Female Avatars Research Articles

Avatar Gender and Ethical Choices in Fable III

This study investigates how players make ethical decisions in Fable III, a video game, with consideration to avatar gender. Thirty males, 18 to 34 years old, were recruited; 20 were assigned to play Fable III, with half assigned to play as a male avatar (Condition 1), and half assigned as a female avatar (Condition 2). Any ethical thinking skills and thought processes used were identified using a researcher-developed coding scheme. Analysis suggests that all game players, regardless of avatar gender, practiced ethical thinking—35 skills and 19 thought processes were identified and categorized. There were few differences found between conditions; however, when gender was a salient factor in a decision, this affected ethical decisions more frequently. Those in Condition 1 more frequently reported a personal connection to their avatar, and Condition 2 participants reported that gender factored into decisions more at the beginning of the game rather than at the end.

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 Stoic Male

Men are more reluctant to seek help for their problems than women. This difference is attributed to social expectations regarding the male gender role. Today, help-seeking is moving online: instead of traditional peer groups and counselors, people depend on online communities and e-counselors. But online users can appear in guises that differ from their physical sex. An empirical study was conducted in an online game to examine whether users’ avatars’ gender influences how they seek and receive help. Analysis is based on user-to-user communications and back-end data. Results indicate that male avatars are less likely to receive sought-for help than female avatars and more likely to be the recipients of indirectly sought help. The authors conclude that avatar gender influences help seeking independent of physical sex: Men overcome their inhibition for help seeking when using female avatars. Practitioners should ensure that means for indirect help seeking are available in order not to exclude male-pattern help seekers.

Prosocial behaviour in avatar‐mediated interaction: the influence of character gender on material versus emotional help‐giving

PurposeResearch on prosocial behaviour shows that help‐giving differs between the sexes. Gender role theory posits that males specialise in material aid, while females specialize in emotional support. Today, people increasingly help and support each other via online environments. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the genders of avatars used in online interactions influence help‐giving behaviour in similar ways as physical sex does in face‐to‐face situations.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical study was conducted using a unique observational data set from a Japanese massively‐multiplayer online game. Instances of help‐giving were identified from conversation logs, coded, and analysed statistically to discover differences between male and female avatars and different help types.FindingsAvatar gender is found to influence help‐giving in ways that deviate from expected gender roles: female avatars are more likely than males to provide assistance in the form of material support and labour, and no more likely than males to provide emotional support. Female avatars are more likely to give help to male avatars than other females. The results are explained using behavioural confirmation and self‐perception theory.Research limitations/implicationsPhysical sex was not controlled for, but most players were male. The study should be repeated in other environments.Practical implicationsThe results suggest that designers can prime users towards prosocial behaviours by tuning the available line‐up of avatars.Originality/valueThe research question and use of observational data are novel. The study is valuable to online educators, companies seeking to reduce customer support costs through peer help, and policymakers dealing with ICTs and societal change.

Generalized Bayesian inference in a fuzzy context: From theory to a virtual reality application

A generalized Bayesian inference framework in order to embed fuzzy sets and partial probabilistic information is provided. The general framework of reference is that of coherent conditional probabilities, which allows giving a rigorous interpretation of membership function as a conditional probability, regarded as a function of the conditioning event. The inferential problem needs to be studied in situations where the prior can be partial; moreover, membership and prior can be given on different classes of events. This inferential model is applied for the virtual representation of a female avatar.

Simulation and Measurement of Dynamic On-Body Communication Channels

A study is presented of wireless on-body communication links, with the body in motion. This paper compares simulations and measurements of the path gain (PG) on moving male and female bodies. Simulations using avatars derived from an animation software have been performed at 2.45 GHz. Male and female avatars walking and a male rising from a chair have been simulated and the results are compared with measurements carried out in an anechoic chamber. The results show that good agreement between simulation and measurement of slow fading features can be achieved for a reasonable computational effort.

An Integrated Framework for Avatar Data Collection from the Virtual World: A Case Study in Second Life

Hundreds of thousands of people from different physical locations can join virtual worlds whenever they want to interact with each other and create objects in a computer-based simulated environment, typically in an interactive 3D format. The rich social media data generated in virtual worlds has important implications for business, education, social science, and society at large. However, how to collect such social media data is a relatively unexplored topic and remains an issue. In this study, we developed an integrated framework combining both bot-based and spider-based approaches to collect avatar behavioral and profile data. Following the proposed framework, we conducted a case study to examine avatar action differences between the two genders as well as between young-aged and old-aged avatars. The results of the case study indicated that in general male avatars tended to perform more active physical actions than female avatars, and young-aged avatars tended to perform more active physical actions than old-aged avatars.

