Attractive Avatars Research Articles

What is beautiful is good: attractive avatars for healthier dining and satisfaction

PurposeAs technology increasingly integrates into the restaurant industry, avatar servers present a promising avenue for promoting healthier dining habits. Grounded in the halo effect theory and social comparison theory, this study aims to delve into the influence of avatars' appearance, humor and persuasion on healthier choices and customer satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachThis paper comprises three experimental studies. Study 1 manipulates avatar appearance (supermodel-looking vs normal-looking) to examine its effects on perceived attractiveness, warmth and relatability. These factors influence customer satisfaction and healthy food choices through the psychological mechanisms of social comparison and aspirational appeal. Studies 2 and 3 further refine this theoretical model by assessing the interplay of appearance with humor (presence vs absence) and persuasion (health-oriented vs beauty-oriented), respectively.FindingsResults suggest that avatars resembling supermodels evoke stronger aspirational appeal and positive social comparison due to their attractiveness, thus bolstering healthier choices and customer satisfaction. Moreover, humor moderates the relationship between appearance and attractiveness, while persuasion moderates the effects of appearance on social comparison and aspirational appeal.Research limitations/implicationsThis research bridges the halo effect theory and social comparison theory, offering insights enriching the academic discourse on technology’s role in hospitality.Practical implicationsThe findings provide actionable insights for managers, tech developers and health advocates.Originality/valueDespite its significance, avatar design research in the hospitality sector has been overlooked. This study addresses this gap, offering a guideline for crafting attractive and persuasive avatars.

E-Learning System using Mashup based e-Learning Content Collection and an Attractive Avatar in OpenSimulator

Mashup based e-learning content collection and provide system with an attractive avatar in OpenSimulator is proposed for making learning processes attractive and finding the students week points through learning processes with avatar. Through experiments with under graduated students, it is found that the proposed e-learning system is useful for the under graduated students. The students may find their week points through learning processes. Avatar provides the questions of the student’s week subjects. The students can enjoy the communications with their avatar. Therefore, the students have the most appropriate e-learning content which provided by the mashup based information retrievals and have lessons with their own avatar attractively using the proposed e-learning system.

Ways of (Virtual) Seeing: Applying a Bergerian Lens in a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE)

Ways of (Virtual) Seeing: Applying a Bergerian Lens in a Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE)

Exploring the Effect of Avatar Trust on Learners’ Perceived Participation Intentions in an e-Learning Environment

With continued advancements in Web technology, e-learning systems have emerged as an effective venue in which learners can interact with online contents and they are often equipped with avatar instructors in lieu of human instructors. In this case, avatar trust, the learners’ perceived trust in the avatar instructor, plays an important role in learners’ perceived intentions to participate in the e-learning activities. We assumed that social presence positively affects participation intention (PI) through avatar trust. The main purpose of this study is to empirically validate this hypothesis. Using two types of avatars as a moderating factor, our hypothesis was tested against 200 valid questionnaires. We found that social presence had a statistically significant influence on perceived PI through avatar trust, and that an attractive avatar type sheds stronger moderating effect on paths between social presence and avatar trust, and path between trust and participation than does an expert avatar type.

THE EFFECTS OF AVATAR ON TRUST AND PURCHASE INTENTION OF FEMALE ONLINE CONSUMER: CONSUMER KNOWLEDGE AS A MODERATOR

Recent studies of online consumer trust have focused on trust in either a Web site or an online retailer. However, customer attitude may differ by the type of avatar, because customer trust can be cognitive or emotional. Moreover, customers may depend on their own product knowledge for judgment and decision-making. An online survey of female consumers with two scenarios about skin care products was conducted, and 599 responses were used to test the research hypotheses. The result indicates that avatars can indeed increase customer trust in e-commerce. It also finds that different types of avatar elicit different types of customer trust. Customers have higher cognitive trust in the expert avatar than in the attractive one, and customers have higher emotional trust in the attractive avatar than in the expert avatar. It was also found that an avatar is effective for customers with either knowledge or low product knowledge, while the effect of the type of avatar on trust is stronger for customers with high product knowledge. The effect of emotional trust on purchase intention is stronger than that of cognitive trust. For cosmetic skin care products, attractiveness may be more important than expertise factors when designing the avatar for an online retailer, and an attractive avatar may be the reference point of consumer's ideal vision of herself. To cite this document: Huei-Shan Lee, Pi-Chuan Sun, Tzong-Shyuan Chen, and Ying-Jie Jhu, The effects of avatar on trust and purchase intention of female online consumer: Consumer knowledge as a moderator, International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, Vol.6, No.1, pp.99-118, 2015. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijecs.1395

It's Not Easy Trying to be One of the Guys: The Effect of Avatar Attractiveness, Avatar Sex, and User Sex on the Success of Help-Seeking Requests in an Online Game

Interactions in online environments are influenced by many of the same gender and sex-role stereotypes that people use in offline interactions. However, less research has examined systematically how the traits of an avatar and the avatar's user interact to influence stereotypical responses in virtual spaces. A field experiment manipulated avatar attractiveness, avatar sex, user sex, and favor difficulty to measure responses to a requested favor across 2,300 interactions in an online game. Attractive avatars received more help than less attractive avatars, but female users received less help than male users when represented by avatars that were less attractive or male.

