What is real?

IMD09120: Collaborative Media

Brian Davison 2011/12

What is real?• Virtual worlds• Social presence• Ethical questions at the real – virtual

boundary• Avatars

Virtual worlds• LambdaMOO• Text-based

community• Virtual house and

gardens• Inhabitants build

and decorate rooms

• Julian Dibbell (1993) A rape in cyberspace

Social presence

• Tu (2002): “the degree of feeling, perception and reaction of being connected to another intellectual entity via Computer Mediated Communication”

Biocca et al, 2001

Biocca’s dimensions• Co-presence

– The degree to which the observer believes he/she is not alone and secluded, their level of peripherally or focally awareness of the other, and their sense of the degree to which the other is peripherally or focally aware of them

• Psychological Involvement– The degree to which the observer allocates focal attention to the other,

empathically senses or responds to the emotional states of the other, and believes that he/she has insight into the intentions, motivation, and thoughts of the other

• Behavioural engagement– The degree to which the observer believes his/her actions are interdependent,

connected to, or responsive to the other and the perceived responsiveness of the other to the observer’s actions

MMORPGs• Virtual geography

• Inhabitants represented by avatars

• Common abilities – chat, teleportation

• Inbuilt roles – eg character classes

• Rules for online world design

World of Warcraft

MMORPGs as living laboratories

• Ducheneaut (2010)• Typical interaction template

1. Level 1 character with limited abilities

2. Player is presented with “quests” (missions) to accomplish.

3. Successful completion of the objectives generates “experience points”

4. At higher levels, quests become increasingly difficult to accomplish alone, reaching a point where a coordinated group of players is required to move further

5. Size of the group required, the length of the quests or dungeons, and the complexity of the encounters make it nearly impossible to succeed with an ad hoc group assembled on the spot, creating the need for more formal and persistent social structures

Constraints on virtual behaviour

• Early work assumed that virtual behaviour would map directly onto real behaviour

• Game variables – eg guild makeup

• Transformed personalities – Bessiere, Seay, and Kiesler (2007) found that WoW players

tended to be more conscientious, extraverted, and less neurotic than they were offline.

• Blurred game boundaries– eg use of thottbot.com for peer support in WoW

Convergence of personalities

• Ducheneaut presents evidence that virtual and real personalities converge over time

• Compare with the adoption of a new role from social psychology

• Conclusion: MMORPGs can be used for psychological investigations, but constraints need to be accounted for.

Second Life

• Unconstrained virtual 3D environment

• Escapism• Real-world

surrogate• Economics

A bit more sinister …• Asymmetric Warfare -

Virtual Training Technology (AW-VTT).

• Training platform for joint, interagency and coalition operations in asymmetric and unconventional warfare, including counter-terrorism, force-protection and missions-other-than-war.

Olive from Forterra (www.forterrainc.com)

Identities in role playing games

• Gee (2003): three interacting types of identity in role-playing games, each of which can affect styles of play and actions within the game

• Real-world identity– How does this affect choice of character - like me or not like me– Which of my real identities shall I reflect

• Virtual identity: the character within the game• Projective identity: my own values and desires

projected on to the virtual character– What sort of ‘person’ should the character be– May want character to reflect values, etc or be completely

different

Anonymity online

• Fantasy worlds• Freedom from real constraints

• Potential source of conflict

• Mr Bungle in LambdaMOO• Dutch Hoorenbeek in SL

Peter Steiner, The New Yorker, July 5, 1993, p. 61

Virtual adultery?

Wall Street Journal,

10 August, 2007

Married to

Controls

Married to

?

Controlled by

Psychological research topics

• Are certain personality types more suited to virtual worlds?

• Do certain personality traits affect VW experience?– need for affiliation, affection, – aggression/aggression avoidance, – self-efficacy, – cognitive ability, – spatial ability, – motor coordination

Mennenke et al. 2008

Sociological research topics

• Is co-presence enhanced in VW and does this affect group behaviour?– decision-making, – interpersonal behaviours, – perceptions of belongingness and group affiliation

• Does the presence of others (as avatars) augment creativity, communication, and decision quality?

