The Proteus Effect: How Avatars Influence Their Users’ Self-perception and Behaviour

Praetorius, Anna Samira; Görlich, Daniel

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-68086-2_9

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…SDT has been utilized as a tool for manipulating facets of the self in gaming studies, with most of these studies focusing on some secondary behavioral outcomes such as health behavior and school performance (Jin, 2012; Ratan et al, 2016; Sah et al, 2017). The Proteus effect explains that consumers who engage in virtual environments adapt their behavior to the behavior of their avatar (Praetorius & Görlich, 2021; Yee & Bailenson, 2007), which is evident in video game studies where participants’ avatars are created to match a type of self. For instance, in a study on eating behavior participants who customized their avatar to represent their ought self made similar choices as their avatar when it came to food-related behavior (Sah et al, 2017).…”

Section: Sdtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Me, myself, and my avatar: Self-discrepancy, embodiment, and narrative involvement in gaming experiences.

Devlin,

Ellithorpe,

Gadino

et al. 2024

Psychology of Popular Media

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Section: Sdtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Me, myself, and my avatar: Self-discrepancy, embodiment, and narrative involvement in gaming experiences.

Devlin,

Ellithorpe,

Gadino

et al. 2024

Psychology of Popular Media

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“…Indeed, such processes are defined as the experience of assimilating some of the avatar's characteristics into the user's self-perception (Klimmt et al, 2009). These have previously been presented as potential influences of the Proteus effect (Ratan et al, 2020;Praetorius and Grlich, 2021), however, to our knowledge, no study has currently tested the influence of identification processes within the Proteus effect.…”

Section: H : Embodimentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, most publications on the subject have focused on demonstrating the effect but very few have sought to explore the theoretical explanations of this effect beyond those given by the first publications about the Proteus effect. Although a few recent reviews of the Proteus effect have highlighted this gap in the literature, and sought to address parts of it (Praetorius and Grlich, 2021 ; Szolin et al, 2022 ), these publications did not discuss some of the fundamental shortcomings of the current explanations of the Proteus effect. Indeed, in their systematic review, Szolin et al ( 2022 ) chose to focus on the Proteus effect in the context of video games.…”

Section: Proteus Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This review provided a clear overview of how the Proteus effect can affect players of video games but did not address nor challenge the theoretical understanding of the effect. The review by Praetorius and Grlich ( 2021 ) did however discuss this point. The authors conducted a qualitative analysis of the Proteus effect literature in order to classify the selected studies according to a model of identification processes (Looy et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Proteus Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A theoretical review of the Proteus effect: understanding the underlying processes

Martin Coesel,

Biancardi,

Buisine

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Humans' inherent fascination for stories can be observed throughout most of our documented history. If, for a long time, narratives were told through paintings, songs, or literature, recent technological advances such as immersive virtual reality have made it possible for us to interact with storylines and characters in a completely new manner. With these new technologies came the need to study how people interact with them and how they affect their users. Notably, research in this area has revealed that users of virtual environments tend to display behaviors/attitudes that are congruent with the appearance of the avatars they embody; a phenomenon termed the Proteus effect. Since its introduction in the literature, many studies have demonstrated the Proteus effect in various contexts, attesting to the robustness of the effect. However, beyond the first articles on the subject, very few studies have sought to investigate the social, affective, and cognitive mechanisms underlying the effect. Furthermore, the current literature appears somewhat disjointed with different schools of thought, using different methodologies, contributing to this research topic. Therefore, this work aims to give an overview of the current state of the literature and its shortcomings. It also presents a critical analysis of multiple theoretical frameworks that may help explain the Proteus effect. Notably, this work challenges the use of self-perception theory to explain the Proteus effect and considers other approaches from social psychology. Finally, we present new perspectives for upcoming research that seeks to investigate the effect of avatars on user behavior. All in all, this work aims to bring more clarity to an increasingly popular research subject and, more generally, to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between humans and virtual environments.

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“…Through interactions with the environment and other users, avatars convey a sense of presence and enable identification with the embodied character's identity [9]. Avatars, as virtual representations of a user or player, can influence behaviour [26] and cause identity shifts [13]. These influences can be used to promote altruistic behaviour [29], reduce fears [30], improve mood [24] and cognitive performance [5], raise environmental awareness [1], and reduce prejudice [25], [21], [23], [4] and [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

User-Avatar Relationships in Various Contexts

Praetorius

Krautmacher

Tullius

et al. 2021

Mensch Und Computer 2021

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Avatars are in use when interacting in virtual environments in different contexts, in collaborative work, as well as in gaming and also in virtual meetings with friends. Therefore it is important to understand how the relationship between user and avatar works. In this study, an online survey is used to determine how the perception of an avatar changes in different contexts by relating it to existing avatar relationship typologies. Additionally, it is determined whether in each context a realistic, abstract or comic-like representation is preferred by the participants. One result was a preference of low poly representations in the work context, which are associated with the perception of the avatar as a tool. In the context of meeting friends, a realistic representation is perceived as more appropriate, which is perceived as an accurate self-representation. In the gaming context, the results are less clear, which can be attributed to different gaming preferences. Here, unlike in the other contexts, a comic-like representation is also perceived as appropriate, which is associated with the perception of the avatar as a friend. A symbiotic user-avatar relationship is not directly related to any form of representation, but always lies in the midfield, which is attributed to the fact that it represents a whole spectrum between other categories. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts and models.

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The Proteus Effect: How Avatars Influence Their Users’ Self-perception and Behaviour

Cited by 9 publications

References 27 publications

Me, myself, and my avatar: Self-discrepancy, embodiment, and narrative involvement in gaming experiences.

Me, myself, and my avatar: Self-discrepancy, embodiment, and narrative involvement in gaming experiences.

A theoretical review of the Proteus effect: understanding the underlying processes

User-Avatar Relationships in Various Contexts

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