In the first study to use avatars to prime negative responses in a desktop virtual setting, Jorge Peña, assistant professor in the College of Communication, demonstrated that the subtext of an avatar's appearance can simultaneously prime negative (or anti-social) thoughts and inhibit positive (or pro-social) thoughts inconsistent with the avatar's appearance. All of this while study participants remained unaware they had been primed. The study, co-written with Cornell University Professor Jeffrey T. Hancock and University of Texas at Austin graduate student Nicholas A. Merola, appears in the December 2009 issue of Communication Research.
In two separate experiments, research participants were randomly assigned a dark- or white-cloaked avatar, or to avatars wearing physician or Ku Klux Klan-like uniforms or a transparent avatar. The participants were assigned tasks including writing a story about a picture, or playing a video game on a virtual team and then coming to consensus on how to deal with infractions.
Consistently, participants represented by an avatar in a dark cloak or a KKK-like uniform demonstrated negative or anti-social behavior in team situations and in individual writing assignments.
Previous studies have demonstrated these uniform types to have negative effects on people's behaviors in face-to-face interactions. For example, Cornell researchers Mark Frank and Tom Gilovich showed that dark uniforms influence professional sports teams to play more aggressively on the playing field and in the laboratory. Peña's research demonstrates how these effects operate in desktop-based video games, and sheds light on the automatic cognitive processes that explain this effect.
"When you step into a virtual environment, you can potentially become 'Mario' or whatever other character you are portraying," said Peña, who studies how humans think, behave and feel online. "Oftentimes, the connotations of our own virtual character will subtly remind us of common stereotypes, such as 'bad guys wear black or dress up in hooded robes.' This association may surreptitiously steer users to think and behave more antisocially, but also inhibit more pro-social thoughts and responses in a virtual environment."
According to Peña, these findings can be particularly useful to video game and combat simulation developers.
"By manipulating the appearance of the avatar, you can augment the probability of people thinking and behaving in predictable ways without raising suspicion," said Peña. "Thus, you can automatically make a virtual encounter more competitive or cooperative by simply changing the connotations of one's avatar."
Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110211037.htm
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- recommended by:
- pjacobs51,
- Vierotchka
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- pjacobs51
- added this
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that's a pretty interesting article...i was just thinking how i wish i could change mine every day, but that it would probably be annoying...
i think my fav avatar on current is bansheewails...with the soccer ball to the face :)
anyone else have a favorite?
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- jeffissleeping
- 9 days ago
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Damn straight! I think I am Thor 90% of the time.
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I like Neocongo's. It looks like Will Ferrel taking a hit off a joint.
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- isnamthere
- 9 days ago
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I like mine it looks kind of Evil in a way.
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bansheewail definitely has a great avatar, and I love hunzedogs patriotic bong :) oh oh and JulianCommongold's Stop Saying Words.... Delia looks like she is talkin to you .. love that... so many interesting avatars...
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I can remember playing video games and playing against a sports team with darker colored uniforms (like in a gameboy game) so that you would feel as if it were personal, and you would be playing against the bad guy team.
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- ColossalView
- 9 days ago
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indubitably
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The Kenny-mo-con does tend to inspire me to maraud down from the highlands and kill the English. ( I tend to regard that response in a favorable light.) "Freedom"!
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Uh-oh, I must be showing my "dark side"
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- 2hellnwait
- 9 days ago
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I like articles that explain why I'm an asshole, hahaha.
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I like my avatar.
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I love EmperorThan's avatar. I giggle everytime I see it :) Good stuff.
http://current.com/users/EmperorThan.htm -
Not sure why I chose an avatar with the words "stop saying words" on it.
Especially since this is a site devoted to saying words....hm
something subliminal?
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- JulianCommongold
- 9 days ago
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I like the WhiteNoise avatar. If anyone is going to upend the government he's going to have that "Billy Jack" look, like JFWilliam.
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Who doesn't know Ólafur Arnalds?
