Hmm, an avatar?
If you’re a student of spirituality, you likely equate the term “avatar” with its Hindu meaning: the manifestation of a deity or the incarnation of one of the Hindu gods.
If you’re an avid movie goer, the term likely conjures up freaky visions of blue creatures from James Cameron’s futurist movie, “Avatar.” (By the way, the sequel to this blockbuster was just confirmed; Avatar 2 is scheduled to be in theaters December 2015.)
If you happen to be a Millennial or an online gamer, you probably think of an icon that represents your identity online — either in online games, virtual worlds or internet forums. When you create an avatar, you generally get to choose or construct the identity of your avatar by determining its age, gender, height and hair color. In some cases, mortality is optional.
For better or for worse, as more of our language moves to the visual realm, avatars as representations of ourselves are playing more of a role in our daily lives. The hot question is how avatars, and the virtual worlds they live in, impact us as human beings and as a society?
Virtually bad or actually bad?
On the downside, it’s easy to understand how avatars could potentially empower people to engage in less than pro-social behavior as their real identities are shielded by an avatar. Online, perceived anonymity leads to wholly different behavior; behavior devoid of courtesy, empathy and general civility. It’s called the online disinhibition effect. We wrote about this new age of rage late last year.
One of the great advances in online game-playing is the ability of participants to form their own communities and clans as they come together to create and play. Avatars are the way players identify each other and self-identify their own values. The characteristics of one’s avatar may reveal much about an individual, or may be designed to actively shield one’s identity. Do we behave better or worse when we think no one knows it’s us?
Does the use of avatars help one become more involved, engaged and evolved as a contributing member of society? Despite the perils, there is evidence to suggest this is so.
Avatars as motivators
On the upside, Jeremy Bailenson, Ph.D. in psychology, who founded Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, helped discover how avatars can nudge us into good behavior. In one of his studies, subjects were shown avatars that looked like themselves. In this example, the avatars were busy exercising and rapidly losing weight. This motivated subjects to voluntarily exercise more.
In another study, Bailenson’s team found if a younger person were to meet their future self via vivid representations of their 70-year-old self — they were motivated to put aside twice as much money for retirement (pdf).
Score another point for avatars as useful learning devices.
Virtual reality as a social communication platform
You may want to give some long and hard thought about your own avatar. You’re probably going to need it. Facebook is buying Oculus VR, a startup that makes virtual reality headsets (so new they’re not yet available to consumers), in a $2 billion deal.
“Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow,” Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a prepared statement. “Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate.”
If a business behemoth like Facebook is jumping in on the virtual reality-as-social-platform wave, better take note. How long before more people know our avatars than know our real-life selves?
Jacqueline
Jacqueline Botting is the founder and a contributing writer to WiseTribe. She is a technology business developer in the U.S. and overseas for start-ups and Fortune 1000s. She’s a proponent of owning less to live more and believes greater contemplative practices in our daily lives and social institutions make our world a better place. She splits her time between LA, NYC and Florida. Connect with Jacqueline on LinkedIn, Twitter or Google +.
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