Avatar-Mediated Training in the Delivery of Bad News in a Virtual World

Delivering bad news to patients is an essential communication skill for physicians. Educators commonly use standardized patient (SP) encounters to train physicians in the delivery of bad news. It is expensive to use actors, for logistical reasons such as travel and scheduling, and there are limits to the characters and conditions an actor can portray in teaching encounters. Thus we studied the feasibility of creating SP avatars in a virtual world for the task of training medical trainees to deliver bad news. The SP avatars are easily customized for different scenarios and amenable to distance learning. We recruited 10 medical trainees to interact with a standardized female avatar in a three-dimensional simulated clinic, where the trainee was to inform the avatar of her newly diagnosed breast cancer. The trainee evaluated his or her self-efficacy in delivering bad news via an affective competency score (ACS) before and after the encounter. Two palliative care specialists evaluated each trainee's performance using the Bad News Assessment Schedule and the performance ACS. The self-efficacy ACS scores of the trainees improved overall: before, 20 ± 4, versus after, 24 ± 3, p = 0.001 (maximum score = 30). All participants considered the experience positive and commended the novel approach, although noting that the avatars were not able to portray body language cues. Participants viewed the avatar-mediated training as an excellent approach for learning how to deliver bad news but believed it could not substitute for real patient interactions. However, participant self-efficacy improved, which suggests that avatar-mediated training in a virtual world is a viable educational approach for skill training in delivering bad news.

Fembots, Cyborgs, and Female Avatars Alike

Gender, Bodies, and Technology Conference Roanoke, Virginia April 22-24, 2010 Approximately three years ago, motivated by the desire to learn from each other's feminist scholarship, faculty and graduate students affiliated with the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Virginia Tech (VT) began meeting to explore the innumerable ways in which gender, bodies, and technology converge and collide. One of the many positive outcomes of these discussions was this invigorating, forward-thinking Gender, Bodies, and Technology conference, where topics ranged from the social implications of servile fembots to radical artistic envisionings of female avatars. That it gestated in a Women's and Gender Studies Program may be unsurprising to those who already appreciate the field's interdisciplinary nature and non-hierarchical approach to pedagogy. In an era where academia too often prioritizes elite intellectuals with highly specialized knowledge, however, it was refreshing to be reminded just how beneficial interdisciplinarity and scholarship from all levels can truly be. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One rarely returns from an academic conference thinking, How fabulous! But the conference planning committee's decision to include myriad forms of art throughout its three-day course elicited exactly that response. The multimedia plenary Bodies in Time featured powerful video, poetry, political commentary, performance art, and even banjo and ukulele playing from extremely spirited members of VT's English, Music, and Art departments. Lucinda Roy's poem Quite Contrary, Pretty Maids All in a Row was the very definition of menopausal moxie and provided a humorous, liberating counterpoint to the many oppressive issues discussed all day. A number of intermediary spaces were also devoted to art that explored the nexus of gender, bodies, and technology in a more abstract manner than the thesis-driven papers, which allowed conference participants to ruminate about similar issues in more sensual ways. Teresa Ascencao's brilliant interactive video installation, Consuming Her: Sensory Explorations of the Female Nude on the Silver Screen, was one such work. By creating a mosaic image of Audrey Munson (Hollywood's first leading lady to appear fully nude) comprised entirely of miniature movie clips of other celluloid sex symbols, Ascencao illustrated how the movie industry fragments and reconfigures women to fit a fictionalized ideal of femininity. Viewers are invited to touch Munson's body, and each time they do, an audio clip of one of these starlet's voices begins to play, revealing her vulnerabilities about fame, beauty, and seduction. The interactive element replicates how cinema consistently thwarts desire. Viewers need to keep a safe distance to maintain the illusion--if you get too close, the fantasy dissolves before your eyes--and ears. The most poignant plenary was that given by Jennifer Terry, an associate professor of Women's Studies at the University of California, Irvine. Titled Woundscapes of the 21st Century: Gender, Technology, and the Figure of the Damaged Veteran, Terry's talk was a harrowing analysis of American war culture and its devastating effect on society. …

An investigation into how avatar appearance can affect interactions in a virtual world

In the virtual world of Second Life, participants create their own avatar to represent them. From an initial template, this avatar can be physically manipulated in multiple ways to individualise its look and behaviour. This pilot study reports on the social experience of a male and female avatar in a controlled environment. Each avatar had an 'attractive' and 'unattractive' representation. In line with similar studies in real life, we found that attractive people are more likely to be included in conversations and interactions in a virtual online environment and are more likely to be offered friendship than their more unattractive counterparts, but the more interesting questions involved deeper interactions related to deliberate 'unattractiveness' and its possible motives.

