How To Kill A Greek God - A Review, Critique, and Meta-Analysis of 14 years of Proteus Effect Research

Abstract

The Proteus Effect is a phenomenon whereby a user of a virtual environment temporarily adopts attitudes and behaviours that are consistent withstereotypes associated with the appearance of their avatar.A recent meta-analysis (Ratan et al, 2019) estimates that the strength of the Proteus Effect is "small to medium" under the de facto descriptors of Cohen (1992). Ratan et al also suggest some meta-analytic regressors which may moderate the overall effect. In this replication and extension of Ratan et al’s review, the conditions under which an effect should be observed are made explicit, and a number of potential issues with the previous review are highlighted and addressed. These include conflation of a number of different theories (Virtual Self Modelling, perspective taking), the erroneous inclusion and omission of studies, errors in effect size calculation, and the possible motivated selection of effects.Results reveal that although the Proteus Effect may be a robust effect with several demonstrative studies, the omnibus effect size of the Proteus Effect is smaller than previously indicated, is sensitive to the inclusion of negativeresults, and that the moderators suggested in the original meta-analysis do not significantly contribute to the prediction of the effect sizes.It is ultimately argued that the Proteus Effect ought not be embraced as an intervention and is more useful as an indicator of stereotype activations.Suggestions are made for a progressive research line which aims to unpack the Proteus Effect and increase the consistency and variety of predictions it can make, including ways to reduce the effect and allow controllers thefreedom to be who they want to be in virtual environments.

A theoretical review of the Proteus effect: understanding the underlying processes

“…It should be noted that using negative stereotypes relating to race, gender, or body size has been criticized for its lack of consideration of the sensitive nature of these topics (Clark, 2020 ). Using avatars to highlight the existence of harmful stereotypes is not inconsiderate in itself.…”

“…Interestingly, based on this description, the framework generally makes opposite predictions to the Proteus effect (Clark, 2020 ). Indeed, the Proteus effect assumes that embodying an avatar will cause the user to adopt behaviors that would be coherent with any stereotypes associated with the avatar's appearance.…”

Immersive Virtual Environments’ Impact on Individual and Collective Creativity

“…To avoid redundancy the following four publications summarizing authors' previous work are not reported in Table 2: Buisine et al ( 2017), de Sousa (2015), Guegan et al (2019), andClark (2020).…”

“…Ten publications addressed the impact on the creativity of embodying an avatar, including six original studies (Table 2), three book chapters summarizing previous authors’ publications (Buisine et al, 2017; de Sousa, 2015; Guegan et al, 2019), and one a review (Clark, 2020). The main research questions were:…”

Studying the Role of Self and External Touch in the Appropriation of Dysmorphic Hands

“…Some studies also pointed to the potential effect of virtual appearance manipulation to reduce pain perception [31,42]. The Proteus Effect [12,61], in which embodied users temporarily adopt behaviors related to stereotypes associated with the altered appearance of their avatar was also shown to induce change in behaviour [62] and self-identification [50]. Homoncular Flexibility suggests that it is possible for users to learn to control virtual bodies different from their own.…”