Your identity and the virtual you

The current issue of the Stanford Magazine carries a fascinating piece about some research from the University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The research looks at how the lines between your actual identity and the virtual you get blurred.

According to assistant professor Jeremy Bailenson, the enormous amounts of time and energy people sink into their avatars (virtual characters) in places such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, mean that "what happens online doesn't necessarily stay online."

His research shows that what you have been doing virtually "bleeds" into the real you once you've logged out and switched off your computer, and Bailenson's group is looking at how you might be able to use these virtual experiences to alter who you are in the real world, for better or for worse.

It's well known that you can be pretty much who or what you want in a virtual world, ranging from making yourself 10 years younger, to actually changing sex. But what the Virtual Human Interaction Lab has demonstrated is that it is not only our appearance that changes. We do such a good job in fooling ourselves that we have become someone different, our behaviour alters to fit the new us.

Lab researcher Nick Yee has called this the Proteus Effect, after the Greek god who could shift form at will. In the article he gives a number of examples of how behaviour follows that form. For example not only are 'taller' avatars more aggressive in virtual negotiations, the humans behind them carry on acting this way after they've logged off.

Similarly, you are more likely to want to date someone in real life if you have met them in the virtual via an attractive avatar (and we've talked about the concept of practice dates in SL before).

Though essentially a computer science lab, Bailenson's group is actually looking at something profound, the extent to which our sense of who we are links in with that outer shell of a body. And how easily it can be altered simply by altering the shell.

They call it "ancient Greek stuff”—the very essence of self-understanding. “When I am in digital space, there is some point where it's clearly me, and some point where it's clearly not me,” Bailenson says. “How far can I push and transform before it's a completely different person? It really raises the questions about what it means to have an identity and what it means to be.”

According to Bailenson, “On the one hand, transforming a virtual appearance is no different than wearing makeup or styling one's hair. On the other hand, a world in which someone can instantly grow 20 centimeters, swap genders and stare into the eyes of a dozen people at once is completely new territory.”