Mennenke et al. 2008

Technological research topics

• Is cross-world interoperability possible, and is it desirable?

• How can VW be aligned with other information systems in ways that will facilitate decision making, negotiation, and other collective and individual processes?

• How can the virtual world interface be improved to facilitate participation among more users, and to improve the quality of interaction when using the virtual world?

Mennenke et al. 2008

Short break

Avatars

• Projection of the person into the virtual environment

• Also used to humanise online services

Avatars and trust• Steinbruck et al (2002) have reported a study which

examined the effectiveness of a comparably simple strategy, the inclusion of photographs in an e-bank's website

• They found a significant positive effect on perceived trustworthiness of the examined website

• It is suggested that virtual re-embedding is an effective way to increase customer trust and that it does not even have to be costly to implement.

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Their method

• They built three identical mock-ups of an online bank website– V1: displayed a portrait photo on the welcome page. This was

labelled “custom service agent”– V2 - same photo but no label– V3 - no photo

• 45 subjects were assigned to one of the three conditions• Each took 5 minutes to explore the site and complete two

simulated money transactions, then asked to complete a 30-item trust questionnaire

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Results

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Avatars with hangovers

• Kevin Smart’s Hons. Project (2003)– investigating the nature of trust in virtual

environments– Software as a means of exploration, not an end in

itself

• Body language found to be an important element in establishing trust– fright, happy, sad, frustration, panic, laugh, disgust,

angry, laugh, ill, swear, hungover

Non-verbal communication

Non-vocal, non-verbal (body language)

Gestures

Facial expressions

Proxemics

Tactile behaviour

Gaze

Posture

Vocal, non-verbal (paralinguistics)

Accompanying speech (eg emphasis, volume)

Autonomous forms (eg laughter)

Other non-verbal (clothing, artefacts, etc.)

Short et al, 1976

Reasons for using avatars in CVEs

Identification

User

Role

Status

Group membership

Allmendinger, 2010

Interaction support

Group awareness information (position, focus of attention, activities, etc.)

Communication (gestures, facial expressions, proxemics, etc.)

CVE with avatars Allmendinger, 2010

Virtual teaching spaces

• Edinburgh University Business School in Second Life• Singularity University in Avination

Avatars and honesty

• Steptoe et al. (2010)• Explored lies and truth-telling in avatar mediated

communication (AMC)• Avatars were made to reproduce eye behaviour

• Experiment 1 compared behaviour in AMC and VMC– Blink rate, pupil dilation, mutual gaze

• Experiment 2 compared an observer’s ability to tell truth from lies with or without avatar eye behaviour

Experiment 1 method

• Each participant was paired with a confederate using AMC or VMC

• Confederate asked questions in 5 groups• Participant was instructed either to lie or tell the truth for

each group• Eye tracking equipment was used to record behaviour

Experiment 1

• Independent variables:– Communications medium– Truth or lies

• Dependent variables– Blink rate– Pupil dilation– Gaze behaviour

Experiment 1 results

• Behaviours were comparable in both media– Pupil size (insignificantly) larger for VMC– Blink rate did not show reliable differences– Pupil size significantly larger during lying– Gaze directed at confederate more during lying

Experiment 2 method

• Episodes from experiment 1 were captured with and without avatar eye behaviour

• 3 groups of nine participants• 3 experimental conditions

– Audio and video with oculesic behaviour (ET)– Audio and video without oculesic behaviour (-ET)– Audio only (AO)

• Groups rated clips from 1-7 where 1=always lying and 7=always telling the truth

Experiment 2 results

• The veracity effect accounts for the lower results when the subject is lying

• Tukey tests confirm that the difference between ET and the other conditions is significant

Veracity ET -ET AO

Truth 88% 70% 68%

Deception 48% 39% 34%