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hmmm
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- lordsbassman
- 9 days ago
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why arent i in there (sob
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- evilliberalbastard
- 9 days ago
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What about a simple picture of yourself? Would that be too narcissistic, not imaginative or representative of our power animal? Ha.
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- drewsuf721
- 9 days ago
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LOL...you people aren't right!! I love this page!!! And my bird ;) She is mY avatar <G>
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- Glock_Gurl
- 9 days ago
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I once heard that a picture may contain up to 1,000 words to describe it. I guess it applies to an avatar it self.
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Current was the first place I used an avatar. I decided to use a picture, I captured at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The sun light was shining through the trees and appeared to be causing a ripple. I generally try to shine a light on cannabis facts, hoping to cause a ripple, leading to a wave.
When I first started trying to make a difference, I used the pen name 'One Lonely Voice Speaking for Millions'. Here I am all these many years later and still trying. Thanks to sites like current.com and HuffingtonPost I'm not so lonely any more. Others are joining the conversation daily and I 'hope' we are making a difference.
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I dig pjacobs 51's avatar because it reminds me of the original early 1960s intro into the Outer Limits TV series. That pioneering sci fi series was one of the " big 3 " which started in the mid 1950s with World Vision's One Step Beyond, then progressed to Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, and culminated with the Outer Limits. All using black & white photography. The Twilight Zone has been such a smash hit, it was redone in 1986 in color, and again more recently with Forrest Whitacre as narrator. But the Outer Limits has only been redone once in color. It's a guaranteed mindblower too, with it's episodes running from 1995 through the early years of the millenium. And they kept the original intro. "Please do not adjust your TV screen. We are now in control of all you see, We can adjust the verticle. Or the horizontal. We can magnify all you see to deluge you with a thousand immages, or reduce it to only one of crystal clarity. So sit back and relax as we take you from the innermost recesses of the human mind to- the Outer Limits. Please stand by... " That little core in the center of his avatar is a dead giveaway that the TV was invented to accomplish mass hypnosis and social controll. The first TV broadcast was of a baseball game in 1939 before WW2 broke out. George Orwell's novel 1984 was published in 1943. My generation was the 1st TV generation. My college degree is in Psychology, so I've had a looong time to study its effects on brainwashing people to mind control them to repeat like parrots anything a manipulative announcer wants them to echo. Like that Roddy Piper movie of the late 1980s, if you could computer filter each second of digital TV, like Cloe in the Watchtower of the Justice League from Smallville,.and expand it to 24 frames to consciously witness what your unconscious mind can subliminaly perceive, you'd probably see Corporate messages like: " buy more stuff as fast as you can" , and "waste all you don't immediately use" followed by "CONSUME". Unlike Piper's movie "They live" those subliminal messages aren't likely as far out as aliens from another Galaxy programing humans. But the Corporate TV takeover of the American way of life is as alien to it as the founding fathers designed the USA to be. Connipae and White Noise have delivered documented facts supporting my understanding of the pattern of Corporate TV's cultural sunami effects on our way of thinking. Being a Psyche student, I know better than to allow myself to be mind controlled by gredo clowns. I suscribe to echostar(Dish) satellite TV. I mostly turn on the TV to listen to satelite radio. So I will always have the last laugh on Big Brother. Also from 1939. (Pay no attention to the man behind the screen. I'm still the great and powerful Wizzard of Oz !!! ) Suuuure he is. As they used to say in the 1930s "theater of the mind" serial radio plays:" Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men ? " , "The Shadow knows" (The Shadow, as a crime fighter, possessed the power to cloud people's minds through hypnosis to make himself invisible so that he could function as a noir detective).
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HMMMM.
Interesting.
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I think I liked mine because
1) L fuckin' rules
2) People thought I was a dude before I revealed my pic. Love misinformation.
Although, I really like,
Ocanada's http://current.com/users/ocanada.htm
Current89's http://current.com/users/current89.htm
And RojoGatto's http://current.com/users/RojoGatto.htm
They make me smile everytime I see them.
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I like all of the constant changes in my avatar, its interesting, heh, I like representation of avatars.....!~
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- metalcookiesxy70
- 9 days ago
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