The contrast effect with avatars

Kenrick and Gutierres (1980) found that participants exposed to attractive women would later rate an average-looking woman as less attractive compared to participants who had not been exposed to the attractive women. Because of the increase in our use of technology and computer programs utilizing avatars, two experiments were conducted to determine whether this contrast effect would occur when participants were presented with attractive avatars. Participants were told that they were in a study interested in first impressions and they were asked to rate images on a number of characteristics, including attractiveness. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with either three attractive or three unattractive avatars and then one photograph of an average-looking woman. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with either three attractive or three unattractive male or female avatars and rated a photograph of a man or woman, respectively. In both experiments, participants exposed to the attractive avatars rated the woman as significantly less attractive compared to the participants exposed to the unattractive avatars.

Children and adults use attractiveness as a social cue in real people and avatars

Observing social interactions between children and adults is a major method in the toolkit of psychologists who examine social development and social relationships. Although this method has revealed many interesting phenomena, it cannot determine the effect of behavior independent of other traits. Research on the role of attractiveness in social development provides an example of this conundrum: Are attractive and unattractive children/adults treated differently because of their attractiveness (independent of their behavior), do they behave differently and thus elicit differential treatment, or both? Virtual world and avatar-based technologies allow researchers to control the social behaviors of targets; however, whether children and adults use the facial attractiveness of avatars as a social cue in the same way as they do with real peers is currently unknown. Using Mii avatars from the popular Nintendo Wii video game console, Study 1 found that the facial attractiveness ratings of real people strongly predicted the attractiveness ratings of avatar faces based on the former group. Study 2 revealed that adults (n=46) and children (n=42) prefer attractive avatars as social partners. The results of this set of methodological studies may help to clarify future research on the relationship between attractiveness and behavior throughout the lifespan. Furthermore, the use of avatars may allow studies to experimentally examine the effects of attractiveness in situations where such research is not ethical (e.g., peer victimization).

The effects of avatar appearance on interviewer ratings in virtual employment interviews

It is increasingly common for people engaging in computer–mediated interactions to be accompanied by a digital avatar that represents them. Little is known, however, about how these avatars influence others’ impressions. We examine this question in the context of employment interviews. It is well known that attractive job candidates are afforded an advantage in traditional face-to-face job interviews. We investigate whether raters evaluating computer–mediated interviews will follow a similar pattern when a digital avatar represents the candidate. To investigate this question, we asked 374 raters to view an interview transcript that was accompanied by either a male or female avatar, applying for either a male or female gender-typed job. We found that candidates with more attractive avatars received more favorable interview ratings, regardless of job gender type. These findings support the notion that the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype influences interview ratings even in computer-mediated interviews; raters automatically apply the same heuristics to digital and non-digital faces.

The Proteus Effect in Dyadic Communication

An original experiment explored the differing predictions of the Proteus effect (Yee & Bailenson) and behavioral compensation processes (Bond) in dyadic computer-mediated interaction. The experiment randomly assigned male dyad members to see an attractive, unattractive, or no avatar representation of his female partner, while female dyad members were assigned to see either attractive, unattractive, or no avatar representation of themselves. Results supported the hypothesized behavioral compensation effect such that both partner and naïve observer reports of relational communication suggested that females who saw unattractive avatars of themselves behaved more positively toward their partners than those who saw no avatar or saw an attractive avatar. These results, their theoretical implications, and future directions are discussed.

My avatar and me – Gender and personality predictors of avatar-self discrepancy

This study examined the influence of gender, the Big 5 personality factors, and self-esteem on virtual self-representation in the form of avatar-self discrepancy. To examine this, participants designed characters to play in a video game, spent 20 min playing the video game, and then had their actual pictures taken. Our results indicated that, consistent with predictions, men and women generally selected self-representations consistent with ideal male and female bodies. This finding was pronounced for men and women high in agreeableness. Conversely, some results contradicted the normative prescriptions often associated with self-presentation. For instance, men did not build taller avatars than did women. Men who were high in openness to new experiences were more likely to select avatars with skin tone variations. Introverts – both male and female – and women high in neuroticism were more likely to build attractive avatars. Moreover, those with low self-esteem were more likely to select lighter skin tones than those with high self-esteem. Thus, the effects of gender and personality have considerable implications for online self-presentation and self-representation.

