The Proteus Effect in Dyadic Communication

Abstract

An original experiment explored the differing predictions of the Proteus effect (Yee & Bailenson) and behavioral compensation processes (Bond) in dyadic computer-mediated interaction. The experiment randomly assigned male dyad members to see an attractive, unattractive, or no avatar representation of his female partner, while female dyad members were assigned to see either attractive, unattractive, or no avatar representation of themselves. Results supported the hypothesized behavioral compensation effect such that both partner and naïve observer reports of relational communication suggested that females who saw unattractive avatars of themselves behaved more positively toward their partners than those who saw no avatar or saw an attractive avatar. These results, their theoretical implications, and future directions are discussed.

Remotely Perceived: Investigating the Influence of Valence on Self-Perception and Social Experience for Dyadic Video-Conferencing With Personalized Avatars

“…Star indicates statistical significance < 0.05 against the reference value "4". scores were correlated with Ownership scores (respectively r 0.55, p 0.04 and r 0.67, p < 0.01), which is consistent with the literature (Heide et al, 2013).…”

“…Studies in immersive virtual environments have indicated that there are correlations in avatar attractiveness and reported friendliness (Yee and Bailenson, 2009) which informed our exploration in this domain. Similar research has demonstrated the antithetical effect of negative valence and aggressive reaction (Peña et al, 2009), while our approach was also justified by evidence for manifest behavior changes following avatar based self-concept alteration (Heide et al, 2013), also termed the Proteus Effect (Yee and Rickertsen, 2007).…”

“…Because the scores of enfacement were relatively low for the avatar in the Pilot, we hypothesized that removing the avatar representation of the conversation partner (factor Partner Representation) would encourage participants in engaging more with their avatar and therefore increase their sense of enfacement toward it. Because Proteus Effect is commonly associated with the sense of embodiment (Heide et al, 2013;Ratan et al, 2020), we also expected Proteus scores to be impacted by the representation of the conversation partner.…”

“…Avatar studies in Virtual Environments (VEs) have empirically validated self-avatar influences on cognitive load (Steed et al, 2016), pain modulation (Romano et al, 2014) and perceptions of self-concept (Yee and Bailenson, 2007a;Heide et al, 2013). These specific applications of avatarinteraction science have been developed from a volume of work which has attempted to define the qualitative feeling of being a virtual self-representation of oneself; the Sense of Embodiment (SoE).…”

Customizing Your Demons: Anxiety Reduction via Anthropomorphizing and Destroying an “Anxiety Avatar”

“…Customization contributes to self-avatar congruence by allowing customized objects (e.g., avatars) to reflect desired aspects of the user's identity (Franke et al, 2010;Kim and Sundar, 2012). This heightened congruence, enabled via customization, has been shown to positively influence attitudes (Van Der Heide et al, 2013) and overall well-being (Fox et al, 2009).…”