Cultural Hermeneutics Installment # 3 - Identity in the Metaverse

Social tremors are already being felt in Second Life, the most popular of the online virtual worlds with over 8 million registered users.  In August of this year, Time Magazine ran an article reporting the findings of a research firm which predicted that by 2011, 80% of internet users will have some form of presence in a virtual world.[1]  The Metaverse is not going away, so what is it that attracts users to online virtual worlds for social reasons?

David Stone has been a Research Fellow at MIT and a Visiting  Fellow at Harvard in Computer Science and is currently a Visiting Scholar at Harvard in Psychology where he has spent considerable time during the 2006-2007 academic year doing research on the clinical applications of Second Life, the most popular online virtual world.  His work has been inspired by Professor Charles Nesson who has made use of Second Life in his teaching at Harvard Law School.  Stone thinks that a major attraction is identity experimentation.  In a recent correspondence Stone said, “Second Life has become a laboratory of identity.”[2]

He is not alone in his thinking.  Perhaps nothing concerns culture watchers more than the anonymity of online virtual worlds.  The MVR manifesto, for example, cited that online virtual worlds like Second Life are already dealing with a host of problems due to “transparency and reputation issues” in which users “experiment with social rules under alternative identities.”[3]  This has become such a problem in parts of Second Life, that the company is now offering identity verification measures to its users.[4]  Since there is no necessary “real world” connection between a user and his/her avatar, virtual worlds attract people who are interested in experimentation.

Yet, we should be careful to add that user experimentation is not the only user motivation.  Nick Yee, a researcher from Stanford University and an expert in online gaming psychology, has recently completed a survey that maps user motivations. His findings showed that user motivations varied depending on age, gender, and personality type.[5]  Generally however, Yee argues that outgoing users are more likely to experiment with their identities in the Metaverse, while introverted users tend to create identities similar to their real world identities.[6]

Though user motivations are complex to pinpoint, psychologists and sociologists are in agreement that online virtual worlds “are not just games”[7] and that they are places where self-understanding is being shaped.  Some seem to think that online virtual worlds like Second Life may even become valuable tools for clinical uses.  On May 1st of this year Stone told an audience: “I believe its possible to construct a therapeutic community in Second Life . . . In addition to technological benefits that come from using leverage in that environment there are some potentially valuable psychological treatment options that come from using this as an adjunct, perhaps, to other kinds of treatment.”[8]

Stone is not overly optimistic about the Metaverse, however. He also thinks that the relationship between a person and his avatar – a digital representation of the user – is complex and can, in some cases, be the cause of confusion for the user:  “I have found that those who created avatars with different personalities to explore what their lives might have been like had they made other choices sometimes find that the life of the avatar is richer and more rewarding than their own ‘real’ lives. This sometimes results in confusion about their identity.”[9]

Recent studies appear to confirm Stone’s suspicions that the user-avatar relationship is more complex than originally suspected.  For instance, two independent studies have recently shown that, in certain situations, the use of avatars can produce both a sense of separation from the user’s own body and/or a sense of identification with the body of the avatar.  In each instance, subjects were asked to watch a digital representation of themselves and report their sensations to researchers.  In the study conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the researchers touched the subject’s back with a marker while the subject watched a digital arm touch his or her avatar’s back.  Subjects reported that the sensation appeared to be caused by the digital arm touching their avatar’s back.  Similarly, in the study conducted by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, researchers touched both the chest and back of the subject with a plastic rod as the subjects watched a digital arm stroke only their avatar’s back.  The experience created the sensation that the subject was sitting in a location behind his or her own body.[10]

Avatar-images can also effect certain user-behaviors.  Nick Yee and Jeremy Bailenson have recently led a study focusing on what is known as the Proteus Effect – the tendency for changes in avatar images to effect changes in user demeanor.[11]  The study discovered that subjects given taller avatars acted with more aggression while subjects given more attractive avatars were friendlier to strangers.  The implication – “the appearances of our avatars shape how we interact with others.”[12]

Other studies have shown that user tendencies toward “gender-bending” – the use of avatar-identities of the opposite gender – affect the self-understanding of the user.    A recent survey by Yee shows that almost 50% of males and over 25% of females have at least one avatar of the opposite gender[13] and that older male players were substantially more likely to use avatars of the opposite gender.[14]