The effects of Avatars’ Gender and Appearance on Social Behavior in Online 3D Virtual Worlds

In this article, we investigate the effects of avatars’ appearance on user sociability in 3D virtual worlds. In particular, we study gender and appearance differences in social communication preferences and behavior in virtual public spaces. For this purpose, we have employed the virtual ethnographic method, which is an adaptation of traditional ethnography for the study of cyberspace. Although we only employed nine users who used four different avatars, we observed a cumulative of more than two hundreds social encounters. We found that users with more elaborate avatars had a higher success rate in their social encounters, than those users with the default avatars. Most notably, female users selected to speak with male avatars much more frequently, when using the attractive avatar, which indicates a self-confidence effect induced by the appearance of the personal avatar.

The Difference Between Being and Seeing: The Relative Contribution of Self-Perception and Priming to Behavioral Changes via Digital Self-Representation

Studies in the Proteus Effect (N. Yee & J. Bailenson, 2007) have shown that the appearance of avatars (i.e., digital representations of ourselves) can lead to behavioral changes in users. For example, participants in attractive avatars became friendlier to confederate strangers than participants in unattractive avatars. While the Proteus Effect is premised on self-perception theory (D. Bem, 1972)—the notion that we infer our own attitudes by observing ourselves as if from a third party—it is also possible that the previous findings were caused by priming (i.e., behavioral assimilation; J. Bargh, M. Chen, & L. Burrows, 1996). In our study, we used immersive virtual environment technology to experimentally tease apart embodiment from perception of the same visual stimulus. Our results showed that embodiment produced significantly larger behavioral changes than mere observation of the same visual stimuli. These findings support the claim that our avatars provide a unique lever to behavioral change; however, more work is needed to pin down the exact mechanism behind the effect.

The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior

Virtual environments, such as online games and web-based chat rooms, increasingly allow us to alter our digital self-representations dramatically and easily. But as we change our self-representations, do our self-representations change our behavior in turn? In 2 experimental studies, we explore the hypothesis that an individual’s behavior conforms to their digital self-representation independent of how others perceive them—a process we term the Proteus Effect. In the first study, participants assigned to more attractive avatars in immersive virtual environments were more intimate with confederates in a self-disclosure and interpersonal distance task than participants assigned to less attractive avatars. In our second study, participants assigned taller avatars behaved more confidently in a negotiation task than participants assigned shorter avatars. We discuss the implications of the Proteus Effect with regards to social interactions in online environments.

The Influence of Avatars on Online Consumer Shopping Behavior

An impediment to Web-based retail sales is the impersonal nature of Web-based shopping. A solution to this problem is to use an avatar to deliver product information. An avatar is a graphic representation that can be animated by means of computer technology. Study 1 shows that using an avatar sales agent leads to more satisfaction with the retailer, a more positive attitude toward the product, and a greater purchase intention. Study 2 shows that an attractive avatar is a more effective sales agent at moderate levels of product involvement, but an expert avatar is a more effective sales agent at high levels of product involvement.

The Influence of Avatars on Online Consumer Shopping Behavior

An impediment to Web-based retail sales is the impersonal nature of Web-based shopping. A solution to this problem is to use an avatar to deliver product information. An avatar is a graphic representation that can be animated by means of computer technology. Study 1 shows that using an avatar sales agent leads to more satisfaction with the retailer, a more positive attitude toward the product, and a greater purchase intention. Study 2 shows that an attractive avatar is a more effective sales agent at moderate levels of product involvement, but an expert avatar is a more effective sales agent at high levels of product involvement.

On the Relationship between My Avatar and Myself

What is the relationship between avatars and the people they represent in terms of appearance and behavior? In this paper, we hypothesize that people (balancing motives of self-verification and self-enhancement) customize the image of their avatars to bear similarity to their real selves, but with moderate enhancements. We also hypothesize that virtual-world behavior (due to deindividuation in computer-mediated communication environments) is less restrained by normal inhibitions than real-world behavior. Lastly, we hypothesize that people with more attractive avatars than their real selves will be somewhat more confident and extraverted in virtual worlds than they are in the real world. 
 We examine these issues using data collected from Second Life residents using an in-world intercept method that involved recruiting respondents’ avatars from a representative sample of locations. Our quantitative data indicate that, on average, people report making their avatars similar to themselves, but somewhat more attractive. And, compared to real-world behavior, respondents indicate that their virtual-world behavior is more outgoing and risk-taking and less thoughtful/more superficial. Finally, people with avatars more attractive than their real selves state that they are more outgoing, extraverted, risk-taking, and loud than their real selves (particularly if they reported being relatively low on these traits in the real world). Qualitative data from open-ended questions corroborate our hypotheses.