Abstract
Modern computer-based applications often require the user to interact with avatars. Depending on the task at hand, spatial dissociation between the orientations of the user and the avatars might arise. As a consequence, the user has to adopt the avatar’s perspective and identify herself/himself with the avatar, possibly changing the user’s self-representation in the process. The present study aims to identify the conditions that benefit this change of perspective with objective performance measures and subjective self-estimations by integrating the idea of avatar-ownership into the cognitive phenomenon of spatial compatibility. Two different instructions were used to manipulate a user’s perceived ownership of an avatar in otherwise identical situations. Users with the high-ownership instruction reported higher levels of perceived ownership of the avatar and showed larger spatial compatibility effects from the avatar’s point of view in comparison to the low ownership instruction. This supports the hypothesis that perceived ownership benefits perspective taking.
Highlights
When we are confronted with avatars in the virtual world, we often have to adopt their perspective in order to complete our task
The high ownership instruction resulted in significantly higher values of self-reported ownership compared to the low ownership instruction
We conclude that the manipulation was successful. Overall this supports the idea that top–down processes influence perceived ownership
Summary
When we are confronted with avatars in the virtual world, we often have to adopt their perspective in order to complete our task. Avatars are used to represent the user in the digital world and the user is able to interact with the virtual world through the avatar In both situations, seeing the world through the avatar’s eyes can be useful to plan actions or to interpret the actions of others. This process, referred to as visual perspective taking (PT), was observed in various situations and toward a large variety of targets. While we are generally able to identify objects as non-human, we still tend to attribute human-like agency and mental states to them (Heider and Simmel, 1944) This agency attribution seems to aide visual PT (Zwickel, 2009). Our goal was to take a closer look at how this avatar is interpreted and how this interpretation can benefit or inhibit PT in a top–down manner
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