Sharon Begley on Effect of your Second Life avatar appearance. (Hot does matter…)
Sharon Begley writes Our Imaginary, Hotter Selves.
Jeremy Bailenson and Nick Yee of Stanford examined how the appearance of one’s avatar in Second Life affects the player’s behavior.
[tease]
“Your physical appearance changes how people treat you,” says Bailenson. “But independent of that, when you perceive yourself in a certain way, you act differently.”
He and Yee call it “the Proteus effect,” after the shape-changing Greek god. The effect of appearance on behavior, they find, carries over from the virtual world to the real one, with intriguing consequences.
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