits are conveyed by a user's avatar.
More communication among individuals is occurring online, and often between individuals who do not know each other offline. Researchers at York University are looking to understand the potential impressions and their limitations of those we meet in a digital context. In a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the researchers specifically looked at what personality traits are conveyed by a user's avatar.
Design of the study
An avatar is typically an image that represents the self in a virtual world, ranging from simple drawings (e.g., Mii characters on Nintendo Wii) to detailed three-dimensional renderings of characters (e.g., World of Warcraft). Avatars allow individuals to express, or suppress, various physical or psychological traits in a digital world. Previous research has shown that individuals typically choose and prefer avatars perceived to be similar to themselves.
The researchers included two components of profile similarity in their analysis--overall accuracy and distinctive accuracy. Overall accuracy is how well personality can be predicted as a whole, and is the sum of both distinctive accuracy and expectations based on typical norms. "For example, if my perception of someone's extraversion closely matches their true level of extraversion, without any reference to how this related to average levels of extraversion, this is overall accuracy," explains lead researcher Katrina Fong. "If I can accurately perceive how much more extraverted than average a person is, that involves distinctive accuracy."
In the first phase of the study participants created customized avatars, and in the second phase of the study a different set of participants viewed and rated the avatars created in the first phase. Creators were assessed on five major traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.