Who is Portrayed in Second Life: Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? The Extent of Congruence Between Real Life and Virtual Identity

Abstract

Virtual social environments opened the door to individual experiences that may not be feasible or possible in real physical settings; in turn bringing to question the applicability of certain more traditional theories to digital environments. Addressing some of this gap in the available literature, in the current study, we compare virtual and real life identities simultaneously, as well as explore the impact of selfconsciousness on virtual identity. Our results indicate that while some of the overall trends are similar between identities constructed in the physical world and those constructed in virtual settings, different identity elements and dimensions tend to be emphasized to different degrees. Furthermore, we find evidence for the role of private in addition to public self-consciousness as influencing virtual existence. In other words, in addition to the general emphasis concerning the role of socially influenced external elements in the formulation of virtual identities, the current study highlights the importance of more internalized and individual level attitudes and perceptions, including one's inner thoughts, emotions, and perspectives. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Avatar Sex – the Joy of the Not-Real

“…It must be remembered, however, that these initial findings did not consider the operator's actual world expression of gender, or whether or not the operator has more than one avatar with which to represent different identities, but rather the fluidity of gender appearance for an individual avatar. Accordingly, the findings are not in conflict with those of other researchers who have found that once established, core elements of avatar identity generally remain constant (Koles and Nagy, 2012) and adhere to "the rules that govern our physical bodies in the real world" (Yee et al, 2007).…”

“…Yee et al wrote that "the rules that govern our physical bodies in the real world have come to govern our embodied identities in the virtual world" (2007, p.15) in so far as, once constructed, avatar appearance and identity typically become relatively fixed and do not change in any significant way. Research by Koles and Nagy (2012) supports this position; they state that "the apparent consistency and stability in the established profiles may indicate that once individuals create their virtual selves, they prefer to keep the core elements of their identities constant, with relatively small amounts of variation." Castranova (2006) focused on the implications of virtual world gender construction for the virtual sexual experience: "Sex in synthetic worlds is real… what is not real is the sense of being not like things in everyday life, is the fact that by switching avatars you can have sex in all four quadrants of the human pairings possibilities graph (M/F, F/M, M/M and F/F) with the same partner."…”

Undertaking qualitative health research in social virtual worlds

“…Some people residing in SVWs wish to preserve their anonymity and do not want to reveal their physical world name (Peachey & Childs ). Although this allows for greater anonymity, from the perspective of the researcher, there is a chance that the same participant may take part in the study more than once by creating an alternative avatar (Hine , Moschini , Koles & Nagy ). However, this is a risk in any online research where a pseudonym is used to protect ‘real’ names.…”

Visualising disability and activism in Second Life

“…9 As the physical laws of time and space obviously do not operate in SL in the same way as in off-screen life, virtual worlds can present 'as a form of augmented reality, one where it's possible to transcend a user's physiological or cognitive challenges into something extraordinary' (Smith, 2012: 388). Inevitably, any utopian sense of freedom to recreate one's performing body at will is qualified by one's offline material circumstances, social world and personality (Gajjala et al, 2008;Koles and Nagy, 2012;Nakamura, 2008) for a reminder of one's embodiment, 'the withness of the body' (Schwartz, 1959) can never really be left behind. Any user of a virtual world is still always aware of the angle and placement of their technological interfaces, such as the keyboard, mouse and monitor of the computer.…”