Avatars affect real-world sexuality: research

A female gamer’s avatars can have a strong effect on their real-world thoughts regarding sexual objectification and rape, according to a new study from Stanford University.

Researchers at Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab asked the question: do female players who use provocatively dressed avatars begin to see themselves more as objects and less as human beings?

“We often talk about video game violence and how it affects people who play violent video games. I think it’s equally important to think about sexualisation,” said Jeremy Bailenson, the director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab.

Bailenson addressed the Proteus Effect, which would explore how the change in your virtual body affects your real-life body, such as being taller in a game making you more confident in real-life, or being in-shape in your avatar influencing you to exercise more in real-life.

Participants donned helmets that blocked out the real world, immersing them in a virtual world of 3D sight and sound. Their motions were recorded as they moved identically in both worlds,” explains the research report.

Within the virtual world, each participant looked in a virtual mirror and saw herself or another woman, dressed provocatively or conservatively, with her movements in real-life being replicated in the game.

Participants in an experiment in Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab used female avatars in sexualized or non-sexualized dress.

A male accomplice was then introduced into the virtual world to talk to the individual women.

“What seemed like a normal, get-to-know-you conversation was actually an assessment of how much the women viewed themselves as objects,” said the report.

Women “wearing” the sexualized avatars bearing their likenesses talked about their bodies, hair and dress more than women in the other avatars, suggesting that they were thinking of themselves more as objects than as people.

A questionnaire was then given to the participants, with the women rating how much they agreed or disagreed with the statements.

The participants who had worn the sexualized avatars tended to agree with rape myths, such as “rape victims are usually promiscuous”, more than the women who had worn the non-sexualized avatars. Women in sexualized avatars whose faces resembled their own agreed with the myths more than anyone else in the study.

“It changes the way you think about yourself online and offline,” said Bailenson of the effect of sexualised avatars. “It used to be passive and you watched the characters. You now enter the media and become the protagonist. You become the characters.”