TY - JOUR
T1 - People, places, and time
T2 - a large-scale, longitudinal study of transformed avatars and environmental context in group interaction in the metaverse
AU - Han, Eugy
AU - Miller, Mark R.
AU - DeVeaux, Cyan
AU - Jun, Hanseul
AU - Nowak, Kristine L.
AU - Hancock, Jeffrey T.
AU - Ram, Nilam
AU - Bailenson, Jeremy N.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Communication Association.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - As the metaverse expands, understanding how people use virtual reality to learn and connect is increasingly important. We used the Transformed Social Interaction paradigm (Bailenson et al., 2004) to examine different avatar identities and environments over time. In Study 1 (n = 81), entitativity, presence, enjoyment, and realism increased over 8 weeks. Avatars that resembled participants increased synchrony, similarities in moment-to-moment nonverbal behaviors between participants. Moreover, self-avatars increased self-presence and realism, but decreased enjoyment, compared to uniform avatars. In Study 2 (n = 137), participants cycled through 192 unique virtual environments. As visible space increased, so did nonverbal synchrony, perceived restorativeness, entitativity, pleasure, arousal, self- and spatial presence, enjoyment, and realism. Outdoor environments increased perceived restorativeness and enjoyment more than indoor environments. Self-presence and realism increased over time in both studies. We discuss implications of avatar appearance and environmental context on social behavior in classroom contexts over time.
AB - As the metaverse expands, understanding how people use virtual reality to learn and connect is increasingly important. We used the Transformed Social Interaction paradigm (Bailenson et al., 2004) to examine different avatar identities and environments over time. In Study 1 (n = 81), entitativity, presence, enjoyment, and realism increased over 8 weeks. Avatars that resembled participants increased synchrony, similarities in moment-to-moment nonverbal behaviors between participants. Moreover, self-avatars increased self-presence and realism, but decreased enjoyment, compared to uniform avatars. In Study 2 (n = 137), participants cycled through 192 unique virtual environments. As visible space increased, so did nonverbal synchrony, perceived restorativeness, entitativity, pleasure, arousal, self- and spatial presence, enjoyment, and realism. Outdoor environments increased perceived restorativeness and enjoyment more than indoor environments. Self-presence and realism increased over time in both studies. We discuss implications of avatar appearance and environmental context on social behavior in classroom contexts over time.
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U2 - 10.1093/jcmc/zmac031
DO - 10.1093/jcmc/zmac031
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85159600041
SN - 1083-6101
VL - 28
JO - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
JF - Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
IS - 2
ER -