Sunday, June 1, 2008

A few observations on Avatar vs. Human test results

First, thanks to everyone who participated! Although I thought it might provide some interesting data, my purpose in throwing this out was as much to encourage people to spend a few moments self-reflexively experiencing each identity. I'd be very interested to hear any insights the experience itself provided.

Although the haphazard methodology and tiny sample size don't allow for any authoritative conclusions, the higher extroversion scores for avatars were fairly significant and consistent as visualized by the chart below.

EXTROVERSION CHART

If real research were done through this modality, it would be interesting to see difference between sub-categories of participants. For instance:
  • Subcultures such as Furries vs. Extropians (are there any furry Extropians?)
  • Casual users vs. those who spend 20+ or 40+ hours per week
  • Business users vs. personal users
  • Human gender including same-sex and cross-sex avatars
If you have any good ideas to add to the list, please post them to the comments section.

3 comments:

  1. This is quite fascinating. The results seem to jive with my impressions of my avatar's habits. I suspect another category of investigation might be to compare results between those who try to make their avatar as close to their RL counterpart as possible, versus those who depart widely (e.g. different hair, body, sex or species!)

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  2. I agree with Arminas. It would be interesting to see how much those who try to reflect their FL personas might actually differ here, and likewise to what extent those of us who split apart actually stay close to their FL mannerisms.

    Furry Extropians, eh? Do nekos consider themselves furry? If not, which may be the case, then no, none yet. We do have mermaids in the citizenry, though! :)

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  3. It might be intersting to see if there are differences by other RL demographic variables -- e.g. age, country of residence/origin, education, etc.

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A beautiful thought experiment personified through the imagined perspective of a self-aware avatar. My creator's site can is at http://fourworlds.tumblr.com