Can Second Life Make Your First Life Better?
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A Stanford University study shows that people carry over the benefits of their Second Life avatars into their real lives. For example, people with avatars skinnier than their real selves go out and lose weight. The researchers call this the "Proteus effect." You can extrapolate from this to see how complex, granular role-playing games can have positive effects on team dynamics, helping organizations with lots of remote workers or, worse, different parts of the organization located in different parts of the country, heal divisions and even build stronger bridges. Not everyone is convinced. Mike Masnick at TechDirt noted that there are parallels with behavioral studies of violent games among children showing that the effects are temporary and indirect. That research has generally shown that it makes kids emotional, but just for a short period of time -- which would make me wonder how long-term the impacts of seeing these avatars is as well. However, if the goal is to just give you a little burst of motivation to get over some self-doubt or inertia (say, to exercise), then that might not be a bad thing. Either way, the research itself is interesting -- but it's still early. It'll be worth watching what comes out of the research down the road. One of the comments to Masnick's piece made me laugh--someone with apparently absolutely no ability for self-reflection. The guy said that when playing World of Warcraft, he created a female avatar because female characters walk in a more gainly fashion than male avatars in WoW. Why? because my avatar was NOT a representation of why I wanted myself to be. It was a representation fo the character I was playing in a game. No more. (ok, it was also nice eye candy... yes, even rotting festering corpses are made to look like hotties in WoW). I guess it never occurred to Hellsvilla that maybe, just maybe, he suffers from an acute case of self-loathing because he would rather be a woman. Virtual reality as pop-psychology tool? Now, that's a danger worth considering. |
Comments (2)
Had to laugh about the guy in World of Warcraft. When I joined the Xerox Parc MOO MUD in the 1990s, my wife challenged me to create a better character--a female character. Being a Florida Biologist and professor, I was interested in the plight of the Florida Panther. So I created a female Florida Panther character, complete with fleas and a tick on her ear, a nest with two little kits in it near the edge of the water in the everglades and three sidekicks--a mouse, a raccoon, and a Snail Kite. My wife's further challenge was to never have anybody guess I was not female. Had great fun with the character, and people's questions provided me the opportunity to etach others about the Florida Panther.
Posted by Sharkbait | April 30, 2008 11:15 AM
Duuude, your wife is messin' with your mind, LOL. But, gosh, it sounds like you are a natural -- you should consider the possibilities. :)
It turns out the base avatar form in SL is female (all you have to do to get a male is reduce the geomtery in a "few" places and add an "attachment". If you disk does not have enough scratch memory to cache the body and clothing parameter details, when SL comes up your tried and true male avatar can all of a sudden sprout mammaries -- now *that* can be an unwelcome surprise !
Article makes a point about positive benefits of SL migrating back to real life (RL). Frankly, SL is a world where, by and large, the inadequacies and frustrations of RL are whitewashed over with surrogate 'Walter Mitty' fantasies where the less-than-socially-acceptable aspects of one's personality can be realized and consummated.
The bifurcation between SL and RL is all too apparent when you consider the conflicts between spouses in real life caused by virtual spouses and sex partners in SL
I would not be surprised if, over time, virtual "realities" (fantasies/illusions/delusions) will be shown to induce mental illness in the real world. Ya gets what ya pays for, and there is no free lunch, except maybe on your own virtual terms. That, and I am waiting for an SL 'relationship' to be used as the basis for a RL divorce!
Hehe... and you have to PAY Linden Labs to instantiate your own hangups and fetishes !
Posted by Lord Slackwell | April 30, 2008 5:45 PM