While Yee agrees that many users create avatars for the purpose of identity experimentation,[15] he also thinks that identity confusion in online gaming is overstated: “Most people in online games [“gender-bend”] for instrumental reasons. Many men choose female avatars either because ‘female avatars are treated better’ or for visual aesthetic reasons. Women do it to avoid sexual harassment in the game.”[16]

But while Yee’s research shows that most “gender-bending” is not the result of identity confusion, it also underscores that experimentation with an avatar of the opposite sex has significant implications for one’s self-understanding.  In fact, Yee reports that several gamers who used avatars of the opposite gender expressed “an increased awareness of their own masculinity or femininity” or that the experience enabled them to “see society differently.”[17]

Given the examples above, it is transparent that a user does not simply “use” an avatar as a carpenter might use a hammer – the relationship is more dynamic. There is a sense in which the avatar “pushes back” by defining the user’s experience of his/her body, emotions, and even gender.  It affects his manner of “being in the world.”  But on the other hand, the avatar is not independent of the user – the avatar is not necessary.  So how do the user and the avatar relate?

And the complexity of the user-avatar relationship, how should we coordinate identity in relation to these two?  Anonymity in the Metaverse opens the possibility that a user might have multiple avatars, any number of which might be substantially different – even antithetical – to the user’s real world identity.  Ric Hoogestrat, for example, is married in real life, but has also taken a virtual wife in the Metaverse.[18]  Is Ric cheating, or is it just an avatar?  In such a scenario, can we still maintain mutuality between the identity of the avatar(s) and that of the user or is the identity of the avatar entirely independent of the user?  How can we coordinate the user, the avatar, and personal identity to do justice to the complex relationship?

This question is not insignificant – it has massive implications for both the user and the virtual environment.  If the avatar were simply an extension of the user, then the user would bear sole responsibility for the actions of the avatar.  However, as we have already seen, this is not the case.  To a degree, the user is at the mercy of the avatar.  If the product of the user-avatar relationship in the Metaverse is new “self-understanding,” then those who choose the shape of our virtual-selves and our virtual-world, shape who we will become.  The question is now, in the year 2011, when over 1 Billion people have a presence in the virtual world, who will we be?

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[1] Kristina Dell, “Second Life’s Real-World Problems,” Time 170 no. 8 (8 August 2007), 49.

[2] David Stone, interview by author, 12 October 2007, telephone.

[3] Smart, 18.

[4] “Linden Lab Introduces Identity Verification to Second Life,” http://lindenlab.com/press/releases/08_29_07, (Accessed 27 November 2007).

[5] Nick Yee, “Motivations of Play in Online Games,” Journal of CyberPsychology and Behavior 9 no. 6 (2007), 772-775.

[6] Nick Yee, “Through the Looking Glass,” http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000755.php, (Accessed 27 November 2007).

[7] Yee, N., “The Demographics, Motivations and Derived Experiences of Users of  Massively-Multiuser Online Graphical Environments,” PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 15 (2006), 309-329.

[8] David Stone as quoted in a lecture given May 1, 2007 at Harvard’s Berkman Center (“Applications of Social Networking Technology to Medical Treatment,” available in video format at: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/category/people/david-stone/ [accessed 22 November, 2007]).

[9] David Stone, interview by author, 22 November 2007, e-mail.

[10] Greg Miller, “Out-of-body Experience Enter the Laboratory,” Science 317 (24 August, 2007), 1020-1021.

[11] Yee, N. and Bailenson, J.N., “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self-Representation on Behavior,” Human Communication Research 33 no. 3 (2007), 271-290; (accessed online 24 November 2007: http://www.nickyee.com/index-vrlab.html).

[12] Yee, “Proteus,” 289.

[13] Nick Yee, “Gender-Bending,” http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/genderbend.html, (accessed 24 November 2007); Yee, “The Demographics of Gender-Bending,” http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000551.php?page=2, (accessed 24 November 2007).

[14] Yee, “The Demographics of Gender-Bending.”

[15] “Create the Perfect Virtual You,” New Scientist 194 no. 2603 (5/12/2007), 12.

[16] Nick Yee, interviewed by author, 23 November 2007, e-mail.

[17] Yee, “Gender-bending.”

[18] Alexander Alter, “Is This Man Cheating on His Wife?,” Wall Street Journal – Eastern Edition 250 no. 34 (10 August 2007), W1-W8, 2p, 2c.