New Talking Avatars on the MSVU Library Website

Two talking avatars - Sarah and Suzie SitePal - were recently added to the MSVU Library website. By adding the avatars to the site, the Library hopes to make the site more interactive and fun for new and returning students. The avatars are used to welcome students to the Library, to highlight Library resources and services, and to relay information about Library events. The SitePal software was installed by Denyse Rodrigues, and the avatars were designed and scripted by myself, the Library's new term librarian responsible for public services. SitePal is a subscription internet service that allows users to create and customize talking avatars to add to websites. For a monthly fee, users can choose from a diverse selection of male and female avatars, can add different backgrounds, accessories, clothing, and can choose from a wide selection of players and pre-recorded voices. SitePal also allows you to record your own voice to add to the avatar. I highly recommend taking advantage of this feature because it adds a more life-like quality to the avatar. The SitePal supplied voices sound robotic and monotone and do not allow for natural inflections in language. The SitePal design process is user-friendly and consists of a series of visual menus that you use to design your avatar by simply picking and clicking on the many styles and accessories offered. The avatars can also be updated easily, as often as you like, by logging in to your account on the SitePal website and making the necessary changes. Users have the option of creating multiple avatars at the same time, so library staff can add new life to their library website by changing the avatars periodically. The number of avatars you can create depends upon the type of account you subscribe to: Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. The designer also has control over the avatar placement on the site, and sound options. I set it up so Sarah and Suzie would not play automatically and they are equipped with a play, pause and mute button. Students control the volume setting and can choose to play the avatars at their convenience. Embedding the avatar into your library website is also a relatively stress-free process. I tend to break out in hives at the prospect of working with code, but embedding the avatar into the MSVU Library website was as simple as cutting and pasting the code generated by the SitePal website into our website code. I did encounter a minor set-back during the launch of the avatars in September. The security features installed on the student computers in the library and in the computer labs prevented the avatars from appearing on the site because they need to be downloaded from the SitePal server and the computers were prevented from accessing the information. …

World of Female Avatars an Artistic Online Survey on the Female Body in Times of Virtual Reality

World of Female Avatars an Artistic Online Survey on the Female Body in Times of Virtual Reality

Experimental Results of Affective Valence and Arousal to Avatar's Facial Expressions

The objectives of this study were to propose a method of presenting dynamic facial expressions to experimental subjects, in order to investigate human perception of avatar's facial expressions of different levels of emotional intensity. The investigation concerned how perception varies according to the strength of facial expression, as well as according to an avatar's gender. To accomplish these goals, we generated a male and a female virtual avatar with five levels of intensity of happiness and anger using a morphing technique. We then recruited 16 normal healthy subjects and measured each subject's emotional reaction by scoring affective arousal and valence after showing them the avatar's face. Through this study, we were able to investigate human perceptual characteristics evoked by male and female avatars' graduated facial expressions of happiness and anger. In addition, we were able to identify that a virtual avatar's facial expression could affect human emotion in different ways according to the avatar's gender and the intensity of its facial expressions. However, we could also see that virtual faces have some limitations because they are not real, so subjects recognized the expressions well, but were not influenced to the same extent. Although a virtual avatar has some limitations in conveying its emotion using facial expressions, this study is significant in that it shows that a new potential exists to use or manipulate emotional intensity by controlling a virtual avatar's facial expression linearly using a morphing technique. Therefore, it is predicted that this technique may be used for assessing emotional characteristics of humans, and may be of particular benefit for work with people with emotional disorders through a presentation of dynamic expression of various emotional intensities.

The Price of 'Man' and 'Woman': A Hedonic Pricing Model of Avatar Attributes in a Synthethic World

This paper explores a unique new source of social valuation: a market for bodies. The internet hosts a number of large synthetic worlds which users can visit by piloting a computer-generated body, known as an avatar. Avatars can have an asset value, in that users can spend time to increase their skills; these asset values can be directly observed in online markets. Auction data for avatars from the synthetic fantasy world of EverQuest are used here to explore a number of questions, especially those involving the relative value of male and female avatars. In EverQuest, about 20 percent of the avatar population is female, and there are no sex-based differences in avatar capabilities. Many avatars (about one-fourth to one-fifth of the population) are cross-gendered, being piloted by a person of the opposite sex. Nonetheless, relations between avatars are gender-based, and include chivalry, dating, and sex. Female avatars tend to be concentrated in highly sexualized Human and Elven races, with very few being present among such aesthetically-challenged races as Ogres and Trolls. Hedonic analysis of the auction price data suggests that gender labels are a less important determinant of avatar values than the level, a game-design metric that indicates the overall capabilities of the avatar. Thus, ability seems more important than sex in determining the value of a body. Nonetheless, among comparable avatars, females do sell at a significant price discount. The average avatar price is 333 dollar; the price discount for females is 40 to 55 dollar, depending on methods. The discount may stem from a number of causes, including discrimination in Earth society, the maleness of the EverQuest player base, or differences in well-being related to male and female courtship roles. We do know, however, that these differences cannot be caused by sex-based differences in the abilities of the body, since in the fantasy world of Norrath there are none.