Me, myself and I: The role of interactional context on self-presentation through avatars

Maria Michelle Baldazo

July 31, 2018

Vasalou, A., & Joinson, A. N. (2009). Me, myself and I: The role of interactional context on self-presentation through avatars. Computers in human behavior, 25(2), 510-520.

Sumamry:

In this article, the researchers investigate the characteristic choice of an avatar by seventy-one participants (23 female, 48 male) who were enrolled at a UK university. The participants were directed to first choose between one of three conditions, blogging, dating, or game purpose of an avatar. Then they created the avatar there were different observations between the three categories. After creating the avatar they were asked to fill out a questionnaire and then conducted a post-interview. The blogging condition was more likely to be correlated with “accuracy” which were three features, participants used self-preferences when creating the avatar. For example the favorite color, if they liked wearing caps, or hobbies they might like. The life happening were used such as past experience, anticipated events or memories. The other feature was desired life changes also affected the avatar creation for example having a future pet. Many of the participants even used the background setting based on their individual likes. For example, one female participant used the setting of a cabin for her avatar due to her future hopes is to have a home in a wooden area. The dating condition showed the push for a more romantic display visually. They would use their more romantic personal qualities and just intentionally put them on display. There was a participant who liked to ballroom dance and placed his avatar with the background of a ballroom. There was one more extreme of the participants depicted her avatar with a “sexy beach body”. The gaming conditioning was broken up into 4 different ways, self-presentation, self-representation, accordance to game style, and customization options. The self-presentation was not altered based on anything just similar to their own “accuracy”. The self-representation was similar to the self-presentation only a little bit smarter, faster, or stronger. Accordance to game style was also seen when creating the avatar, this was more aligned to the game, for example the background being blended into the game, or the customary depiction of a detective. The customization options targeted was to focus on game strategies for example to distract the other players in order to win. The findings suggested (Vasalou & Joinson, 2009), “that avatars are used to express stable aspects of their owners”. As well as, the self-representation increased self-awareness when participants created their own avatars.

Response:

I thought the study was interesting and insightful. I really appreciated the free choice of the three different purposes of the avatars. This was the first article that really gave me a better understanding of the avatar creation which to me at first had never even had second thoughts about. The different perspectives and examples of the participants was clear and easy to understand. The researchers using both qualitative and quantitative methods allow for a better in-depth explanation of the how and why of the creation.